Apparently moving large chest freezers full of food sucks. They are heavy and cumbersome. Then there is the ever present problem with things thawing if you aren't quick enough.
In order to get our largest freezer onto the trailer and then off again, the men in charge piled up the contents on a box.
After putting the freezer in place, everyone then quickly returned the pile of poultry to the freezer. And then when the door wouldn't close, I got called in to rearrange things so they would fit.
Now I realize organizing the freezer was a breeze compared to the house.
And I can't get anything done. The family room (above) is filled up with stuff, much of which belongs elsewhere. Some of Gregory's bedroom furniture is here. But Gregory's room is full of his stuff and Michael's stuff. I can't move Michael's stuff until I paint Michael's room. So far, I've only painted the ceiling. And I did a lousy job at that. I've decided I don't like painting. Except when my friend Kathy is around. She loves to paint and she is good at it. Her good attitude infects me and then painting is okay. I'm having a hard time getting to the painting because there are so many people at the house doing stuff and I have a hard time isolating myself in a bedroom when there are strangers around my children.
Much of the master bedroom furniture likewise sits in the family room. But I can't really move anything (more) into the master bedroom because it doesn't have a proper floor and flooring work is imminent.
The master bedroom floor sits in the family room next to the floor for the master bathroom.
Because we ran out of space, we did put some stuff into the master bedroom. Most of the stuff is fragile or expensive. We also stored the furniture destined for the sun room in the master bedroom. We couldn't put anything into the sun room because the sun room floor was so bad it had to be completely removed.
In fact, our friend Bob, the best of builders, had to jack the sun room onto blocks in order to repair the bad foundation.
Fortunately, Bob performs miracles these days and he not only fixed the foundation and the sub floor, but he retro-fitted some sort of flashing that should prevent future rotting issues. He is my hero this week.
But I still can't move the furniture into the sun room because the tile for the floor is in boxes.
I have to install the tile. But to do that, I need to learn to install tile. Hopefully it isn't harder than knitting or sewing.
Since we can't sleep in the master bedroom, we have set up temporary sleeping quarters in the dining room.
The dining room is probably too small for our dining room furniture anyway. But for now, we've set up a temporary dining room in the living room.
The living room also holds a bunch of boxes. One pile leans precariously over Gabrielle's chair.
I'd like to unpack some of the boxes, but most of them hold kitchen things. And of course, the flooring for the kitchen is in the family room.
And the kitchen isn't habitable.
The cabinets and counter-tops are in pieces. Any time I try to unpack something into the kitchen, it gets moved for work being done. I've given up trying to unpack the kitchen for now.
There is some "light at the end of the tunnel" however. I entered all the receipts for everything to date and we're basically out of money. Thus, construction will be done very soon. I can't believe how fast it spends. It feels like we've had a black hole attached to our bank account.
Of course we had a bit of a drain before we moved. Everything started breaking. Kurt replaced the pool pump and then the dishwasher quit and had to be replaced.
All day today, we've had an air conditioning repair person fixing the broken units. Apparently the quoted price is just a starting place.
Every time I turn around, there is a new expense. This air conditioning thing could turn the bank account inside-out by the end of the day.
On the day we closed, we hit an end of the season sale and bought an above-ground swimming pool for the new house. We had one at the house in Brewton and our family just loved it. And I was glad to have paid for it in full, in advance.
Well, that was until the installers were stumped.
Meet stump one.
And stump two.
When pool installers discover large, live oak stumps, pool installation cannot proceed and big, expensive equipment must be rented. Guess who pays for the extra expenses. . .
And what would be a pool installation without cutting an underground power line?
At present, the workshop has no power and the poultry freezer is plugged into an extension cord running into the house.
But God is good and at the moment the power problems surfaced, our friend John was in our attic fixing some other power issues.
Final score at the end of the day? We're poor, but Jesus is still mighty in our lives.
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