Setting Up Our New Place

Our new place is a walk-out basement of a 100 year old house. Our address includes “1/2″ which I find to be charming as if it belongs in Alice in Wonderland. Luckily all our windows look straight out above ground. That makes the space so light and cheerful.

We lucked out with this place by knowing the previous tenant (who just bought a house). The landlord was born in this house and then moved to the house next door when he was young. He inherited both houses when his mother passed away. Another thing about our landlord is that he’s hard of hearing and very adamant about us being non-smokers (which we both are, thankfully) as both his parents died of lung cancer. He and his wife (with the help of some others) did a ton of work on the place before we moved in, including new carpet and linoleum, paint on the walls, adobe-like plaster on a few walls, and a new stove and hood. His wife also gave us a bunch of huge pots to plant in which I was ecstatic about. The funny thing about our landlord is that he really likes all the old details (check out the cupboards) that keep the place looking like it did when he was a boy. Our landlord’s main handy-person is this man who rents a room in a trailer, wears a crystal around his neck, talks like Jimmy Stewart, and communicates with cats via his higher self. He’s pretty much awesome and loves Sasha and Lita.

So our place is pretty great. It’s 3 blocks from my favorite Sip House, Ideal Market (AKA mini Whole Foods), and a bunch of other neat things. We’re also 5 blocks from Pearl Street, which is rad. It’s been great to walk down to Pearl for dinner or to meet up with friends. As for the house itself, we’ve got a great big open yard that we share with the house next door. It’s got a lovely apple tree (which is great to hang a hammock from), a picnic table, and along one side of the house there is garden space. Inside it’s about 600 square feet, 1/4 the size of the townhouse we owned before leaving for Costa Rica, but we’ve found we don’t need much space. We still haven’t really used the space off the kitchen. Jim pointed out that no matter where we live, we always don’t use one space. My favorite part of our place is our red claw-foot tub.

The first night at our place (which was the day the stove was put in) I cooked up a curry meal for us and we watched a movie, before sleeping on our blow-up mattress (which we did for almost 2 weeks before getting out bed). We hadn’t moved everything into the place yet, so check out the plants on chairs, and our nifty laptop console.

The following day Jim built a fence for the girls. Actually, it’s really for us, so that we don’t always have to put on a lease when they just need to go potty or want to lay in the dirt in the sun.

Check out that cute butt!

The girls were very interested in sniffing everything out in their new hang out place. They approved!

While Jim put the last touches on the fence I planted in the massive pots we were given. Lots of flowers, including organic edible ones, and a bunch of fresh herbs, which took 2 weeks to become fully vibrant and cheerful.

My next post will be on the garden space along the side of our house, but here’s some lovely Irises that were there already.

Packing Up

So I realized I haven’t mentioned how grand of an effort packing was. We had many friends and family help (Jim’s sister Katie and her fiance Michi, Big Jim, Marissa, Kylie, my Dad, Marissa and Jeff, The Weinrauchs, Greg/Tashi, and many more). From moving large pieces of furniture, to packing boxes, to cleaning, it was a massive help.

Jim was a Super Star when it came to posting furniture on Craigslist and getting items to people.

After selling our place we lived in our friend Paul’s mom’s place. Paul and his family had just moved out (they bought a house) and we moved in for a month. We didn’t bring much with us there. There was already a table so we brought a bed, a love-seat and rocking chair (heirlooms), plants, and kitchen stuff mainly. We only used a few rooms in the house.

The rest of our stuff that we didn’t sell or donate and we knew wouldn’t come with us to Costa Rica for the year, went into a storage unit. We had originally thought we needed a 5′x8′ unit, but thankfully ended up with a 5′x10′ one. As you can see, we filled it up.

The last few days before leaving were full of giving away plants, selling the grill, cleaning, running errands, choosing what we really wanted to bring, and storing the rest. We were a bit concerned that we’d go over the weight limit on our bags, so Jim found us a $10 luggage scale that went up to 75lbs (our limit was 50lbs).

We packed bags, weighed them, redistributed items between the bags, and weighed them again. We ended up with one large “rolly suitcase” (each), one duffel bag (each), one small “rolly carry-on” (each), one large moving box at 60 linear inches (the size requirement), and one guitar (in its case). Everything except for the large box was under 50lbs. This ended up costing us $300 in luggage fees; $25 each for the first 4 (2 per person), $100 for the guitar (the extra baggage fee if the right weight), and $150 for the large box (the extra baggage fee plus $50 because it was between 50 and 70 lbs).

The next task was to see if everything would fit in our large mini van (what an oxymoron). With the Tetris skills we had developed with packing all the boxes and the storage unit, it was a success. All 8 pieces of luggage, 2 large dog crates, 2 dogs, and Jim and I all fit in! Thank goodness the middle and back seats folded flush to the floor.

One last stop to the storage unit and we were off!