Mine! (Almost) All Mine!

The last couple of weeks have been crazy busy as we finished out most of the last of the construction details, got the final inspections done, and finished all of the paperwork. All before the HOA’s July 31st deadline. While Bill and the subs continue to work on the items on the punch list, I closed on the mortgage on July 26th and the Certificate of Occupancy was issued on the 27th. The house is now officially mine! (Well, my trust’s actually.)

GREAT! Now I can move in, right?

Uh, not really. It would be nice to have some furniture, maybe. So on August 1st, the new beds were delivered–and I managed to have the queen and the two twins put in the wrong rooms. That made the “Oriental” guest bedroom look awfully small all of a sudden, and led me to discover that I’d ordered sheets that won’t match the themes of these two rooms. SIGH. OK, that can be fixed.

Next up was getting the sofa and chairs for the great room delivered on the 2nd. The guys showed up from Phoenix in a driving rainstorm but were able to back the truck up close to the west patio doors and get everything in without getting it wet.

Next up were Paul and Celia Sislow, owners of CopperAnza in Tucson, and their two sons, delivering the coffee table you see above and the dining room table.

The coffee table will have a glass top like the dining room table. We left it in its packaging because the table is going to have to be moved so my big Turkish carpet can go underneath it. The frames of both tables are steel–and heavy–and the glass tops are heavy too.

OK, so where are the chairs? Well, they’re not due to be delivered, along with two buffet tables which will go against the wall, until the 23rd, along with the rest of the furniture for the bedrooms. So my plans for moving in by the middle of the month? Not happenin’.

Later this week, the desk for the office will be delivered. That should be really amazing. I’m nervous to see how it came out, since it was custom built in Tucson and all I’ve seen are the plans and the template for the granite top.

There is one piece of good news here, though. I’ve been wondering how I was going to get everything that I do plan to move from the current house to the new one. A friend and former neighbor has offered his father-in-law’s enclosed trailer (and the truck to pull it), but why should I wait when there’s a lot of small stuff I can move before we need the trailer? So the move is going to happen kind-of the way Johnny Cash built his Cadillac: “One Piece at a Time.” This afternoon I stuffed six boxes of books, plus one other box, in the Bimmer and schlepped them down to the house. I can get a lot done if I make it a practice to fill the car every time I have to go to the house.

Internet

One of the things this move is forcing me to do is get a new internet service provider. The cable company I’ve been using for the last 20 years doesn’t provide service in Wild Horse, so my choices are either DSL or an over-the-air link. DSL data rates aren’t the greatest, and I’d gotten positive reviews about some of the broadcast providers, so I had one of them come down and install their system. Here’s Ben installing the antenna.

Yes, it’s that small. The transmission tower it links to is about a mile and a half away. Inside I’ll have my own little Wi-Fi network.

Rainstorm

I mentioned earlier the driving Monsoon rain that was a problem for the first furniture delivery. Before those guys showed up, though, it was even stronger. So strong, in fact, that the wash below the house ran for the first time that I’ve seen. Not a surprise since I’d bet we got between 3″ and 4″ of rain just from that storm.

The rattling you hear is the rain falling on the metal roof.

If I can get moved in by Labor Day, I’ll have been in my current house for almost exactly ten years… when I originally expected to be here for only two.

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