My Old Atlanta home: And We're Back!

Whew, it's been one hell of a week folks. The move did not go as smoothly as we'd hoped. The moving company forgot about us and never showed up on Monday morning. By the time we called them and straightened it out, Atlanta was hit by a pouring rain storm, and it was decided that we should just put off the move till Tuesday. That's all fine and dandy, but everything we owned was packed up into boxes. Fortunately, our contractor Brett offered to take some guys over to our rental house and move our bed so we could at least sleep in our "new" house. Also, it helped that I had a suitcase packed up with clothes, toiletries, towels, and essential electronics (phones, ipods, kindles, etc) so that we could live for a few days without having to unpack boxes. Delaying the move did stress me out some, because we need to host our family for the holidays. It's essential that I get the house up and running by then, and losing a day of unpacking just sucked.

The rest of the week has been a flurry of trying to get the kitchen and master bedroom/closet unpacked and organized. The hardest thing has been figuring out exactly where we want to put things. I want to get the unpacking and organizing right the first time around because I know that we are just too darn lazy to ever go back and redo it. Also, I have to wash every dish, pot, pan, plate, utensil, and froo fraa that goes in the kitchen before putting it away. I know I'm probably being a little overzealous (especially since this is kind of still a construction zone), but I just can't stand the thought of putting something away that was dusty from the move. You should see my poor dishpan hands!

Yeah, so the construction is not exactly finished here. Brett and his boys have absolutely busted their humps trying to get as much done as possible before we moved in, but little things kept happening that were out of their control. For instance, the washer and dryer that we ordered is no longer being made so we had to pick new models (they won't be here till next week). The slab company lost one of our bathroom sinks so we weren't able to have our final inspection. They also have delayed coming out to install our kitchen island slab and some of our hearth slabs (for unknown reasons)...sigh. If this were any other time of year, the hubby and I would have just canceled his vacation time (yeah, he took the week off to help unpack and get us settled, poor guy) and moved our move back date till everything was done. But, as I've mentioned, we have to host the family for the holiday (for personal reasons that I won't go into here), so we kinda had to be back in our house. So, we're living in a work in progress here, but that's okay. Our family won't mind, and we feel like we're in good hands with Brett. He is out here every day, ticking off every little thing that he can to complete the house. Seriously, I cannot stress enough how hard this man has worked to try and get us back into our house for the holiday season, or how he has gone above and beyond the call of duty for us. I cannot recommend him enough as a contractor, and if you live in the Atlanta area and need a contractor, I would be happy to send his information out to you.

I also want to take a moment and mention our wonderful designer Karen. She has been working feverishly this month trying to nail down every little detail so that our house could be as complete as possible by our move in date. Keep in mind that she has a full time job (that does not involve designing for us) and a small child and a husband and the holiday season to deal with just like the rest of us. She has worked herself to exhaustion trying to make sure everything was as comfortable, cozy, and complete for us as it could possibly be before she went on her holiday vacation. I cannot recommend her enough as a designer, but I can't recommend her to you. You know why? She doesn't do residential design professionally. Karen designed our house for us as a labor of love, and we feel so humble and lucky to have her as a friend.

Well that's it for this week folks, but let me leave you with some "keeping it real" pics of the house RIGHT after we moved in (seriously, the movers had just left when I demanded the hubby take some pics).

The front hall. That hutch will not be there permanently. That's the spot where a family heirloom piano will live, but right now it's in storage somewhere near my parent's house. Also, that's our wiener dog Sookie sniffing a drill.

The office.

The guest bedroom. A lot of that junk is going down to our basement. We just didn't put it down there that day because of all the mud from the previous day's rain and the fact that our basement is only accessible from the outside (temporarily).

The master bedroom. That's a drop cloth we're using as a curtain. The sweet lady who is making our draperies is working as quickly as she can, but she has a 7 week old baby, and a 3 year old, and there are only so many hours in a day. I'll post when we get them up. Can you spot Sookie's butt?