The Move - Chapter 4

It is less than a week now to our move, and things are getting pretty frantic.  We are both feeling some stress, but I think we are handling it well.  Lots of talking and discussing plans that seem to change around a lot.

We've been packing... and packing... and packing.  It is a wonder that we have so much stuff around.  We have been trolling the area looking for boxes and using NextDoor.  We've bought a few, but mostly have been using recycled boxes.  The big negative on the recycled boxes is that they don't hold weight very well.  This may represent a problem loading the truck.

The other day, I was driving through a neighborhood nearby and found a trailer from a you pack it company.  The guy was outside and I asked about boxes.  He gave me a truck-full including 5 very clean wardrobe boxes.  Most of the boxes look like they got some water or just smushed, but the wardrobes are mint.

On the truck... I just did the easiest check-in ever for a vehicle.  U-Haul had a message on the website in my record that I needed to do the checking process.  It was really easy.  I took photos of the front and back of my driver's license and added an emergency contact.  Really, no sweat.

We are kind of running out of room to put stuff in our house.  My office, the room I photographed in the previous post, and the living room are filling up.  The garage had to be cleared out so I could have room to work.  All of that is now in the living room.  Tammy is going through old tubs and we are ditching a lot of stuff.

Also, since I have written, we used U-Haul's "Moving Labor" option and found a couple of people to help us load on March 8th here in Tomball and another group to help us unload in Summerville on March 11th.  It was super easy.  Both groups reached out to me and arranged arrival times within a day.  Both seemed very knowledgeable and helpful.

In Summerville, there's an Extra Storage within a couple of miles of where our home will be.  I rented a 10 x 25 storage in an enclosed temp-controlled zone.  It turns out that Extra Storage just built this facility in the last few years.  It wasn't shown on Google Maps, but the map of the complex has it.  We are not far from a door, so the unloading should go well.  There wasn't a U-Haul storage close to us.

Our plan now is to load and hit the road immediately afterward.  We are hoping to get to Summerville on Saturday sometime, but okay with having to spend an extra night in a hotel.  Neither of us knows how much of a handful the truck might be on that long of a trip.  The reviews for the trucks are all pretty good.

That's it for now.  Lots of additional packing this weekend and disassembly of some beds and stuff.  We are going to do our best to pack this truck nose to tail.  More later on!

The Move - Chapter 3

Yesterday, we really got busy packing.  We are getting our moving truck in three weeks from U-Haul and we need to be ready to fill that truck up.  We are packing all the items that we don't trust others to pack like our photo frames, artwork, and nicknacks. In addition, anything we don't need is getting packed.  We've been scouring NextDoor looking for used boxes, but we have had to buy some.  We ran out of box tape and made a same-day order on Amazon for 12 more rolls.  The photo is of a room with wall-to-wall boxes we packed all yesterday.  The walls are bare and the house looks kind of sad.

Today we are both sore and still have a lot to do.  It's Sunday, so we are going to take this as a day of rest and recovery.  Tomorrow is George Washington's Birthday, so I have the day off.  My plan is to pack up the garage.  I'll need to make a toolbox of common tools to stay here so I can repair house stuff.  I'll also keep back the painting supplies.  I'm strongly considering hiring a painter.  

I discovered an interesting way to clean grout online and it really works well.  1 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide, and a tablespoon of Dawn.  Mix together and use a condiment-type bottle to squirt into the grout lines.  Let set for 10 minutes and then scrub with a brush.  Wipe up.  Mopping the floor helps afterward.  I started scrubbing the whole tile and everything really looks great.

This week, I will reserve space in Summerville at a storage facility.  Looking for an exterior entrance on the first floor - 10 x 20 - environmentally controlled.  Not sure that exists, but we'll see.  

On the house-building note, we've had a couple of folks taking photos for us.  We can see that some plumbing and electrical work is being done in the framework of the foundation.  We are waiting to hear from the builder to schedule the pre-construction meeting.  We told them that we'll be out there in early March, so the meeting may wait until then.  We are very excited to have this meeting.

Things are moving along!  

The Move - Chapter 2

It is early February and the plan is starting to rollout.  We are feeling a lot of pressure to evaluate how our existing furniture and art collection will be used in our new home.  We are gaining 400 square feet in our new home, so one would think we would need to buy new furniture, however, there's definitely a worry about where things will go.  We have a lot of "where are we going to put that?" conversations.  The new home does have a lot more windows which limits the wall space in all the normal places.

We've started packing a few things, focusing on my office first.  After this weekend, however, we are going to really press the gas pedal in order to fill up the the U-Haul and declutter as much as possible our current home.  The March 6th U-Haul pickup and March 8th 'hit the road' dates are creeping up quickly.  Getting loaded in Tomball and unloaded Summerville will include enlisting the help of a contract mover.  We still need to arrange these as well as storage in Summerville.  We are looking for a 1st floor temperature controlled unit.

Our daughter-in-law took some photos of our new home location and the contractor has started framing the foundation.  We also saw that the building permit was issued by the Town of Summerville.   All of this is getting very real.

More to come...

Small update:  Today - 2/9/2024, we received official notification that our construction start date is today!

The Move

About two months ago, my wife and I were talking about moving from Texas to the Charleston, SC area as we traveled to Florida for Thanksgiving.  Our son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren live in the area.  On that trip, we decided to see if it was feasible at all to do the move.  My job allows me to live anywhere since I work from home.

We poured over our finances for a couple of weeks and scoped out the housing market.  It became pretty evident early that Summerville was the only place we could afford.  We made several spreadsheets, including loan amortization, tax comparisons of Dorchester and Berkeley counties, lists of developments under construction, and budget calculators.

Our initial plan was to go to Charleston for the New Year break and tour housing areas, decide on a house plan, and start executing the process if it all was feasible.  We started calling home builders and making appointments.  Unfortunately, we quickly learned that most of the homebuilders in the area were spec homes, and we couldn't even choose the paint color.  "We build what we think will sell" was the mantra of most builders.  Most of those builders had a lot of bad feedback on rating sites.

One great call we had was with Michael Piazza of Mungo Homes.  He is the salesperson at Six Oaks subdivision near Summerville/Knightsville.  First, while they are a production builder, they allow a great degree of customization.  That checked the first box for us in building a home.  Next, we wanted a home plan that would work for us as we age (we are in our 60s).  We also wanted something unique and not "cookie cutter" boring.  We immediately fell in love with the Lafayette plan.  Mungo/Six Oaks is a planned and phased community, so the number of homesites for such a house was limited.  We chose the Lafayette B elevation, and things came together rapidly.  This was early December, and we have gone from considering a move to buying a home in a neighborhood, totally unseen.

Our lovely realtor, Debbie Cromer, Century 21 Properties Plus, spent a couple of hours driving the roads to Six Oaks with her cell camera to record the neighbors and then the community of Six Oaks.  She walked through the partially finished model, pointing out various aspects of the home.  I'll pause here to say how wonderful she has been in this process.

Not even a month after the conversation began, we signed the initial documents to purchase a home in the Six Oaks community from Mungo!  Our plans for shopping around changed to picking the final structural elements and visiting the design center.  

We contacted two potential banks for financing, and both have been great.  Mungo has their own financing group, Silverton Mortgage, and we are Navy Federal Credit Union members.  Both have been great through the pre-approval process.  We'll have up to the closing date, hopefully sometime in July, to see the rates and deals for both organizations.  There will be more on these later on.  Many lovely people in these two banks.

As this all became a reality, we started trying to organize our move.  We made a calendar of how we would move from January to when the house is ready.  We started calling companies that could help us move and settled on two moving methods.  First, I'm a Tillman Scholar, and U-Haul, as a partner of the foundation, offers a free move to the scholars.  I contacted the Pat Tillman Foundation, and they arranged the reservation with U-Haul.  We have a truck reserved for March to move about 1/3 of our belongings.  Our goal is to get "thinned out" and start patching and painting in preparation for the sale of our house in Texas.  We are so thankful for U-Haul!  Many companies claim to help veterans, but few that support them to the degree of U-Haul.  I can't say enough good about how wonderful they have been thus far.

The next move will happen in April, and we are using Units Moving and Portable Storage.  They have really been wonderful in helping set up the arrangements.  The folks here are good people.

So... back to the house.  We sat earlier this week with Ms. Denee Warren of Mungo and picked out all of the design options for our new home.  It was a WONDERFUL experience.  There was no upsell pressure, only combining colors and designs that matched our tastes and desires.  Granted, we knew what we wanted for many of the options before we arrived, but my wife and I are sometimes "design challenged," and we needed help.  Denee and Debbie guided us through many great options and let our desires lead the way.  What is very cool is that our final design ended up a few thousand lower than we expected!  

Afterward, filled with anticipation, we drove back to the model home at Six Oaks and walked through it again, realizing our design choices in the home.  This whole process has been great.

We are back home, tired and facing many challenges, but filled with joy to be closer to our family in Charleston.  Packing and moving are not fun, but we are gathering energy for this in the next few months.  More to come!