7 posts tagged “moving”

We received our damage deposit, minus $114 (rather than the $60 we were told about on our LAST day for standard carpet cleaning that's always done between tenants) for "cleaning the oven fan." I think that's a load of crap, since they never gave us a checklist telling us they expected that to be done despite us asking three times during that last month. But whatever. At least we're all done with them and I warn people that if you're ever looking to rent an apartment in Burnaby BC, never ever rent from Boardwalk Rentals. I don't know what they're like in other places but in that particular building we were treated pretty poorly.

I forget if it was this entry or this one, but I did promise to post the photos of all our stuff sitting out in the rain as we labored under the misapprehension that the new tenants would be coming later that day, only to discover that this was absolumoosily not true. (I made up a word yay!)

The green lawn chair you can just barely see in the first one was where I spent the entire day. It was not warm. It was not dry. It's such a miracle that our mattress didn't mould (as far as we know anyway) and our TV didn't die. I was also lucky not to get really sick I suppose, you don't technically catch colds from sitting in the cold but being cold and stressed out can't be good for you. I tell ya when James pulled up in that U-haul to it was like he'd ridden up on a white charger. ^_^

Here's some pictures of the new place. 

My house

I've been meaning to post these for a little while. It's nice to cross something off my massive to-do list. ^_^

I've been meaning to get around to a proper post for a bit here but I keep loosing my train of thought. Despite the horror that was moving day we're both extremely happy we did it, and this place already feels more like home than the Burnaby apartment ever did. I really really aught to get some good shots of it in the daytime, flash just washes everything out so you can't really see the lovely colour of the hardwood and the cream walls.

I have a bajillion things to get done in the next two weeks. I'm supposed to (finally) launch my portfolio website so I can begin to properly promote and sell my jewelry, and maybe even some art eventually. I've got a bunch of things I want to burn onto disk for my mom (including my should-be-famous mashed potato recipe) in time for our trip to Alberta next month. There are some letters I should write so I can send a few packages off to friends in far off places that I won't be able to visit next month. Once I've managed all that maybe I can do some proper outlining for Nanowrimo.

So what have I actually been doing? Crocheting an afghan, cuz we need one, and the one I made last year is complete crap. I develope a strong urge to knit and crochet (more for crochet, it's a bit easier) in the fall, and when I have things to do and don't know where to begin. It's coming along nicely. ^_^

P.S. Damn you Quayle! I actually put an e on the end of potato there. Good thing I caught it in time. >_<

Sorry for the longness and grrrness of the last post, justified as it was. This one's going to be just as long if not longer, so go ahead and get a coffee first. ^_^

It worked out rather well in the end, but moving day was quite miserable. The fact that it wasn't my worst day ever is rather frightening actually, because it was pretty bad. We did end up having to put all of our stuff on the lawn. I had to sit with it for 8 hours (6 1/2 of those completely alone) and we did not get any of the sun that the weather forecast had promised. Rather it drizzled for the first 4 hours and we were so sure that we'd end up having to simply throw out our couch, mattress, TV and coffee table because of mold or water damage. Thankfully it did dry enough that we didn't even need to air it out much once we got it home, but it was a close call.

It was somewhere between 11 and 12 degrees Celsius for pretty much the whole day, and my hands went almost completely numb. It was 5 hours before I got a chance to run to the coffee shop across the street for some coffees a pee break, and though I went there all the time and the lady knew me, she insisted that I ordered and paid for our coffees before she would let me use the washroom. We had the Hamster in his cage packed in a large box and surrounded by pillows with some ventilation at the top so he wouldn't freeze, but I was really scared for him anyway. I know they can go torpid and sort of hibernate when it gets too cold for them but I'd rather he stay warm and comfy.

It really felt like we'd been evicted, and to top it off the whole reason we had to be in such a rush to be out was so that the new tenants could start moving in that afternoon. So you can imagine how pissed we were when James was told during the final check with the landlady that they wouldn't be coming at all until the next day. I'm dying to write a letter to a customer service rep as well as posting a full writeup (with pictures) of our experience in this and a couple other of my blogs, but I think it might be wise to wait until we actually have our damage deposit back. Not because I'm worried we won't get it if I write the letter first, but because we're not completely sure they won't screw that up as well, and I want to be sure to add that to our list of complaints if they do. I don't want to have to write two letters right?

Now for the happy part (finally!), our new place is AWESOME. It's an apartment, but it feels like a house inside, with gorgeous hardwood floors and a decorative fireplace. The tub is this nifty art-deco looking built into the wall thingie that feels like it's at least 3 feet deep, the hot water actually goes hot when you turn it on, and all the doors have these neat little old glass knobs. There was this daycare I went to when I was really small that was in a house built in a similar era (1940's), so it feels really really homey to me in a sense-memory sort of way.

Our new landlady is lovely and nice, and the few neighbors we met were really friendly. Even the neighborhood is friendlier, people actually talk to you, but it's never in a sort of nosy or invasive kind of way. It's like we found this one little pocket of reality that was made just for us, we just can't get over how much better things are here.

I've gone on far too long and I'm a bit anxious to see if our new net connection is strong enough for me to play wow over wireless on the laptop, so I'll leave the rest for when I find the card reader and can post some pictures of the new digs to go with my gushing.

It really was worth all the effort. This place is the best!

Tomorrow is moving day, so "operation frantic packing" is now in full swing. For some reason when Jamie isn't in the house I have no idea where to put anything, I've spent about 30 minutes packing one small box of living room bits, and it's not quite full, so I'm trying to think of what else I can fit in there that won't be too heavy but will fill the space up. I know that once he's back from picking up our new house key my brain will switch back on and it will seem a bit simpler. That's the trouble when you're one half of a symbiotic organism I guess.

Tomorrow is where the angst comes in. Our building has this rule that you have to be out by 1pm on your last day. Fine. We called to book a U-haul the first week of this month and all we could get was tomorow at 4pm. So we're thinking no big deal, I guess we have to sit in the lobby with our stuff or something until we have the truck. WRONG.

Here's the deal, we have to "book" the use of one of the elevators to get our shit downstairs (we're 9 floors up so stairs are not an option) but we can only get that between 9-11 am. So that means 5 hours downstairs with all of our stuff. Still wouldn't be a big deal, except that when we called to ask about it they said we absolutely have to be "off the property" at 1pm. This is a complete physical impossibility, we have no truck to put it in, no friend's or neighbor's house we can park it at for three stinkin hours (that would mean shifting it all roughly 4 times all in one day) and even if it was allowed there's no way we're sitting on the god damned lawn, especially since I'll have to watch it by myself while Jamie gets the truck.

This is the most bass-ackwards crap I've ever heard of. You'd think we'd been evicted rather than simply moving out. Not to mention that we aparently were supposed to recieve a notice to vacate form to sign along with a checklist to follow before moving out, we've reminded them several times but never recieved it. They gave three rather than the requisite 24 hours notice before bringing in people to view the apartment (barely a day after we'd given written notice of our intent to move) and they did their "final inspection" a day or so after that, rather than towords the end of the month to see if we'd met all the cirteria on the checklist, that we never recieved. Oh, and they assisted and facilitated abuse and harrassment from a guy downstairs who insisted we were making noises that turned out to be imaginary when the rest of the people on our floor were polled (three notices to cease disruptive behavior and a couple of 3am "visits" from the guy downstairs where he'd knock on the door frantically for about 10 minutes each time, I was always alone in the apartment when it happened). *Edit: the nieghbor thing happend between February and March of this year, not while we were packing.*

For reasons I'll explain later I must post this without an ending.

It's been pretty rough going looking for our new place of residence. The first place that we made a trip out to view we never actually saw, because once we discovered that the neighborhood was rather notorious for drug dealers and related mess we didn't think there was much point actually waiting around for the landlord to show up and show us the listed unit. I'm sure the building itself is safe enough, if you never come out of it that is. *heavy sigh* The upside was that as we walked back to the train station (we'd cabbed to the building from there in order to be on time for the appointment we ended up walking out on)  we passed this amazingly gorgeous apartment building that had a vacancy sign out front.

At the time I was so disappointed with that appointment that I wasn't super hopeful (not to mention I was feeling ill from hiking up and down the crazily inclinated roads out there in the heat) but we called them and Jamie went to view a couple of the units there this morning. I was supposed to go to but I'm still stuck on this crazy night schedule and couldn't sleep until about 8am. I trust his judgment though, and he came home pretty psyched. It's a heritage building, 1940's-ish with tons of character. There's some neat little shops, a pub, and a cafe where none of the food costs more than $7 right close by. You can get a coffee and fries for about what it used to cost in my hometown when I was in high-school. That's just unbelievable around here.

It's all a bit too good to be true, so I'm not sure how excited to get. We were told that we'd hear something by the end of today, so at least I shouldn't be held in suspense for long. It's a smidge more than we were hoping to pay, but still doable. They do allow cats, (which we definitely want in the long term) so at least we'll feel like we're paying a bit extra for a good reason.

Wish us luck. ^_^

*Update 6pm*

It's ours! Mwahahahaha!

What are your plans for the holiday weekend?

Showing the apartment to prospective tenants. Yay! No wait, not yay, the other thing.

We're moving at the end of this month, and we got notice a whole 3 hours in advance this morning that they'd be showing the place to interested folk already. Of course the notice itself is dated Sept. 1, what does it matter that they stealthily stuck it to our door sometime this morning while we were still sleeping. *sarcasm!* I got a cumulative hour or so of sleep last night due to the heat, and was pretty bagged when James came in and woke me up so we could tidy up some. We did a big clean last week so it was manageable, just irritating at 9:30 on a Saturday morning.

I'm less ticked about it now than I was this morning, and I'm still tired but I have to stay awake until at least 5pm so I can let people in. Fortunately everybody who's come in has been terribly pleasant and friendly, including the lady escorting them, who I know is someone who works for the building but I've never really spoken to her before. As of this sentence the apartment has been viewed 5 times today, and they started coming at noon. Tomorow it will be all day from 9am to 5pm unless they have a taker by the end of today. :P

We don't have our new place lined up yet, but Jamie is confident we'll find something in time because we got this place about a week before moving out from Alberta. We're looking at an apartment on Monday but we're not hopeful about it. When the lady James spoke to asked if we had any pets he told her we had a Hamster, and she didn't know what that was, but she did know they weren't allowed. O.o

I think I feel a migraine coming on.

*edit* Wow, I really am tired. I left many words out of some of those sentences. Yoda like talking I was.