Moving: A Photo Essay

The Huge Mess

Danielle and I bought our first home near the end of February.  We’ve moved many times before - between semesters at Cornell, from Cornell to Tampa, and from Tampa to Baltimore.  Now we were finally moving into our own home.  And so, for the first time, I decided to thoroughly document our move.  I was partly inspired by photo blogs I’ve been reading recently, such as Jeffry Friedl’s blog.  I decided to put together a photo essay.  So I whipped out my cameras and started shooting.

We first started packing mid-April, knowing we’d be moving into the house at the beginning of May.  We had a huge mess in the hosue for a few weeks, as you can see above.  The rest of the story is told through the photos and captions.

Christmas Boxes and Books filled up most of our hallway closet.

The Newspaper Method of Packing Valuables

The Packing Peanuts Method for Valuables.

It was so odd to see this TV unit bare. It was previously covered in family photos. We didn’t take it with us to the new hosue as it didn’t fit in the new living room.

How many shades of white are there? When you’re choosing the color for your new house, way too many!

After waiting from February until the end of April I was impatient about getting the keys.

There were so many holes to plug up on the walls, but at least I had my podcasts to listen to.

We decided the best thing to do would be to move all of the small stuff to the new house so we would have a lot less to move on moving day. Danielle’s Honda Element was perfect for this.

My Car was a little less useful for the task.

But at least the back seat can be lowered.

My Little Giant Ladder was VERY helpful.

Danielle’s parents taking a lunch break from helping us paint. That was the craziest weekend of the whole moving situation. Neither of the four of us had painted before so it was a lot of “on the job” training.

Danielle’s father was in charge of putting the primer coat on the rooms where the colour was changing dramatically.

Applying Primer

As the weekend wore on, everyone found their niche. Eventually I did less painting and more prep work.

Danielle, on the other hand, was awesome at touch up and small detail work.

Danielle’s mom forgot this technique until we were nearly done painting. It would have saved a lot of agony with the painter’s tape.

I was wearing some jeans with a very small hole in them. Over the course of the weekend the hole got bigger and bigger.

I only had a little left to pack at this point.

Moving day had finally arrived and we were ready!

Daniell’s mom made some covers for the beds so they wouldn’t get dirty on the moving truck. Unfortunately, they were made of spandex and made handling the beds nearly impossible.

Danielle’s father wasn’t able to carry heavy things because he used to do deliveries for his company and hurt his back very badly. So he was outside guarding the items from theft. When I saw this photo, I just had to snap it. It has become one of the favorites in the family.

At this point we were nearly done filling up the truck, but still had about 1/4 a truck full of stuff.

Dan brought Ian, shown here as Shadow-Man, to help us move.

Min also helped us move. Or at least gave the impression of helping.

Bizarre symmetry that happened on its own.

This is a little video I accidentally shot because I thought my camera was in photo mode.

The living room was full of all the items we had to take up stairs.

These were mostly items for the garage, but the garage was full of items that belonged in the living room.

Tired during moving day.

We didn’t have our nook table yet, so we improvised with a box.

All the dust from moving and from the cat hairs in the basement were driving my allergies crazy.

My father helped us install flooring because he had done in on a bunch of rooms in his own house. He lay the flooring and I cut the planks.

It took us a work day’s worth of time just to get this far.

At the end of the day we still had another room to go.

Now that all the planks had been laid, it was time to put the quarter round.

Danielle placed putty on the border between the two floors.

The quarter round was hard to place around the bay windows.

Now we need to move the furniture in.

The interface between the dining room and kitchen.

The dining room is furnished, but not complete. It is still missing books for the book shelves.

The living room is still missing some plants and other items.

The electric thermostat replaced an old analog one that used mercury.

Now the dining room is complete. A key missing item was the table runner. We spent three days looking for it. Eventually we found out it wasn’t in a box, but had been in our master closet all along.

Finally on Monday, 26 May, we were finished! It was a lot of work. Not because the previous owners had neglected the house; they gave it to us in good shape. But we wanted to replace the carpet on the foor floor with the laminate flooring. And we didn’t like the same paint colours they had chosen. But now we had made it our own.

• Moving
• Photo-Essay