Our first weekend in our first home

We were blessed with a beautiful moving day. Everything went smoothly thanks to a handful of great friends. We had a few people at the old apartment loading, my brother-in-law driving the truck over to the new place and a few more friends helping to unload. All in all, it took only 2 hours to move everything, no injuries (to flesh or furniture).

Now that our stuff is in the house, we love it even more. There's still lots to do, lots to fix, lots to clean but it's all ours.

Strange things that I did:

• I vacuumed the coils behind the fridge (apparently we should all do this every 6 months to improve the efficiency of the fridge)
• I vacuumed out all the vents (I think the previous owners dumped all their garbage down the vents, it was gross)
• I hand washed each and every white ceramic tile from the front door, down the hallway and into the kitchen. They were covered in years of grime and sloppy paint. They cleaned up really well. I highly recommend this to everyone if you have ceramic tiles that you're not in love with.

My guess is that there will be a large number of odd tasks in the coming months of first-time homeownership.

Taxes

I just had the joy of paying property taxes for the first time. I've never understood why city staff is so unfriendly.

Got a cold yesterday so I'll keep this short today. Get my work done and head home for a rest.

Getting ready to move in

It's now Thursday. On Saturday we have a bunch of friends coming over to help us move. We're lucky that Jay's brother has a large truck since that'll save us the $100 to rent one through Budget or Uhaul.

Being in our 30's, most of our friends now pay for movers. I've heard good things and I've heard horror stories.

Personally, we don't have that much stuff. Nor do we have precious heirlooms. But we do have a tight budget so doing it ourselves makes sense to me.

What do you think?

Burn-out

We've been at the house until 10pm each night. There's so much that we still want to do before we move our furniture in on the weekend. But I'm nervous that we're going to burn ourselves out and not have the energy to do any more fixes.

How do we balance wanting to get a lot done with keeping ourselves motivated?

On the plus side, losing the mint green hallway feels great!

Tonight:

• 2nd coat of paint on the hallway
• 1st coat of paint in the bathrooms
• possibly the 1st coat on the 4th wall in the bedroom
• cleaning the stove we bought on Craigslist yesterday

All the extra costs

It's amazing how many hidden costs to moving there are.

Yesterday I got my Rogers Internet bill and it was double the usual rate! When I called to ask why, I got a very strange answer. Apparently my bill used to go from the 5th of each month to the 4th. Based on the day I called to change my address, they had to change that to the 4th of each month to the 3rd. And, because of that, I know owe for 2 months. How does that make sense?

Other moving costs that surprised me:

• $40 from Canada Post to have our mail forwarded (this was a nice surprise since I thought it would be more)
• $250 for a deposit on our natural gas usage
• $400 for property taxes (I had no idea that you pay for upcoming months)

What were some moving costs that you found surprising?

Weekend work

It was nice to enjoy our first weekend of home ownership - even if we spent it cleaning, painting and ripping down outdated light fixtures.

Our biggest challenge was definitely scope creep. We kept starting a small job and unearthing a giant job. It was really hard to not get ourselves in too deep and to remember our budget.

While painting the kitchen tiles, we discovered that the tiles weren't grouted onto the wall. They were simply pasted up there which means that they're each on a slightly different plane. It also means that they're easy to rip down. It was so hard to not just rip them all down. We'd both love to but we know that we don't have the money to re-tile the kitchen just yet. Painting ugly tiles will have to do for now.

It would be nice to completely redo the entire place but, sadly, money is not infinite for us.

Tonight we do more painting!

April 17 - 2009: Day 2 in the House

We took possession of our very first home on Wednesday. 2 days ago. We haven't moved in yet. Actually, we've only spent a few hours in the house and I'm already amazed at everything that we need to do.

Here's a list of all the companies we had to call to let them know that we own the house. Hope it's helpful.

• Enbridge (for Natural Gas)
• Toronto Hydro
• City of Toronto Water
• Direct Energy (we rent a hot water heater through them)

Other company types that we found useful:

• a locksmith (I hadn't even considered this!)
• a furnace maintenance company
• an AC maintenance company

Companies I called to forward my address:

• credit cards
• banks
• cable company
• phone company
• any magazines
• PayPal
• Shoppers Drug Mart (I love the Optimum program)
• my employer
• RRSP company
• group benefits company
• Driver's licence
• car and home insurance company

Now, does anyone know how I can encourage my partner to get his address info updated?