Returning Home
When we last left off our renovation journey and our blog posting, in our real-life timeline, we were about to move. Holidays were upon us and we were in the midst of finishing the construction and readying all our stuff back down the street 24 houses to 631 North Drury Lane. And with my passion for foodie-focused blogging, Mike was having to literally hold me back from posting so we actually could get packing and preparation for our upcoming move finished. He was totally right - we needed to take a break from our online storytelling so we were ready to move back to our forever home.
Late December - construction fence down, porta-john still up. Our home patiently awaits our return!
We are now back in and are still unpacking and will be unpacking and settling in for some time to come. And we are super-excited to be back on our blog creating more fun content about our Happy Boolo Project journey to build a highly functional and sustainable home, our wonderful community, and all things delicious and edible! (For more information on our 3 part-project philosophy that guides our journey: Community, Functionality, Sustainability)
Thanks to a Drury Lane neighbor, we had a great moving team we knew we could rely on once again, Alliance Moving and Storage headquartered in Rolling Meadows, IL. A locally-owned and locally-managed organization, these guys did a wonderful job moving us back in December 2019, so we called them up again for this move. This time there would be more of a challenge - move us back in and make sure our new home stays nice and new with no dings or scratches.
These guys did a great job being careful with our belongings. We asked for the same team leader as last time - Jose. It’s clear he’s excellent at motivating his team and managing the work. He’s quite handy with tools as well - as soon as he came into the rental, he remembered the job he had to do last time in completely taking apart our monstrous office desk so it would fit through a door. Mike and I still wonder - why is a desk made so big that it cannot fit through a standard door?
They were also flexible and helped us plan a staged move. The first — the main one for most of the furniture and belongings — and the second one of all our garage/outdoor items and any furniture we had no place for in our new configuration that we were planning to sell.
So on January 7th when the Alliance team showed up for packing day, the idea that we were finally leaving to go back home felt real . We were grateful to see the familiar faces of the Alliance team who made the move process feel as easy as possible the first time around. They seem to understand that moving is a pretty stressful event for any customer, and as they did the first time, they aimed to make the move as comfortable and efficient as possible.
Jan 7 - Pack Day
January 7 - Truck arrives on packing day
Jose and his team takes direction from Mike in our basement storage area
The team works efficiently to pack us up
This desk was a pain the first time - once again requires disassembling to fit through a door
Wrapping the wood furniture so it’s snug and safe
Omar, Jose, Carlos in front of their mountain of staged furniture
Jan 8 - Move Day
Ready for filling up…
Gotta love the inspiration on the Alliance shirts!
You can’t have a winter move in Chicago without snow!!
Ready with the full load to go down the street 24 houses
Mattresses are a bear to go upstairs
Kitchen door removed to ensure an easy flow for furniture
Glad we had sliding glass doors to fit Mike’s massive desk
Job well-done gentlemen! Jaime, Jose, Silva, Celedonio at the end of a satisfying day’s work!
Looks like we will be living with boxes for awhile
Thanks Kay for the neighborly visit!
Yes there may be a million boxes, but at last we can eat our first meal at home. Woohoo!
Thanks to Alliance Moving and Storage for a job well-done!
We learned a lot from our moving experience about the do’s and don’ts of moving that we are excited to share in a future post in case our learnings are useful for others. Plus more to come on our garage move and garage updates.
But for now, we wanted to say - we are SUPER excited to be back to blogging curating fun and informative content to share with all of you.
Happy Boolo to all of you!!