Home | Moving Day

Just under two weeks ago, John and I moved into our first home together. It was one of the most exciting and life-changing days of our lives and the start of a whole new chapter for us. Having lived with our own families for our whole lives, this was big stuff for both of us. It was emotional and surreal but it was also amazing and eventful. We've been preparing for this day for 5 long months and though we had some little and large bumps along the way, we're finally in, happy and settled enough for me to sit down and write the story of our moving day.

Moving day was on a Monday and we were both up pretty early. We'd hired a van because we didn't have enough stuff between us to warrant hiring out a moving team. Being first time buyers living with our parents all this time, we'd only accumulated what we had in our own bedrooms. In terms of furniture, we both took our beds with us and I took my desk too. We picked up the van about 10am and took it to John's to load his things up first, then to mine to get my stuff. We pretty much got everything in apart from my desk which we picked up a couple of days later in a car.
It was about noon when the estate agent called to tell us that the keys were ready to pick up. I literally 'yay-ed' down the phone and she laughed at how excited I was! Getting that call was the best feeling because it was confirmation that everything was finally complete. The whole deal was done and the place was 110% officially ours. The call gave us the go-ahead to make our way to our new place with John driving the van up and me leading the way in the car.

With the keys in our hands and the van parked up, there was only one thing left to do: walk into our home for the third time ever but the first time as home owners. Before moving day we'd only seen it once to view in February and one other time to measure it up in June. It was a lovely moment that John's sister kindly captured for us:

As lovely as that moment was, walking in was weird. It was an empty home that was ours and ready to fill with our belongings and new furniture. We were a little shocked at the state of the place to be honest. The question: "what did we get into?" popped into both our minds when we saw how much work we might need to do. It was a bit messy and everything needed a good deep clean before we did anything.

Nevertheless we began moving all our boxes and belongings into the front room so we knew everything was in the house. Our next job was to make the most of the van we rented and take a visit to IKEA for some furniture we'd pre-planned on buying. With two IKEA stores within equal distance of our house we headed up to the Milton Keynes store over Wembley mainly because of the traffic we knew we'd hit. It was a good choice because compared to the Wembley store which we'd always been to, Milton Keynes' store was tidier and more relaxing to shop in compared to Wembley's hustle and bustle. The aim in IKEA was to buy our new sofas which we knew they had in stock. After a bit of IKEA lunch, getting the sofa was our first job and after that anything on the way to the tills that jumped out at us as essentials, we picked up. It was a nice break away from the moving but time to get back to it as we loaded up the sofas into the van and drove back down to the house.

Throughout the move we had the wonderful help of John's brother, sister and brother-in-law. They kindly started on building our new sofas whilst John and I worked on getting the lock changed on our front door. It was about a two-hour job because the door just wasn't working properly. We'd fitted the lock fine but the door opened from both sides... then you couldn't close the door without locking it every time and then we had to deal with how loose and tricky the handles were. We ended up leaving it so that it was lockable and only the next day after another hour's work did we figure out (by fluke) how to get the door working like a normal front door again. Since then it's been fine but for a whole day, it was stressful sorting it out because it was in such a sad and sorry state. Thankfully John's quite the handyman and fixed the whole thing up. It works like a charm now. You wouldn't even think it's the same door!

After hours of fixing, driving and moving we were pretty tired, but the last thing we really wanted to do (before settling in for our first night) was to clean the kitchen and the bathroom. It was pretty late in the evening when we started this job but it made us feel so much better to know that was done and they were as clean as possible. Once we'd finished cleaning, we finally settled for our first night in. It wasn't too bad; we laid the mattress on the floor and luckily kept a duvet and pillows within easy reach for a good sleep!

It'd been a hectic day and for some reason in my mind, I thought moving day would be easier and less stressful. I guess I expected it to be like in the films when the girl and guy move in together for the first time and everything is magical and lovely. It's not like that - at all! We didn't buy a new build and we didn't buy the most perfect and ready place but it's an amazing fixer upper in a great place and it's perfect for us. We've worked so hard for the last two weeks to make it our own and downstairs is now more or less done (decorating wise). I'm sitting here on our first day off from decorating and it's finally starting to feel like a home. I'm so excited to blog about this part of our home-buying journey and I hope you like reading these 'diary entry' style posts about how it's going and how the house is turning out.

Unfortunately I didn't take any before pictures of how it looked when we got in. We were just so eager to get it done that I completely forgot. It would have been nice since we changed it so much already but nevertheless I have the photos from the advert (it's not the same but still).

What have your experiences of moving days been like? Was it smooth-running and stress-free or hard-work and stressful!?