Sorry for being MIA for the last 10 days - everything is fine, or it will be soon enough, but it’s been a WEEK! Some things do NOT go as planned and this transition was most definitely one of those things! Remember when you were in elementary school and you’d have to write an essay with the prompt “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”? This would be MY essay!
Last week we moved my parents. They have done an AMAZING job of getting ready for this move, downsizing and packing, canceling various things and transferring others to a new address.
the moving van loaded and ready to roll!
Moving is always stressful and at 90 years old, moving out of their home of 57 years to an adventure in a new state, it is even more so.
Mom and Dad saying a bittersweet goodbye to their home of 57 years
I met them at their house Tuesday of last week to be with them while the movers finished packing and to drive them 2 hrs to their new place where they expected to be moving in imminently.
They knew they would be staying in a guest suite a few days while workers were finishing up the last bit of the renovations. We knew the countertop was scheduled for installation on Thursday and then expected to spend the remainder of the week moving in.
I had a clue when they said “we’ll just have the movers put your things in the middle and we’ll keep it covered while they finish up”. There would be no need to cover up the furniture if counter installation was all that wasn’t done…
We finally rolled in at 5:30, put their short term suitcases in the guest suite, and toddled down the hall to their new apartment to see it for the first time since I came down for a site visit 3 weeks ago.
A rolled up temporary carpet protector was just outside the door…not a good sign. We opened the door to find: Most, but not all, of the new millwork was in, none of the patching and painting had been done, the electrical wasn’t finished, and the flooring was laid in most but not all of the apartment. And…it was the WRONG flooring.
I am SO grateful I am not an only child. My sister lives about 30 minutes from the complex and I was staying with her until we could get them settled in their new home. I spent most of the night stewing about the flooring and worrying about how much of a delay changing it was going to cause instead of sleeping.
While my parents didn’t dislike the flooring that was there, it was millennial-grey-fixer-upper-ish barnboard in what is most definitely NOT a modern farmhouse, and it wasn’t going to go AT ALL with their beautiful, very traditional maple Hitchcock furniture or any of the rest of the finishes we had selected. It really had to go.
This was going to take WAY more than a few days, even if they were efficient about it. And the furniture truck was arriving early the next morning. GAH.
unloading in progress…
The temporary guest suite was lovely and newly redone, but it was intended for a one or two night stay for visiting children. A tiny closet, limited storage, and a suspicious lack of bathroom safety features is not ideal for an extended stay for 90 year olds.
The next morning, our sainted crew chief had gotten the flooring people straightened out and rescheduled for later in the week. Meanwhile all the furniture and 80 or so boxes needed to go SOMEWHERE. Management decided to put as much as they could fit in the basement hallway and, very unwisely, decided to pile the rest in the apartment.
The painting crew starting on the blue bedroom
The painters appeared the next day and painted one of the bedrooms. The millwork guys drifted in and out accomplishing minuscule amounts on any given day punctuated by a lot of standing around and going off to fetch snacks. I sincerely hope the place is not paying them by the hour. They also managed to damage a wall in the only painted room by crashing something into it. This did not bode well for the furniture sitting around uncovered getting covered with construction dust and repeatedly moved.
about 1/5 of the boxes and furniture got parked in the middle of the great room…on top of the paper protecting the WRONG flooring.
The counters came right on schedule except they had seamed together 2 very different dye lots. They would need to be recut and reinstalled the next week. Did I mention cell service in the building is practically nonexistent? It makes it quite challenging to send a hail Mary text to our project manager when things go sideways like this!
The flooring guys and the millwork vagabond came on Friday. Management moved all our stuff out of one of the main room into the public hallway, where it would remain for nearly a week.
As an added bit of excitement…because we were expecting to be unpacked at this point, my parents needed things like extra medications that were in some of the moving boxes…WHICH moving box became the game of the week. We had until the following Wednesday before the medication issue would be mission critical.
It was like that movie Groundhog Day…the alarm went off at 6 am every morning, and my sister and I would roll out of bed and work off our aggravation on a 3 or 4 mile walk, then get ready and drive over to check in with my parents, get a caffeine infusion, and go encourage progress on the apartment while systematically going through all the boxes we could get to every day in between hunting down workers or answering contractor questions. It felt like that old Planet Fitness ad “I pick things up and put them down”. We loaded the seasonal and keepsake items and extra china boxes into their storage locker down the hall, unearthed Dad’s computer and set it up in the tiny guest suite, figured out how to retrieve his email that refused every log in combination, and hunted down maintenance to figure out how to make the newly installed TV in their guest suite work.
Mom and Dad enjoying the amenities at their new home
Meanwhile every day seemed to bring a new crisis….flooring, wall damage, countertops…
Once the countertops were in (even though some of them would be replaced) we cleaned out the dust and debris in the cabinets and started unpacking some of the kitchen boxes in the hopes that the elusive medication was in one of them.. As we unearthed more boxes we found THE box, the last box…on which my Mom had written the word “meds”. 🤦♀️ We opened the treasure trove and the angels sang. FINALLY!
Yay! The elusive VIP box unearthed!
The weekend was pretty quiet. The flooring guys finished, and the painters did some patching, at least in the rooms that they could get to with the flooring underway. I checked the paint cans only to discover one can with an incorrect color…off by one digit makes a big difference!
The electrician went back in once the rest of the crews were out to get more of his work done.
Monday, things were looking up…the replacement counters came, the painters arrived with a big crew and went to work in earnest. The right paint color was procured The paint crew was back on Tuesday to finish up painting.
We left exactly a week after we arrived to bring my parents back to Boston for my Dad’s heart valve replacement and I’m typing this from the hotel room down the street as his procedure was successfully completed this morning.
We’ve been in touch with the crew chief pretty much daily answering questions that have come up, and we’ve been online madly ordering the last few things we will need.
I am hopeful for the first time that when we return sometime this weekend, it will be mostly complete, and sparkling clean, and we can start doing what I was there to do in the first place - move them in!! There will be plenty of decorative decisions and additions in the coming months yet, but the renovation portion of this adventure will soon be beautifully accomplished!
In spite of all the chaos, the staff, the food, and the facilities at this place are all so wonderful. And the other residents are lovely too. I know my parents will be so happy here.
And I can’t wait to share some of the finished pictures once everything is in!
