Temporary Home

Well...we finally found a home to move into, temporarily at least! I first heard about the Showhomes organization a year or so ago when one of my friends from work told me about her husbands new business venture. He owns the Showhomes franchise in Raleigh, NC and I remember hearing about it and thinking it sounded like an interesting idea. Basically, the organization takes vacant homes that are on the market and stages them with real people and their furniture. We have to keep the house clean and show it whenever someone wants to look at it and in return, we get to rent the house for about 1/2 of what it would normally cost. As I mentioned in my previous post, it's also only a 90 day commitment and then turns to a month-by-month lease so that works nicely for us.

We went through the process of applying to be in the program through sending pictures of all of our furniture in May. Once we were accepted, Ryan looked at several different properties that they had available and didn't really like any of them. We finally decided we would take one but called and it had already been filled with another couple. I got a call from them the week we were moving out of our Nashville house that they had 2 homes that had just come available in Germantown. I immediately sent Ryan to look at them and told him that even if he didn't like either one, he had to pick one because we had to have somewhere to live in Memphis.

He went to look at the 2 properties and as expected, didn't like either. (Have I mentioned that he has very high expectations when it comes to houses?!?). He picked one but told me not to get excited. I wasn't sure what to expect, so was pleasantly surprised when I got to see the house in person. It isn't a house that we would buy, but it will work just fine for the interim while we continue looking for our permenant house.

The movers were supposed to arrive on Monday, August 1st with our things. I got a call from them on Sunday night saying they were on the road to Memphis and would be there Monday morning at 8:30am. I got another call on Monday morning around 7am telling me that the truck had broken down somewhere outside of Jackson, TN and that they were having to be towed all the way back to Nashville to have it fixed so our things would not be in Memphis until Tuesday at the earliest. I was bummed but I couldn't change the circumstances so we spent Monday cleaning up around the new house. We had the buddy taking a nap on the living room floor when the front door randomly opened. Turns out someone was coming to show the house and they opened the front door to a vacant house and saw a baby on the floor! You can imagine how shocked they were! I quickly told them he was NOT for sale with the house :).

The moving crew arrived on Tuesday morning and it was the same bunch who had packed our home in Nashville so it was nice to see some familiar faces. They also brought Tam with them...she is engaged to the leader of the crew, Adrian. Tam was a great help throughout the day...mostly as a babysitter!

It took until around 7pm, but they finally got the truck completely unloaded. They did a great job and we only had 1 piece of furniture that was damaged. It was Ryan's side-table and the leg broke off.

Here is the crew - Adrian, Tam, Junior, and Marcus (aka Hercules)

Then began the overwhelming task of unpacking all of the boxes. Here is a shot of the kitchen filled with boxes...ahhh!!!

Fortunately, I had been smart when they packed our home in Nashville and labeled some boxes as "Showhomes". These were the things from the kitchen that I knew I would need in a temporary house. I kept everything else boxed up to save some time/effort when we need to move again.

Madison Claire and Mac were exhausted just watching us unpack!

Mom and Dad were there to help oversee the movers and help me get the house unpacked. Ryan was in the midst of 2-a-days at football, so he wasn't much help at all. Dad had to leave after 2 days for some work meetings, so it was just me and mom and the kids because Annie was on vacation. I still don't really know how we did it, but somehow in 2 days we unpacked all of the boxes and got most everything situated. Mom and I worked so hard those days - literally working from about 8am until 10pm. My forearm was so sore from opening boxes and mom was exhausted. She said the next time we move, she is going to come keep the babies but she is not going to unpack! She was such a great help to me and I truly could not have done it without her help.

On Friday morning, Heidi from Showhomes came to stage the house with our things. It took most of the day for them to get things hung on the walls and all of the accessories throughout the house situated but by the end of the day it looked great. Here are a few pics of the finished house...I somehow didn't get one of the Master bedroom, the kitchen, Annie's room, the guest room, or the baby's room, but this will give you a general idea:

I wish I could say it's been all smooth sailing from there....but unfortunately, that hasn't been the case. I'll update with more details soon, but in the meantime I'll leave you with one word....RATS!