The New House

So this weekend we finally moved! I'm so exhausted right now. I haven't posted pictures yet, I'll try to do that on my next post later this week. The house is amazing, so is the neighborhood. We've already met a few of the neighbors that came over to say hi.It's a complete 180 change from Miramar.

We started the move on Friday. It wasn't the best day for a move. I took a half day and got out of work early and it was pouring down rain. We got three times the normal December rainfall between Wednesday night and Friday afternoon. Normally it's dry and sunny this time of year but not last week. Anyways we loaded up my truck and Suegrita's suv and headed up to the new house.

I had a couple of projects I needed to work on. First off I reprogrammed my garage door. Then I needed to change the locks on the side garage door and the front door. This required two trips to Home Depot with monkey (Jahiri). The first trip we got me a nice Honda lawn mower, a Ryobi weedwacker that takes attachments for other products including the hedger I bought for it and the leaf blower I'll probably get later, and the locks. We ran into some problems though. First off we tried to remove the thumb handle on the front door and put a normal door knob. This didn't work because the hole it left below was so big so I had to get a new thumb handle. On top of that problem I encountered another problem with my side garage door which still hasn't been fixed. It appears whoever put the door there didn't do it right. The hole that the dead bolt is suppose to fit in is too small for a standard size deadbolt, or any door handle. So while we were back at Home Depot monkey found a deadbolt drill clamp set. Basically you clamp on this set that has the holes on both sides and it comes with the proper drill. So I tried to drill my own hole but the clamp wouldn't hold tight. I finally figured out why once I got some better light set up. It appears there is a think layer of metal on both sides of the door. So I think I'm going to just install a whole new door and frame. Ugh. The good news is that I did get the front door finished and I got the deadbolt where I can program a bunch of codes for everyone for keyless entry. That is a really cool feature. Once removing the locks I could see that they were old and rusty and it's definitely a good thing I replaced them.

I got so busy on Friday night that I completely forgot to pick up the u-haul until it was too late. Once I remembered they were already closed. So Saturday I got up really early and loaded up my truck for round two. I dropped off a load of stuff at the new house, set up the lawn mower, and finished up some other projects. Then I was going to go to u-haul but I found out they cancelled my reservation. So I decided to pick up a truck in Pembroke Pines instead. So I made a reservation while driving down to Pines and when I do get there, well I went to the wrong one. I finally got the truck and got back to the house at just before 11. I got the 26 footer even though Tio Jose tried to tell me I don't need one that big. My decision to go overkill was a good one though. First off I had all my plants that can't be stacked, and second, I didn't want to waste time trying to make stuff fit. So I went with what is easy and I'm glad I did.

I was able to back the truck up so close that I got the ramp all the way to my front door. It doesn't get easier than that. I had one friend show up, Kevin, and Natalie had four of her uncles, her sisters, and two of her aunts. I was nervous about moving the 550 pound safe but after taking the 150 pound door off we were able to get it done. Then the other hard part. The aquariums. We managed to get those as well though. When all was said and done it was a good thing I got the 26 footer because I still ended up leaving enough stuff to fill up my Ranger twice. I did go back for one of those loads yesterday and tomorrow I'll get what's left when I go to clean up the apartment.


Driving up to the new house in the truck I almost killed some moron. I have a rule and it's a good one. If someone cuts me off I am not going to flip the vehicle I'm in trying to dodge them, nor will I end up hitting some other incident person trying to avoid them. Well I'm in the middle lane of I-75 and some moron missed their exit. Instead of taking the next exit they did the stupidest thing they could have possibly done. They stopped right in the middle lane of I-75 with their blinker on and tried to push their way over into a stopped line of traffic exiting the freeway. Now I was in a truck probably weight a good 20,000-25,000 pounds fully loaded. They don't stop quick. Needless to say I stopped just inches from this idiot's back bumper. I was pretty pissed off about that. Anyways, everyone knows I can't write a blog without mentioning South Florida stupidity.

So we got to the house and unloaded the truck. We got really lucky with my guest bedroom. There are two closets on one wall with a cubby hole in between by the window. I wanted to put my aquarium by the window so it's easy to clean. Hose in and hose out. Well my aquarium is a perfect fit in the cubby hole. So perfect and tight I cannot open the top without rubbing the walls and really pushing hard. So my solution is to access the aquarium from outside through the window. Then the safe. The safe happens to be the exact size of the closets. So my safe was a really tight fit. No space at all to move it around so it was a challenge getting it put back in and getting the door in but we got it done. I'll take some pictures later and put on my next blog but that room is just too perfect. Now I can close the closet and no one will know my safe is there.

After unpacking we lit up the bbq so we could get everyone fed. Yes, I make the world's most awesome bbq chicken. No joke either, everyone loved it. I had to eat it cold though because I set up an appointment for ADT to come out so we can get an alarm on the house. I didn't know it would take 2 hours for us to do the walk through. The guy kept making jokes about the size of our house. He said "what is this, room 16?" He was really honest about what we should purchase. I told him the alarm is more for when we are away then when we are there. I want to come home at night and not have to check the entire house before going to bed. I want to know it's protected when I'm on vacation. As far as noise for opening doors and stuff he told me a lot of that I can do myself cheaper by going to Home Depot. I already knew this though because I looked into it online and I had a lot of that stuff at my apartment. But anyways, I can always upgrade my alarm as time goes by.

So we purchased an alarm and will have that setup next week. All wireless motion detectors that use cell technology since I don't have a landline. So if someone tries to cut my phone line it's not going to do them any good. I got extra protection for the guest room and the baby's future room. I didn't tell the guy why I wanted the guest room extra protected I just told him to make sure we got that one locked down. Of course when I mentioned to him "let someone try to cut the phone line" Natalie assumed that I was talking about shooting people and didn't realize that I was just referring to the cell technology. I don't let strangers know about my arsenal though so he had no clue what she was talking about and she said "o, you didn't tell him". Fortunately I was able to change the subject.

After we finished that deal I finally got around to eating my dinner. Everyone was enjoying themselves outside. We have a great view and the weather was good. I even decided to take a swim. I had to be the first one in my pool and all the brown people thought I'm crazy but that's just because they don't understand that South Florida is not cold. After everyone else left my cuñadas and I spent until midnight unpacking. Jasmine got the kitchen all setup and monkey and I did the guest room, and other stuff. Natalie was down for the count with a sore back.

Sunday I made another trip to the apartment and got some cleaning done. I have one more trip to do tomorrow and then I'm turning in the keys. We have a lot of trash so I think I'm going to dump it all at the apartment since I'm still paying for trash and everything else until January.

Yesterday I stained one of my many shelves in the garage. I also got two of my Jasmines planted. I took out the vine that the previous owner had growing above my frog pond and put my pink Jasmine there. I put my Confederate Jasmine on the North West side of the house and I hit a pipe doing it. Not only did I hit a pipe, but I hit it in a space that had a t-connection and a coupling where it had already been patched. So that required a trip to Home Depot, actually two trips, good thing it's less than a mile away, and set me a good 90 minutes behind. Finally after I got that done I retired from the night. I am so burned out. I haven't been this tired in years.

I am taking tomorrow off. After I get out of the apartment I am going to try to finish up my garage, plant my pineapples in the back yard under the palm tree, and do some cleanup inside. We'll see how far I get. The garage is the one room that really needs some work. The walls need painting, the shelves all need to be painted, and the floor needs to be refinished. I'm going to go with epoxy shield on my floor and make that garage look majorly awesome. Also on that list for the garage is my side door of course and we are having alarms installed in there as I already mentioned. After that I'm done. The ADT guy showed me that when I go on vacation I can bolt my garage door shut but said that with these hurricane coded garage doors people don't break in that way anyways. I'll have to take pictures to show all my West Coasters what a hurricane code garage door is, but basically my house is built like a fort.

I still haven't setup my office yet. I'll try to do that today. That is going to probably be our first in house project is getting rid of the wood walls and painting the office and redoing the ceiling and lighting. My other projects are landscaping, putting three ceiling fans on the patio, screens on windows, a salt system on my pool instead of chlorine, and a firepit. The landscaping looks good but I want more fragrant flowers, more trees, more fruit trees, and a vegetable garden. I get free water from the canal so this should save me a lot of money.

So that's it. I'll try to keep updating as I go, and like I said I should have some pictures up this week.

Also a big thank you to my parents, the Dominican family, and Kevin for all their help. Natalie and I would have had our move delayed until spring if not for my parent's loaning us some money that we'll be repaying with the stimulus. So we got an earlier move than expected and got out of that hell hole without having to sign another lease. And the move wouldn't have been possible without all the help from the Dominican family.