The living room and dining room packed up very quickly. The only stuff in here was big furniture and books. I think in all it took about an hour to pack up these rooms, and they guys did it as almost an afterthought.
Jenna and I were really amazed at what a single day’s work looked like when the packers left.
This is what the office looked like at the end of Day 1. It took one guy about three hours to get this room packed up and he did a great job. It was really surprising to see how fast things could be packed up and carted away.
While the office was probably the most complex room to pack it still went together very quickly.
One of the most difficult things about leaving for a couple of years is the friends who will be left behind. Michelle, Jenna, and Shannon have been friends since grade school, and I know it’s hard for Jenna to leave.
We’re hoping that they get a chance to visit us in London, and that we get a chance to visit them wherever they might be.
It’s been a long time since I saw professional movers work. Like most people I’ve moved myself all through college, and my wife and I packed and moved ourselves with a little bit of help when we moved into our first house. This week, though, we got to work with professional packers and moves. I have to say it was a treat to watch these guys move us out of our house.
Our house in Sunnyvale, CA is on the third floor of the building with only a set of winding stairs for access. Normally this isn’t a problem, but when you are trying to get a couch, desk, or entertainment center out of the condo, you can be in for a real hard time.
Of course the wonderful movers from ACE relocations made it look easy. These guys would haul two or three boxes out at a time. Pick up the couch and walk out of the door without a thought, or even take the entertainment center down the stairs whole. It was all impressive to see, and made me very happy that we had some professionals helping us to do this move.
Monday and Tuesday were the official packing and moving days for us. They turned out to be incredibly busy moments punctuated with long boring stretches of watching other people work.
Monday morning Joe and Felipe arrived at our house bright and early. They brought a panel truck, boxes, paper, and a whole lot of tape. The goal for Monday was to get the house packed up, and load the items we would be shipping overseas.
We found a furnished flat in London, so we didn’t have a lot of stuff to ship over. That threw the guys a little because they had planned on us shipping most of our furniture.
Instead they packed up our air shipment and then started on the storage, which was most of our stuff.
As part of our move we were allowed to ship 500 pounds of stuff by air. It turns out that 500 pounds is a lot of stuff, and our initial estimates for our air shipment were way off. We had piled all of the stuff we wanted to air ship in one place, and we thought we would add to the pile if we had any more room, but felt that we had come pretty close to the five hundred pound limit.
We had actually only piled about 150 pounds. So we spent a good part of the day trying to figure out what else we wanted to air ship. We ended up shipping most of our clothes, some books, shoes, and coats. There were some other things in there as well, but I’m really glad that we were able to ship so much.
In the end we found about 490 pounds of stuff to ship, and we left it there to give us a margin of error on the scales.
At the end of the day the movers loaded our air shipment into the panel truck and drove away. The next day they would load the rest of our stuff, and that would be it until we get to London.
Bob and Nancy (Jenna’s parents), threw us a going away party last night. We had a great time, and really appreciated the time and effort that they put in to plan the party. The party started at 2pm and went on into the evening. Jenna and I got home around 9pm. Lots of people stopped by including some who I haven’t seen in a long time.
It was great to hear that so many people plan to visit us over the next two years. We’re looking forward to seeing you, and happy to let you stay in our guest room. One of the big reasons that we wanted to find a two bedroom place was so friends and family could visit us in London.
We also had the chance to celebrate Grandpa Dave’s birthday, and Bonnie’s birthday. We had a great cake, all kinds of snacks and the company of good friends and family. It couldn’t have been better.
To all of the people who attended, thanks for making our sendoff great, and to those who couldn’t attend we hope that we’ll get a chance to see you before we leave next week.
After spending an afternoon flat hunting, we think we found a place to live. Here is a link to the approximate location.
I learned that flat hunting in the UK is quite different from apartment hunting in the US. Most flats seem to be parts of very old buildings that are divided up. It seems that maybe even some are owned whilst others are rented. There are many different property managers and you need to make appointments with them to see the various places. All the flats that we saw were off main roads, on little narrow streets. This proved to be quite an exciting driving adventures as: 1. They drive on the wrong (left) side of the street in the UK, and 2. The streets were very narrow.
As you can see from the link, our flat is very close to the main street in Kensington and also happens to be very walkable from Kensington Palace. There is a nice green space there as well. We saw lots of happy dogs.
As the entire country has Good Friday through the Monday after Easter off as a bank holiday, we won’t know whether we get this flat until we’ve returned to the US.
