DC Townhouse Progress and Our Crazy Move

If you’re not familiar with the military, I’ll give you a little primer…when they military tells you to move they will pay for your move up to a maximum weight of household goods.
My husband is authorized 17K lbs of household goods the Army will move at no cost to us. You also have the option to do what we call a “DITY” or do it yourself move. Other than our move from Italy back to the States we always move ourselves.
Why you ask?
Because the Army gives us 90% of the money that they would have paid movers to move us and we get to pocket the extra. I’m not one to pass up a chance to make some extra money with a few days of hard work!
When we were first married we would rent a UHaul and do all the packing and moving ourselves. As we’ve gotten older and have the kids to wrangle we have still pack ourselves but hire help on each end of the move to load and unload the truck.
Even though we are allowed to have 17,000 pounds of weight we have never had more than 8,000 so that’s what we were thinking we’d have this time-maybe 9,000 since you know, I have hoarding tendencies because I always feel like I may be able to upcycle something for a blog post!

Almost 5 hours later the truck was only about 2/3 full and we knew there was absolutely no way all of our things were going to fit.
And y’all…the movers we hired were horrible…they took so many breaks and had no regard for our things or the house…walls were missing chunks of drywall, scratches everywhere, numerous pieces of furniture were damaged, it was horrible!

After the movers left my husband had me get on the road with the kids because it was getting late and he was going to stay and finish packing as much as he could in the truck and we decided he’d drive back in a few days and rent a trailer for the rest.
I got in to our new place exhausted with 3 cranky kids about 9:30 that evening (and of course one my boys had a fever and was throwing up that day!) My husband didn’t get in until about midnight. That was one long day.
Luckily our movers on this end were fantastic and got us all unloaded quickly with no additional damage. Two days later my husband left at 6am to make the 6 hour drive back to North Carolina to rent a trailer and load up the remainder of our things.
What he did not do was check the weather before he left and he ended up working all day in severe thunderstorms and guess what? We got the largest UHaul trailer you can get and the stuff didn’t. fit. I felt awful for him, he was soaked through from loading the trailer all day in a downpour.


So again, this past weekend I got up at 4:30 am and drove down to North Carolina, rented a trailer and loaded the rest of our things up. I had it much easier than he did because the weather was fantastic and this time everything fit!! I shared this pic on Instagram as I got ready to hit the road back to Virginia.
Anyways, it was quite the moving adventure and I’m sooo glad it’s over now. Here are a few pics of the house progress we’ve made.



I’ll have the house {hopefully} fully decorated soon!
That is crazy! I’m glad you and all your stuff made it safely to VA, though! That picture of “Unhappy Husband” cracked me up. I love the yellow rug, and can’t wait to see the whole house! Welcome to your new home!
Thanks Karen!! I made sure to get permission to post that pic of my husband, I literally laughed out loud when he texted it to me…he was so miserable looking!
I know you aren’t supposed to laugh at somebody’s troubles, but the way you told it was funny! Your picture of Unhappy Husband was the best. Please post pictures of your wall arrangements in the dining room as soon as it is ready. I enjoy seeing your progress, but sure am glad it is you and not me. Ha!
I’ll definitely be posting pics on instagram and FB as I get things hung up and then share the full tour on the 3rd! At first I wasn’t going to post how horrible the move went because people always think we’re crazy to move ourselves and I thought I’d be proving them right but sure enough a few days after we finally got everything here we talked about how we’d move ourselves next time without all the pitfalls! So I guess it ended up being a learning experience!
You must be exhausted with all that moving and packing and unpacking! I give you a ton of credit for even bother to decorate right now!
Its all looking great! Welcome to VA!
Thanks so much Kristen! This has definitely been the hardest move we’ve done but the worst is over, the decorating is the fun part!
God bless you all. What an ordeal! I am amazed you feel up to showing your new house so soon! Maybe working with a deadline forces you to get things together! It will be lovely, and I’ll be waiting to see it all.
Thank you Lauren! We try to get settled as quickly as possible…with moving as much as we do it seems to help!
Congrats on the new digs! I’m amazed at how much you’ve already settled into your new place (clearly, you’ve been hard at work). And I can totally relate to feeling like a hoarder when it comes time to move; I’m already bracing myself for when that day comes for us in the not too distant future. I probably need to start purging NOW!
Thanks Lauren! I thought I purged a ton before the move, we had a garage sale, donated a bunch and nope…still a hoarder {hanging head in shame} We’ve donated and sold a ton more since getting here too!
Hi there! I am sorry that it didn’t go as originally planned-not sure I’d be as calm as you were! If there is anyway possible, can you let us know the color of your DR? Starting to changing my colors (greens, tans reds) to more neutral and taking my stained woodwork to white. It’s gonna be a long haul ahead but heck if you can move an entire house I can stay put and freshen up mine! Good luck!
I’m not sure in this house Lisa, it’s a rental but it does look very similar to our last house (you could look at our home tour on the top bar of my blog to compare-this house has a lot more natural light) The color at our last house was Sherwin Williams Believable Buff.
Hi Melissa,
This is my first time visiting your blog and I’ve really enjoyed it. I love the yellow rug – can you share where you purchased it? I’ve been looking for one for my office for a long time and that one would be perfect.
It’s from Target Diane…I love it although I will say it looks best when vacuumed everyday-it shows dirt and traffic marks pretty easily. Even so I love it and wouldn’t trade it, it brightens up our space so well!
Welcome to DC. My daughter moved there right out of college about 4 years ago. She loves it now. It was very hard on her at first because we have no family there. She lives in the Arlington area in Virginia and metroes in every morning to work. She is a 14 hour drive, or 2 hour flight away from home. I enjoyed your tour and hope you enjoy your new home. My daughter has introduced me to Ikea there – two of them! We live in Birmingham, Al and our nearest Ikea is Atlanta. I just saw your blog today. I will be following happily along from here.
Thanks Vicki!! We’re very close to Arlington and I too was surprised that there were TWO IKEAs around-insane after living 2+ hours from one for the past 8 years! It’s been an adjustment for us to get used to the lack of personal outdoor space but we’ve discovered many parks for our boys and our dog and that helps a ton!