Moving is Hard Work

Speaking of reupholstering furniture… Remember this post?

This is what my love looked like just a couple of weeks ago:

You're lookin' a little droopy there, gumdrop.

Well look at my baby now!

Damn girl, you are lookin fiiiiine!

Isn’t she lovely?  I did that on Saturday.  Now I just need to pay someone to make myself a double-welt cord to cover all of the trim and pay someone to sew a new cover for the bottom cushion and it’ll be all done!  My goal is to have the double-welt applied before the actual move on March 23^rd, but let’s be honest, that’s so not going to happen.

Why isn’t that going to happen?  Because in addition to packing up my entire collection of furniture, clothing and random items so that I can have everything moved out by March 23^rd (so I can clean the Barpartment and prepare for Natalia and the Penguin to move into in on March 30^th) I also have a ton of other things going on in the next 10 days!

This Saturday is my bestie, Foxxi’s, Bridal Shower and Bachelorette Party.  I’m very much looking forward to this!  We’re renting a (hopefully) fancy house in the beautiful Galena Territories and planning to drink our faces off, enjoy the hot tub and have altogether ridiculous girly times.  However, between making a cake, preparing all of the food (with assistance from Francesca and Prudence) and setting up for the event, my Friday, Saturday and most of Sunday will be taken up with non-moving related tasks. (and I have no idea what punctuation should be used to make that sentence grammatically correct so please stop judging me)

Then, next Thursday is Best Fest!  This annual fundraiser for the local hospice is not to be missed.  I’ve had my ticket for two months.  We go in and for three hours you get to sample the best food, drinks and products of the tri-state area – as much as you want.  From 5:30-8:30 next Thursday I will also be drinking my face off.  So again, not doing anything related to moving.  Friday morning/early afternoon will be spent recovering but then it’ll be down to business Friday night.

So, with all of this going on, I am going to have a total of 5 full night to pack everything.

HOLY SHIT.  *ahem* Ok, so that’s the first time I’ve really let that soak in. Deep breaths…deep breaths…

Monday night I started packing.  I filled one gigantic box full of books and realized it was too heavy for even Lou Ferrigno to carry down the flight of stairs out of the Barpartment so I gave up on packing for the night.  Because I’m responsible.

Last night, however, was much more successful! 

Yesterday morning I signed my new lease and got my key!  I can’t start moving things in until March 23 (and I can’t cheat because they have surveillance cameras everywhere – stupid secure building!) because my lease isn’t officially valid until April 1 and if I wanted to move in as of March 15 I could have for an additional half-month’s rent, which I just simply couldn’t afford.  But she told me I was free to go look around the place and take measurements, which is exactly what I did last night!  Natalia, Francesca and Han all went with me to get a glimpse at my new digs. 

And you know the good thing?  I still love it!  *Whew* That’s a relief.

So after the new apartment tour last night I sat down and got to work.  I got all of my books packed into reasonably sized boxes.  I also packed my shoes (minus a few pairs for the next week), DVDs, video games and all of my breakable décor.  Tonight I’m hoping to finish packing everything in my spare room, dining room, living room and bathroom (again, minus what I’ll need for the next 10 days).  That way I can get to work on my kitchen and bedroom over the next week, which are both bound to take a long time.

I’m trying to stay all Zen and not let the stress of moving get to me too much… but who am I kidding?  I thrive on stress!  If my head explodes and I never write here again, please remember how brilliant I think you all are and that my favorite flowers (for the funeral, duh) are calla lilies.  And I like pandas, please bury me with a panda.

Hugsnkisses,

Annie Jay

Project Furniture Refurb!

So last night began Phase 1 of Project Furniture Refurb!

Let me first tell you the backstory of this little chair that I'm going to reupholster.  

When I was a teen, my mom liked to go to estate auctions and she got some totally sweet stuff for our house from those auctions, including my bad ass dresser which you can see the corner of in this picture:

I know, I'm sorry.  These are the pictures you get when
I choose to blog on my lunch break.  One day I'll be
a well-prepared blogger.

It is awesome and curvy and beautiful and it even has a secret drawer in it.  When mom brought it home and was cleaning it out we found a bunch of cool stuff in it.  Like a copy of the guy's will wherein he left his daughter only $5.  The previous owner of my dresser was awesome enough to not only have a dresser with a hidden drawer but he also was awesome enough to want to stick-it to his daughter with one of the best F-You's I've ever seen.

*ahem* 

Anyway.  

At that same auction, she bought my chair.  This, beautiful, beautiful beast:

Yes, I want the purple storage
ottoman and fainting couch too.

She hated it.  Mom always intended to recover the chair.  But in my 13-year old excitement, this was the coolest. fucking. chair. ever.

I told her I wanted it in my bedroom.  I thought its teal and olive swirl, shiny fabric was the most badass and romantic thing I'd ever seen.  So into my bedroom is went and there it stayed.  

Through countless moves to apartments and back to Mom and Dad's house the chair went with me wherever I went.  Until eventually, the last time I moved out, the chair was in too poor of a condition for me to let others use it.  So I left it in the basement of Mom and Dad's house for safe-keeping and for imagination to strike.

Last night, as soon as I got off work I trekked out to Mom and Dad's and talked to Mom about my plans to reupholster the chair.  Being my mother, and understanding her daughter's sometimes ill-conceived ideas, she tried to ground me in my pre-reupholstering excitement haze by relating to me stories of her own attempts at reupholstering in the past and how they had fared.

She knows that I like to ride on waves of excitement without thinking things through so she was being the realist that she is.  Being the heedless and headstrong person I am, I continued, undaunted.  I understand this will be a battle.  But I, like great generals before me, will march into this battle and fight tooth-and-nail until I have the most beautiful chair ever seen!  

So I gathered up my tools, say down by my chair and said a prayer to the upholstery gods that all would go well.  I petted the chair and told it I would take care of it.  I took a deep breath and began to strip the fabric off of it.

*GASP* It's like seeing your baby with its intestines hanging out of it.

Dad came downstairs and set in to helping me.  Whether it was to help me during this painful time of wounding my baby, or just to have a nice distraction for a Wednesday evening, I'll never know.  But together we stripped her back and sides and I began to plan for the next phase of the event.  

My fabric should be in by Friday, so hopefully within a week i'll have my darling all put back together and looking beautiful.  Pray for my darling chair as we undergo this daunting reconstruction.

Hugs n kisses,

Annie Jay