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Friday, I closed on my first house. As you know, it‘s located in Bettendorf, Iowa, and I’ve enjoyed living there so far. Moving my stuff has been a lot of work, and very little of it is actually put away yet, but I am slowly turning the empty house into a home.

The final walk-through of the house was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Thursday, July 30. Mom, Dad, and I met my realtor at the house, and we walked through it. Most of the sellers’ belongings were out, and everything was in order, so thankfully there was nothing further to do but wait for closing.

That night, I started loading the van. I had scheduled the Dish Network installer to set up my satellite Friday afternoon, which meant I had to have my TV in place before noon. After loading the TV and entertainment system, Tom and I went to the farm to put the washer and dryer (so generously given to me by one of my colleagues) in the back of Dad’s pickup.

Complicating matters was the fact that Mom and Dad were trying to facilitate a car purchase under the CARS (Better known as “Cash for Clunkers”) program. They were just signing some paperwork to finalize the deal when the dealer was notified that the government program had run out of money. Later Thursday evening, one of the salesmen called Dad back to let him know the program was either back on, or had not actually been suspended. Either way, they were to meet at the dealership Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. to buy Katie a new Toyota Corolla.

Friday morning, I met the realtors, sellers, and lawyers at Deere Employees’ Credit Union, to close on the house. We had assigned seating, which worked out well, as the credit union’s lawyer could easily explain to me what I was signing. Thankfully, unlike when filling out Indian Customs forms, I was able to use my own signature.

Before long, I was on the hook for a substantial mortgage, and the sellers turned over the keys. One of the sellers mentioned that his daughters had turned in their keys, to which his realtor responded, “I’ve seen your daughters—they’re beautiful! He may want to let them hold on to their keys!” (I’m told they are 18 and 21…) There was an awkward laugh around the table, as I kept my mouth shut.

After the meeting wrapped up, I drove over to my new place. Tom was already there, having just driven up to help move the heavy stuff. We unloaded the van and waited for Mom and Dad to arrive with the truck and the washer and dryer. Once they arrived, Tom and I brought the washer and dryer downstairs, ingeniously using the tie-down ropes as hoists. Unfortunately, I forgot the power cord for the TV, so Dad had to run back to Woodhull to get it before the Dish Network guy could finish his work.

My neighbor had a tree service over to cut down some branches. When we arrived, there were some cuttings in my yard, which didn’t really bother me. Unfortunately, the guys dropped some branches on the power lines connecting to my neighbor’s house, which started a small fire and necessitated the power being cut. The tree service guy was very nice, but clearly not all there upstairs.

The Dish guy was able to get most of the work done before the power was cut, but got stuck on some software issues and didn’t quite get finished. Since there was nothing to do while the power was out, he took off, and the family went to get some lunch at Red Robin. We enjoyed our burgers and discussed how the main move would go the next day.

Mom had been putting her great skills to work in the kitchen, scrubbing the sink, counters, and cabinets, and replacing contact paper. Clearly, I very much appreciated her efforts there, even if Tom couldn’t figure out why we were spending so much effort on the contact paper.

After eating, Mom and Tom went home, and Dad and I went to Lowe’s to get some replacement washer hoses and dryer vent tubes. (The first set of hoses Dad bought leaked, to our great fury.) Unfortunately, the second set of hoses also leaked, and the dryer vent was not well connected to the exterior wall. We did get the gas line in place, and did what else we could, but decided to leave the rest for later.

After Dad left, I set up the DSL, and then headed back to Woodhull myself.

Saturday morning, we were up bright and early. Dad went to Davenport to pick up the 26′ truck, and I finished getting things in order. When Dad arrived, we tried a couple approaches to get the loading area close to the house’s front door. The straight-on approach didn’t work, as the back of the truck grounded out in the ditch. Eventually Dad backed it in at an angle through the neighbor’s ditch, and we were able to get the bottom of the ramp to the truck bed within a couple feet of the bottom of the stairs.

Unfortunately, it was raining in Woodhull Saturday. We managed to keep everything mostly dry, but it was certainly a relief to have the big truck, instead of trying to rely on Dad’s open pickup. We initially thought 26′ was going to be way more than we needed, but it turned out that it was the perfect size to load everything in a single layer. I think only the king box springs were stacked, which made it very easy to load and unload.

Once everything was on board, we headed to Bettendorf, where we met Bean at my place. The obvious things were unloaded to their final destination (E.g., the bed went to the bedroom, monitors went to the office…), but quite a bit was simply moved to the garage or living room. Once everything was unloaded, Dad went to return the truck and pick up a few more supplies. Everyone went back to work cleaning and setting things up, and we got a fair amount accomplished, including finishing the washer and dryer.

Katie had to bring the old green van back from Champaign to discard as the clunker, so she joined us at the house and got to work as well. She was very excited about her new car, but managed to be a big help to Mom, and therefore me.

Saturday night, after everyone took off, Zipp and Tom came over for a few drinks. Another of our fraternity brothers, Scott Deuser, stopped by as well, and brought his fellow Deere interns Alyssa and Chelsea along as well. We had planned on going out, but ended up hanging out until the wee hours, when everyone finally crashed in the basement.

Sunday, I bribed the family to keep working by buying them brunch at Granite City. As you’ve read, Granite City has a marvelous breakfast, and I, for one, ate enough that I did not eat again until lunch the next day. Unfortunately, this gluttony severely impacted Tom’s productivity when we returned to the house. Despite this, we did get quite a bit done before everyone took off.

Sunday night, I started my first home improvement project: adding in-wall speaker jacks to clean up the look of the entertainment system. It’s going well, but I’ll save the details for a future post.