Moving day & settling in

I just realized I never posted pictures of moving day, which was over two weeks ago now.  It was quite a day.  I have to say, European movers REALLY earn their money.  They hauled nearly all of our big furniture in through the windows on the second and third stories of the house.  Amazing.  When I commented on it, they told me it was nothing:  sometimes they need to do this on the 13th story!  I stood down below, wincing as our belongings were hauled up and maneuvered into the windows.  Truly unbelievable.

Here's the moving truck and the ladder set up outside as part of their "elevator":

A shot of the elevator taken from inside the house.  Note they had two different elevators and ladders, one going up to the second floor and the other to the third:

An action shot of something going up to the third floor:

And another one.  I don't know what was scarier, watching the items go up, up, up into the air or watching the movers try to wrestle the furniture in through the window.  This is just a picture of empty boxes coming back down.  I literally couldn't watch much less photograph most of the big pieces going in.

It was an incredible sight, and the movers were extremely competent.  I'm happy to report that everything made it in safe and sound, with no damage to the furniture or to the house.  Whew.

On to the settling in:  Since our house here is much bigger than the one at home, we had to buy a lot of furniture, a LOT.  If you know Roger, you know how much stock he puts in furniture (not truly a necessity in life), so you can imagine how much money could be spent on all this new stuff:  as little as possible.  Which is why I've spent so much time at Ikea in the last couple of months.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Ikea, but furniture bought at Ikea is furniture that must be assembled.  Since I'm the resident assembler, I've been quite busy.  Good thing I actually like assembling furniture.  The list:

• One TV stand with drawers
• One four-foot tall shoe cabinet with drawers
• Four wardrobes with doors (and hinges!) and all the interior fittings
• One desk with hutch
• One double bed
• Several shoe racks
• One table and two storage stools (actually, Will did one of them)
• Five toy-storage bins
• One very large bookcase
• Several shelves with brackets

If I never have to assemble another piece of furniture in my life, I will be very, very happy.  The hardest part, other than getting all the stuff in the car and dragging it into the house by myself -- but that's another story -- was putting them together with very limited tools.  I did bring with me a couple of screwdrivers and I bought a new drill/screwdriver when we got here but I didn't have some of the basics, like a level or hammer.  So I had to improvise:

Wine bottle hammer:

Maybe not such a good idea for heavy hammering but for little finishing nails it worked great.  Having to drink a glass of wine while assembling furniture was just a nice little bonus. The bottle has to have a flat bottom, though, or it won't work.

Water-glass level:

Not perfect, but close enough.  I tried using a marble to see if it would roll on the shelf but the water glass worked a little better.

Now, all that's left is to get rid of all the cardboard...

And that's just from three toy bins.  You can only imagine how much more we have lying around!