The Adventure - Part 1 Everett, WA 9:30am

Hmmmmmmm, where to begin?
Maybe our first night, Billings, MT.

Looks like a nice enough place in the daylight. Downtown Billings, on the river. Clean, tidy, historic neighborhood. Coffee shop slash kayak rentals at the back of the parking lot. But at night. Oh! Night! Cars parked on both sides of the streets, one ways, roads under construction and dead ends.

We rolled in at 3am. Two of the big 28 foot Penske trucks, one pulling a car on a car dolly. No big deal, you say. BUT. Add 3 drivers new to this size vehicle, the same drivers that have little to no experience backing up with a trailer that you can't see. Add in an L-shaped, unmarked, dead end, one lane with cars parked on both sides of the street and no place to turn around. Did I mention that it was 3am? Well, one hour, lots of yelling over the sound of the truck (no frustration or anything) and lots of zig-zagging and we made it to our rooms just after 4am. Nice rooms :) Up and out at 9:30am to hit the road, dreading Butte and the mountain pass.

sidenote: one of the trucks (truck 2) started acting up on Snoqualmie pass. Yes, less than 100 miles from home. Dash lights started flashing, things were beeping. As we pulled off the highway to figure it all out... it died. Being the make-do girl I am (possibly a bad choice this time) I said, "turn the key off, let it sit a minute and start it up again." Vwa-la! Lights were off, crazy-loud beeping had stopped and we were off on our adventure again!

We Did It!

...and I love it!

It's been 2 long weeks of moving, sorting, throwing out, organizing, sorting again and throwing out again but the switch of master bedroom and workroom is about done.

I had no idea how much space we were wasting in the big room and how cramped we were in the small room. My workbench, an iguana cage, 2 bookshelves, Donnie's gigantic computer set up and my overflow of art, craft and jewelry supplies, two humans and two terriers all in 12 x 12. It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves or each other!

Check out the new space:

It will never be this clean again!

What you can't see is Donnie's computer set up directly across the room from the iguana cage next to my workbench. It all fit and more! I was able to bring my desk upstairs along with the file cabinet, all my photography equipment and my packaging and mailing things. I have a matching corner piece coming and more under-shelf lighting. There is so much floorspace I can actually put up one of my craft fair tables and spread out if I need to. I don't know why we didn't do this long ago. The bed, dresser and a chair for the dog to sleep in fit perfectly in the other room.

Yay to my awesome guy for saying, "Yup. Let's do this".

Tripping

Donnie, myself and the Iguana have been crammed into the second bedroom of our condo for our "leisure activities" for more than 2 years. His activity being the monsterous computer set up he has for gaming and mine, of course, the jewelry and art workbench. And shelves. And secondary table. And supply cabinet.
OK, so we are not just crammed in, I'm overflowing into the loft area in the hallway and then some. Add in an Iguana cage that's larger than a large armoir and two terriers that are constantly underfoot and there is no room left to walk. We trip through the door hoping to land in the vacinity of our chairs. These pictures are of everything all cleaned up.

One day while making envelopes for some ACEO's I casually said, "We should switch the two bedrooms since we spend more time here than we do sleeping". As we think about it, maybe we really should! Will the ginormous bed fit? If it does, will we be able to get anything else in the room? Will I have to have the headboard flat against the wall? (I hate that). We'll have to start measuring.