When we came to view the apartment at Hawthorne House, the landlord showed us the unit that ended up being across the hall from where we live. It was nice, but it did have this big funky metal furnace in the kitchen next to the stove. It was kind of ugly, and took up space in the kitchen.

So then she showed us the unit across the hall, which had a newer forced-air furnace in the living room, and nothing in the kitchen. Combined with the bonus of not having to deal with radiators, we took it.

But when the landlord heard us joking about the furnace, she told us that there was an even “funkier” one upstairs. I found it hard to believe until she showed it to us. Imagine this beast sitting next to your stove.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, and Annie and were spending the night in our new apartment the night before we moved all our stuff in. We had an air mattress and my laptop with us, and I was excited to find one of the neighbors had left their wi-fi network unsecured, so I could post a quick blog entry from our new home.

The next day, we drove out to the storage unit where all of our stuff was sitting, and loaded a moving truck, a minivan, two station wagons, and a sedan full of everything we own. We nearly fit everything in one load, but we had to go back for a few stragglers. Here you can see exactly how full the truck was.

Since our new apartment is only a one bedroom, the living room was where most of the stuff got put. Here’s an in-progress shot while we’re unloading the truck. You can already see it filling up.

A couple days later and we had moved enough stuff around to let me pull together our TV and couch, but you can see there’s still a crazy amount of stuff in the living room.

Here’s a shot from the living room looking back at the entryway and the bathroom hallway, which gives a good view of the boxes stacked 4-5 tall along the length of the wall.

Looking from the middle of the living room into the kitchen, you can see that our kitchen was completely unusable for the first few days. We ate a lot of takeout until we were able to move those boxes. You can also see the temporary computer setup on our old coffee table.

Anything even remotely bedroom related got piled on the bed. This included pillows and blankets, but also about a dozen bags of laundry.

Now, jumping ahead about two weeks, and we’ve got most of the unpacking done. I’m particularly pleased with the work I did in our basement storage unit, where I managed to fit everything we had to store and still keep most of it easily accessable, through the use of a bunch of those cheap garage hooks to hang all our dining table chairs from the ceiling.

Here’s Annie sitting in our nearly complete living room. There’s still some things to put away, like the bookshelf behind her and the Ikea box with our new bookshelf on the floor. I’m very happy with the new rug we got, which is just simple squares of color.

The bedroom hadn’t changed much at this point, except that the laundry bags had mostly been dealt with when we put the dressers into place.

Looking back into the entryway and hallway again, and you can see that the bulk of the stuff has been put away. The remaining boxes against the wall are of books that are going onto the new Ikea bookshelves once they’re all assembled.

The kitchen is usable now, and nearly everything is put away. Plus, we have enough room for the portable dishwasher we’re borrowing from Eric and Jill.

This is the storage unit in the hallway outside the bathroom. On the shelves you can see all the little tupperware tubs I keep computer and stereo cables in.

Finally, here are the cheap paper lanterns we bought to cover the bare lightbulb fixtures. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but as you can see the lanterns look decent up there, so I’ll be popping in some long-life bulbs and covering all our fixtures.