On July 9, nine-and-a-half months after we started construction, and a day over ten months since we moved into the rental, we made it back to our house on Harmil Way. The project was a long and winding road—the first email in my Remodel folder is dated August 2, 2017—that, at times, felt like it would never end, but it was an incredible feeling to finally be home again.

There wasn’t much left to do at the house, so not too much changed between the end of week 41 and our move-in date four days later. There were a few tweaks here and there—the boys’ bathtub door needed an adjustment and various bits of paint and trim needed attention—but our primary focus was on preparing for the move.

Each of us had settled in at the rental to varying degrees. Julia was completely unpacked within a week, while it took me a couple months to get the office in a more or less habitable state. On the other hand, we left most of the decorative items from our living room in boxes for the duration of our stay: we were using the corresponding space in the rental as Will’s distance learning classroom anyway, and there didn’t seem to be much point to unpacking it all.

Nevertheless, the days leading up to the move were a flurry of activity as we scrambled to prepare for the movers. As we did when we moved out of our house last September, we opted to do our own packing and leave just the furniture and other large items for the movers in a (perhaps misguided) attempt to save a little money. This also bought us a bit of time: we didn’t have to have everything ready to go by moving day; rather, we just had to have enough packed for the movers to pick up the furniture. Even so, it was a surprisingly close call, particularly for me, as I was using the office for work right up to the evening before the move. I found myself finishing up my preparations well after midnight the night before.

Moving day itself went smoothly, the only signification complication being that the moving company forgot to send us two trucks (and a correspondingly larger crew), despite the fact that they knew we were reversing the move we’d done last year, for which we’d gone well over the capacity of a single truck. They somehow managed to squeeze most of our large items in, but that still left us with a few things to haul over in Julie’s van. Luckily, the van can hold a surprising amount of stuff, and we had a readily available supply of manual labor in the form of Joe, so it wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been.

The movers finished delivering and reassembling our furniture by mid-afternoon, which left us plenty of time to settle in before our first dinner at home, which we ordered from a local Chinest restaurant, as all of our kitchen stuff was still in boxes or at the rental. After we ate, we got to work unpacking just enough of our bedding so we could enjoy a comfortable night at home, in our own rooms.

Even though we were incredibly busy the day of the move, I did find time engage in one bit of somewhat extravagant sentimentality. When we first bought the house, all the way back in July of 2002—just a week short of nineteen years before this move, in fact—the previous owners, the Dowds, left us a handmade sign reading “Welcome Home” and a gift basket with coupons and gift certificates from various local businesses. The sign was placed on the bookshelf in the kitchen, so it was one of the first things we saw when we walked into the house after we got the keys.

Now, because I’m a little bit sentimental, we asked the builders to save that bookshelf for us so we could put it in our new kitchen as a memento. And because I’m actually really sentimental, I hung onto the sign for the entirety of the nearly nineteen years we owned the house; it actually sat in the trunk of my car for the entire time we were in the rental. So, naturally, I ran out to get a flower basket the morning of the move and placed it and the sign on the very same bookshelf in its new spot between the kitchen and family room so it would be there when Julie came over with the movers after lunch.

The days after the move were a blur. We shuttled back and forth between the rental and the house throughout the weekend and well into the following week: there was a lot left to move, and we were faced with the daunting prospect of cleaning things up in the hope that the owners could rent it out quickly, saving us a bit of money on the back end of our lease. That didn’t go quite according to plan, but, as busy as those days were, they felt like an epilogue. After a long and surreal (if you’re reading this in the far future, look up “COVID-19”) year, we were home.

Gallery: Week 42: Home