Moving Adventures
I haven’t posted (as you were warned) since Wednesday of last week because we moved to a new house. Here’s a breakdown of what happened while I was away from the Internet:
Thursday
We got up at our usual time, and headed to the new house for a final inspection. When we got there, the old owners were still moving out. I was concerned that they wouldn’t be out of the house by the time we were ready to move in later that day. My fears weren’t unfounded, but they were close enough to being out that I didn’t make an issue of it. During the inspection, we found that one of the light sensors on one of the garage doors wasn’t working. That meant that you had to hold down the button to get the door to close. Not a big deal. There were also five sets of metal and wood shelves in the garage that it was obvious that the old owners would not be able to fit in their truck. The wife offered to trade the shelves in exchange for us overlooking the broken sensor. We need the shelves, so I was happy to make the trade. (As it turns out, the sensor was dirty, and Kiara was able to clean it to get it to work. Go Kiara!)
We left the house, stopped by the bank to get a cashier’s check for our part of the closing, and made it to the closing with a few minutes to spare. I won’t bore you with the details of the closing. If you’ve bought a house, you know what it’s like. If you’ve never bought a house, imagine signing your name about 50 times on different sheets of paper. Yeah. It’s that fun!
After the closing, Kiara was getting the shakes because of low blood sugar, so we went to our favorite diner King’s Chef DIner that was only a few blocks away. The food was good, but the diner was packed. They also had a new chef on his first day of flying solo. Instead of our usual in-and-out-in-thirty-minutes, we were there for about an hour. No biggie.
We headed to the u-haul store to get a 26′ truck. That was another disaster. Someone had siphoned all of the gas out of the truck, so the truck was on ‘E’, and they wanted me to return the truck with at least 1/4 tank of gas. I told them that I would return it with as much gas as I got the truck. The lady told me that she would knock off the price of a 1/4 tank of gas. I was agreeable to that since it was $45 off of the price of the truck if we went that route. Kiara went to the house to begin packing while I drove to the nearest gas station to fill up the truck. I put in 1/2 tank of gas since the prices were so high, and it was damn hot out.
I finally got home with the truck to find Craing there waiting for me to help me start packing the truck. We immediately went to the storage unit. Craing is a moving machine! What took me and Thanatos about 3 hours to pack up, and put in the storage unit took Craing and I about an hour to load into the truck. We then headed to the house where Kiara had packed up the garage. It took another hour to load the garage into the truck. There was still room in the truck, so we loaded up the guest bedroom. That filled up the truck quite well, so we headed to the new house with the load.
When we got there, we found that the old owners were still loading their truck. When we left them that morning, they only had about 4 feet of space left in the truck. Now they were down to 2 feet of space left. The time that it had taken Craing and I to fill 26 feet of truck and transport it, the old owners had only gotten a tiny little bit of packing done. Two of their children were old enough to help, and the third child was old enough to keep their youngest child out of the way. Their truck was in the way of the driveway, so I decided to pitch in and help them get out of my way. After about 30 minutes, we had them packed. While they worked on getting their Jeep loaded on to a trailer, I backed my truck into place.
Craing and I got started on unloading the truck. We were making pretty good progress when Savarros showed up and started helping. It was nice to have three of us making the rounds. In no time flat, we had the truck unloaded. Craing and I were beat, so we decided to call it a night after unloading the final thing from the truck.
Friday
It didn’t feel like we got lots done Friday, but we were working all day. Kiara and some friends were at the new house while our main electrical juncture box got rewired due to some code violations that were found during inspection. They were unpacking what Craing and I had delivered on Thursday. Craing, Fred, and I spent the day packing books, bookshelves, and pretty much everything else we could pack into a box. Not much was actually moved but we made good progress.
Near the end of the day, I was beat. I couldn’t move another thing. I was complaining to Craing that I was going to have to shell out some serious money for a shelf that would hold our huge 36″ TV. In the old house it was on a corner shelf above the built-in fireplace. We had no such place at the new house. Craing is a carpentry whiz, and he loves to do it. He said that we could get the parts for a new table with shelves at Home Depot on the cheap and build it ourselves. I took him up on his offer. We hit Home Depot, got the wood, screws, and brackets that we would need. We had the wood cut to size, and then headed to his place to get his tools since mine were all packed. We hit the new house with our parts, and started building.
Part way through the build process, my mom called, so while talking to her, Craing continued to work on the table. He was trying to pick it up to flip it over when it slipped from his fingers. He fell backwards, and managed to catch himself before hitting the ground. However, he twisted his knee very badly, and ended up on his ass. While I was talking to my mom, he limped into the house. I quickly got off of the phone with my mom, and asked Craing what was wrong. He told me the story, and I ask him if we needed to head to the ER. He said that he didn’t think so, but wanted to walk on it a bit more. We headed back out to work on the table some more. At one point, we both needed to squat next to it to make some measurements. Craing could barely do it. It was at this point that I told him that we were going to the ER to have his knee checked out. He didn’t argue, so we closed up the house, and headed to the ER.
The ER experience went oddly smoothly. It was a Friday night, so I expected tons of business there. If you’ve ever been to an ER, then you know how it goes: check in, wait, vitals check, wait, insurance and billing, wait, go to this department, wait, get an xray, wait, get results of xray wait, get instructions from doctor for care, wait, get prescription for pain meds, go home. All told, we were there for about an hour.
I asked Craing if we could go back to the new house to finish off the table since I needed his expertise to get it done right. He agreed, so we drove back to the house. We propped the table up on two shelves that were already moved so that we wouldn’t have to squat to do what we needed to do. We spent the next hour screwing brackets into the legs, setting up shelves, and finishing off the bottom of the unit. We got done, and left it where it was because Craing was in no shape to be hauling about 40 pounds of lumber down a flight of stairs.
Craing said that he would love to help on Saturday, but his knee was in no shape to really be of any use. I told him that he was free to come and hang out with us, but I wouldn’t let him carry a damn thing because of his knee. He said that he can’t be around physical labor without the urge to join in, so he would just stay home and take care of his injury.
Saturday
This was the big move day. We split our forces. A few people would help at the new house while the rest of them would help with the packing and moving of the old house. We had 4 people at the new house, and 8 people at the old house. The day started with some more packing of boxes and the moving of furniture. The 4 at the old house finished long before we did, so we ended up with around a dozen people moving stuff out of the new house. It all went smoothly. Nothing got broken. There were a few scratches on the walls from the washer and the freezer (more on that later.)
We had a team packing stuff that needed to be packed. I always hate asking other people to pack my stuff because I feel like I should have that done before anyone shows up. However, we were trying to live in and sell the old house, so it had to stay in “showing condition”. That meant no boxes of packed goods lying around the house. The packers went through the house room-by-room, and did a great job. When they got done with a room, they would track me down, and have me point them to the next thing to be packed. They packed closets, the kitchen, tons of computer stuff, and stuff out of our storage area.
While the packers were getting us stuff to move, we did the furniture. That all went well. We had enough people to keep everyone busy without people stepping on each others’ toes. I spent a considerable amount of time directing traffic and supervising. I wasn’t being lazy at all, but I had been packing and moving for two straight days at this point. My energy reserves were almost tapped, and I knew it. I had to ration out my strength to be able to last until the end without collapsing (which I almost did on a few occasions.)
We finally filled up the truck, so we all hopped in our cars (and me in the truck.) We headed to the new house to unload. That went well. All of the furniture got into the right rooms, and the boxes made their way into the garage. Our DVD shelf that we got at Wal-Mart suffered a catastrophic implosion during the trip, but I think I can fix it. If I can’t, I’ll go buy another one for about $30. While unloading the truck, Thanatos suffered a crushed foot from a falling shelf. It bruised him pretty badly, but nothing was broken. He sucked it up, and continued to work with the bruised foot. I’m just glad we didn’t have another hospital trip on our hands.
Once we were done emptying the truck, there remained the big items back at the house: the 36″ TV, the freezer, and the air hockey table. I got two guys working on taking the table apart while I emptied the freezer as much as I could, and the rest worked on carrying the smaller items to the truck that wouldn’t fit in the first trip. We got most of the smaller items. On Shinto’s advice, I called a stop to carrying the smaller items, so that we could focus our waning energy on the larger items. First went the air hockey table. While heavy, it was easy to carry with the legs taken off. Next went the TV, and that went smoothly because I had wisely kept the box for the thing.(I think I’m going to trash the box this time around, though. It won’t fit in the attic at the new place.)
The last thing we moved was the heaviest out of everything that we own: the freezer. We got it strapped into the dolly, out the door, down the hall, and at the base of the stairs. There is a support post near the base of the stairs that makes maneuvering difficult. While Bobo was swinging the freezer around the pole, the corner of the freezer clipped a wall. It gouged the wall a bit, and paint chips went flying. Not a big deal. A little putty, some paint, and about 10 minutes, and the wall will be as good as new. We finally got the freezer lined up on the stairs, and we stood there for about 5 minutes wishing that it was already at the top of the stairs. Thanatos finally volunteered to grab the dolly and lead the way up. Shinto, Bobo, and I pushed from below. It took a few false starts to get the angle, leverage, and willpower right to get the thing going. We took it one stair at a time with Thanatos adjusting his legs and grip each time. We finally got it to the top of the stairs, and the angle of the dolly changed. We were no longer on the tires of the dolly, but on the slider rails. Thanatos asked if we needed to change the angle. Someone (I think it was me, but I’m not sure) yelled out, “Go! Just go!” and we did. The three of us on the bottom pushed, shoved, and heaved. The freezer was at the top of the stairs!
The last load of the day was the large items. We set some people to grabbing the smaller items from the truck while two people moved the air hockey table. Some people grabbed the TV, and got it downstairs next to the table that Craing and I had built. We finally got the freezer out of the truck. It was just going into the garage, so we didn’t have far to go. It slid into place, and will remain there until the end of time. I’m not moving that damn thing again!
With that done, we called it a day. I rounded everyone up, and took them to dinner at Village Inn. I would have rather gone to someplace nicer, but it was close, we were tired, and it was about all Kiara and I could afford on our new budget. We had some good talk, had some good food, relaxed, and enjoyed each others’ company. It was the end of a long, hard day, and we were grateful that we survived. After dinner, we called it a night, and went our separate ways.
Sunday
Kiara and I spent all day Sunday loading up our cars with smal stuff that was left behind, and cleaning the old house. It took all day long, but we got it done. At the end of the day, I was spent. I had a hard time taking off my shoes, and it looked like Kiara was in the same boat. We showered, crawled into bed, and zonked out.
It’s said that it takes a village to raise a child. That may be true, but it takes a great collection of friends to move a house. With that being said, I would like to thank (in no particular order): Craing, Thanatos, Savarros, Jhianna, Spice, Cameron, Fred, Rhianni, Bobo, Jasmine, Spud, and Shinto. You guys are the greatest!
