Moving update.

[rivka]

We are in our new house, and slowly figuring out how it works.

The move was... exciting.

We knew that some of our things weren't going to make it around the tight stairbend, and that we'd have to hoist them up over the flat first-floor roof and bring them in through a window. Most of the furniture going upstairs could be disassembled for the trip, but there was simply no question that our mattress and box spring would have to be hoisted. Our landlord told us that we'd have to lay sheets of plywood down to protect the roof, and that he'd send one of his workmen over to pop the window out. Fair enough.

Except that, just before midnight on the night before the move, we suddenly realized that we'd never gone out and obtained sheets of plywood.

So yesterday morning, after we'd disassembled the bed, crib, and futon, and with movers expected in just about an hour, Michael went tearing off to Home Depot to buy plywood and either rent a truck to bring it home (they charge $19 an hour for that) or have it delivered. I stayed behind with a hugely long list of things to do before the movers got there: pack up the last of Alex's toys and books (we delayed that until she went to school so she wouldn't be upset), pack up Alex's bedroom (there wasn't much), finish some last-minute packing in our bedroom, disassemble the computers and the TV/DVD/VCR/TiVo.

The movers were early.

Michael was occupied with the shopping and the plywood and the truck for the first two hours the movers were there. I was kept running frantically back and forth between the houses - over here to finish disassembling the electronics, over there to show them where to put the furniture, back over here to give guidance about what was staying and what was going, over there to direct the boxes...

In retrospect, I could've easily supervised the move all by myself if we'd been moving further away. I would've stayed in the old house giving directions about that until it was empty, and then gone to the new house to direct things there. The nightmare came from having the two houses right next door to each other. The movers could be in both places at once, and so I needed to be able to as well.

The movers did a great job. It was totally worth hiring professional movers, even just for a next-door move. When they left, Michael and I wolfed down an ENORMOUS lunch and then went about the job of reassembling all the furniture we had taken apart. This was made more difficult by the fact that I, um, I lost the futon hardware. (We didn't find it until late last night, at the bottom of a laundry basket full of Alex's toys where it obviously belonged.)

Some things we're having to sort through:

• The aforementioned missing futon hardware. I searched for it so many times, feeling like a complete idiot the whole time. I had felt so smart and organized for carefully sorting the hardware for each piece of furniture into its own labeled Ziploc bag! But that's really only efficient if you actually remember where the bags are.


• There was no hot water to the kitchen sink. Michael eventually figured out that they'd shut off the water when they installed new fixtures and then only turned the cold back on, but not until after I'd boiled water in the kettle to wash the dishes.


• Our showers this morning could only be described as warm, at best. It turns out that the hot water heater had been turned way, way down to save energy while the house was vacant. Reasonable enough, but I wish they'd warned us or that we'd thought to check.


• Verizon messed up our phone transfer order so severely that they wound up having to cancel the whole thing out and put in a new order. It took me 45 minutes on the phone this morning sorting it out. Fortunately? Our cordless phone is able to pick up the phone line from the old house next door. So we have phone service, but alas no DSL.


• The fabulous antique marble sink in our bathroom has a leaky pipe.


• The outlet we planned to plug the computers into doesn't work.


• The kitchen has an ungodly awful layout, and I can't think of a useful arrangement for all those huge new cabinets. (Which are too tall for me anyway. Michael has gone out to buy a stepstool.)


• There's nothing in our bedroom to hang curtain rods from. We're going to have to mount hardware. (Mercifully, Alex's room already had hooks for a window shade.)


• The next-door neighbors have an outside wrought-iron stair that leads down from their second-floor living quarters to the back, where they park their car. When they close the door and come down the stairs, it sounds exactly like a burglar is inside our house. Which we discovered last night after we had already gone to bed.


• It turns out that our entertainment unit thingy was as stable as it was in the old house because we had tethered it to the mantel it was in front of. (Blocked fireplace, so it's not as horrible an arrangement as it sounds.) In the new house it is distinctly rickety. And the walls are plaster over (eventually) brick, which means that sinking new tether supports is not as easy as it would be in a drywalled house. But we have to figure out something, because falling TVs are capable of actually killing small children.


• Probably more things I haven't discovered yet.


Oh, and Michael wants to know: there's a mezuzah on our doorpost. Is it sacrilegious to leave it up?

Comments

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

My trick is to use labeled Ziploc bags, and then do one of two things: 1) All ziploc bags go in one place, so the answer to "Where is the hardware for $item" is "In the box with all of the furniture hardware in it." 2) Firmly tape (painter's or gaffer's tape is best because it sticks well but comes off cleanly) to the piece of furniture in question. So "Where is the futon hardware?" "In the baggie taped to the futon." I prefer #2, but it's not always practicable. When I was making an interstate move, I put all of my hardware baggies inside my large cooler, which was being moved with my furniture and was otherwise going to be empty.

Another trick I learned is the easiest way to move dressers, desks, and anything else with removable drawers, especially if you're doing an amateur move rather than using professionals: 1) Do not unpack the drawers. 2) Remove the drawers and pile them, contents and all, somewhere out of the way. 3) Move the empty shell of the piece of furniture to the truck. 4) Carry the drawers out to the truck and put them into the shell of the item. 5) Tape the drawers or face the item into a wall to keep them from opening in transit. 6) At destination, reverse process.