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

Mezuzah

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

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

No.

B

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

The obvious solution to the tv problem is a nice new plasma flat-screen hung up on the wall. Of course. ;-)

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

That sounds, um, yeah, exciting is a good word for it.

Regarding the entertainment unit: my first thought is to see if you can shim from the front so it's actually leaning slightly backwards against the wall, but I don't know if that's safe or not.

Regarding the mezuzah: I don't think it's sacrilegious to leave it up, because you are respectful of its meaning, but then again, I'm not an observant Jew.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You know, Char, if you were trying to think of a good housewarming present for us... ;-)

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Your move sounds so much like how ours went!

Re the mezuzah, when we moved, the hubby took it down, even though technically you're supposed to leave it up. However, that comes from a tradition wherein the next occupants were sure to be Jewish because you were living in the shtetl. Since the next occupants of where we moved from were more likely to be Asian (and therefore, probably not Jewish), he took it down. He hasn't gotten around to putting it back up at the new place.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'll echo Janet's suggestion of shims to make the entertainment unit lean slightly back. Other than that, is there any chance some straps could be anchored to the ceiling?

[txobserver.livejournal.com]

Suggestion from the land of frequent earthquakes: put a closed cuphook (ring with screw on it...I don't know the real name of this) on the nearest part of the wall that will take it, perhaps a ceiling molding, and on the back of the furniture. Connect with strong fishing line, which is translucent nylon.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That's a fantastic idea. Thanks!

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

That answers that, then!

As soon as I get word of my inheritance from my rich uncle that I’d never heard of, I’ll get right on it. :-)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

On the non-working outlet: have you double-checked the breakers/fuse box? I discovered, to my chagrin, that mine sometimes look on when they 've flipped. ("To my chagrin", because I thought the A/C was broken, and called a repairperson, and it turned out that it was just a breaker -- which I had checked, but I was wrong.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Everything else in the same room works, including a lamp on the same wall. That doesn't sound like a breaker problem to me, but I suppose it doesn't cost anything to check.

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

I'd buy the heaviest fishing line I could find -- I don't know how heavy your TV is, but line with test past what it weighs is of the good.

[(Anonymous)]

Any chance the wall plug is connected to a switch you haven't noticed?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the mezuzah comes with the house and sometimes it doesn't. Technically, what's supposed to happen is that buyers and sellers are supposed to decide before the move whether the mezuzot stay with the house (just like with light fixtures.) If the previous residents are still in Baltimore, and you can get in touch with them without too much difficulty, it might be nice to ask if they left it behind by accident. I remember my father going back to our old house a couple of days after I thought we were done moving, to get ours. (The people who bought that house weren't Jewish, though if one of them had been called "Rivka," my parents might have thought she was Jewish regardless of appearance and her husband's questions about church locations, and left her the mezuzah.)

[lerryn.livejournal.com]

Hard to get line that test except for maybe in the sturgeon fishing section.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I think the technical term is eyelet screw.

Either way, I like this idea!

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I had felt so smart and organized for carefully sorting the hardware for each piece of furniture into its own labeled Ziploc bag!

I've always hired people to pack and move my place. One of the things I noticed that they would do is that they'd put hardware back into the holes from which they'd removed it. For example, if they took the legs off of the dining room table, they'd put the bolts back through the individual legs. Always knew where to find them.

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

Note that I am not an IBEW electrician, but this is what I personally would do:

Take the face plate off the outlet and check to see if wires go to the outlet.
If there are wires, then find a friend with a "sniffer" that will give you a light if electricity is present. If electricity is present, find out what turns it off, and turn it off. Do not assume that it is the same fuse or breaker that services the rest of the room.
Unscrew the outlet (2 screws) pull the outlet out of the wall and check that all the screws holding wires are firmly screwed down. Your outlet might not work just because wires are loose enough not to make good contact.
Put things back together and turn on electricity.
If that doesn't work, call an electrician.

[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.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It turned out, bizarrely enough, to be connected to a switch in a different part of the house. Apparently we only have power to that outlet when the light for the basement stairs is on. Explain that one.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We're running multiple lines from multiple attachment points, which should have the same effect. Because, yeah. More stopping power than necessary is a good thing.