Moving Sucks: Annnd We’re in!
Deanna and I thought we had this moving thing down. We organized everything while packing and labeled every single box so we know where stuff was when we would need it. All of our moving day arrangements were made weeks in advance and leading up to the big day, we weren’t stressed in the least. As a matter of fact, we were totally stoked at how smoothly things were going and really looking forward to getting into our new home. Moving day came along, and everything started to go to shit – and I do mean everything.
I will try not to go into explicit details here and just give you the gist of the suck that was our move. We had until noon before the truck and trailer was set to arrive at our apartment. My Dad just picked up a 17′ enclosed trailer that we thought would be more than enough to get our stuff from A to B. After all, we were packed into an 850 square foot apartment. How much stuff could we possibly have? The answer – a [fucking] lot! This was our first mistake. We ended up filling that trailer, plus a 10’x8′ trailer (twice – had to make 2 trips), and finally the back of 2 enclosed pick-ups. Each truck had our TVs, computers and monitors on the seats as well. Luckily for us, my Dad runs a landscaping/maintenance business and has lots of vehicles at his disposal. Not to mention, he brought along some of his crew to help us out. So if there is a positive to be found here, that would be it. If it wasn’t for my Father being one of the greatest people on the planet, we would have been pretty screwed.
We finally got all our stuff out of the apartment, about 2 hours later than expected. When we rolled into the new place, there was a moving truck backed into the loading area and the moving room was half-full of someone else’s boxes. Deanna and I made a trip out in the morning to sign the lease, pick up our keys and make sure everything was good-to-go. At which time, we confirmed that we would have the elevator and moving room booked for the afternoon. 15 minutes later, we track down the person who’s in the middle of moving out who claims he had booked the elevator 2 weeks prior. Long story short – he wasn’t in the reservation book for that day and the manager was willing to tell him to take a hike so we could get in there, since we had our reservation in place. But once again, the awesomeness that is my Father steps in and offers to come back the following morning with a few extra guys so we can get in quicker. Since we didn’t have any rentals besides a couple of dollys and some moving blankets, it wasn’t a big deal to leave our stuff in the trucks and trailers over night. Inconvenient, without a doubt. But not the end of the world. I agreed not to be a dick and kick this dude out on his ass and we set our new move time for 9am Friday.
My Dad was going out of town for the night and offered his place to us, which is only 15 minutes away. Sounded great, but we had the 2 cats and fish to worry about. Hannah was spending the night at our neighbor’s, so she was taken care of. Deanna hopped up into one of the enclosed trucks and found our clothes, bathroom stuff and bedding. We decided to camp out on the floor of our new place so we could be with the cats and set up the fish tank. Sounded like a good idea at the time.
After we got settled, we started checking things out. This is when we discovered that the property managers had hired the worst painters this world has ever seen. Apparently, they use airbrush type things to paint the apartments and by the looks of the windows, they stand about 10 feet back while painting. There’s over spray on every window, every door handle and window cover. And every counter and floor was caked in paint drops. And now for the best part! Not a single door in the entire apartment would close. These genius painters had painted over the door latches. The little tongue that sticks out to keep the doors shut was literally, jammed in and painted over. Every, single, one of them. Now, I know that can’t be done without trying. You would have to keep the door know turned while painting it for that to happen. So maybe these thought they were being funny? Or maybe it had something to do with the cases of beer we saw in the laundry room when we originally saw the apartment. At which time, it was in better shape than it was when we moved in.
I wish that was all I had to complain about, but there was no running water in the kitchen. The water in the small bathroom was spitting out dirt. The lint trap wasn’t connected to the dryer so there was lint everywhere. Someone had put their fist through the master bedroom door and instead of just replacing the door, they filled it in… and did a very poor job. We found the previous tenants soap and toothpaste stains in the main bathroom. There was a huge hole under the sink in the small bathroom where we found moldy insulation. Both of the toilet seats were broken. About half of the lights had blown bulbs, the other half were painted over. The floors were disgusting and nothing had been cleaned. But someone did vacuum.
To wrap this up – we were all moved in Friday by 2:30pm. Deanna went down and spoke with the management about the state of our new home and they sent someone up right away who replaced all the door knobs, toilet seats, light bulbs, and a bunch of other stuff. The cable guy showed up around 2pm, so I had to scramble to find the cable box and modem, but he got us all setup. We’ve been unpacking non-stop and setting things up which has been pretty fun. Despite being totally exhausted and completely stressed. Tomorrow, we’re heading out to pick up a few things including a new desk for myself. Mine didn’t survive the move and I’m actually writing this from my wife’s computer. I’ve been ‘offline’ since Tuesday, and to be honest, it’s been alllright!
I’ve got photos of all of this that I’ll be uploading to Flickr as soon as I get my machine up and running. Probably over the next couple of days. This was definitely a learning experience for us and hopefully future moves go a little smoother. There were actually a few more big things that went horribly wrong or just plain sucked, but I feel like I’ve complained enough for one night.
I know some of you must have some great horror stories of past moves. Let’s hear them!