Friday, April 07, 2006
New TownHouse Renovation - Day 29 (3.25.06)
Saturday:
Goals: Move on up...to the east side.
pics
Well after our exciting Friday night, we wake up extra early to get things done for the move. I went to bed last night feeling like ass, and woke up feeling the same. The big things that we need to do this morning are to move the fragile things (Rena's harp, my computers, sat. dish receivers, etc...) We get up, I pack the rest of the office, Rena hits the bedroom. Last night again it felt like everything was in slowwwww motion. But this morning we are knocking things out quickly. We load up the cars and head to the new place. As I am carrying my 2 huge monitors up to the 3rd floor I start to think about how glad I am that we hired movers. I am too tired to carry all of our stuff up all those stairs. This is the first time that I have ever used movers, and am nervous because of all the horror stories that I have heard about them adding charge after charge and holding all of your stuff hostage with demands for special lunches and cash. So my apprehension starts to build.
We unload our junk and head back to the old place. The movers only take cash, so I hit the bank and Rena hits the Starbucks. We get back to the old place with about an hour and a half before the movers arrive. They are due at 10 and Rena's mom and Paul are coming over at 9:30 to help. We continue taking things apart - we pack up the rest of the office and start to take our bed apart...and I hear a truck outside....I glance out the front door and see it....Delancey Street Movers. They are half an hour early. This is unheard of in the moving world. We are not really ready. If we would have had that last half hour, we would have been fine. The guys show up and I invite them in....they look like a line of recently released convicts. This is probably because they are a line of recently released convicts. The Delancey Street Moving company is part of the Delancey Street Foundation. It is sort of a half-way house for former prisoners, substance abusers, and people who need help. These people agree to live at Delancey for 2 years, learn a trade and stay away from their old habits. The trades include moving, culinary (they have a really nice restaurant up in San Francisco) and construction.
These guys were the most respectful, nice people that we have had the pleasure of meeting throughout our home buying experience. They went through the house, sized everything up and started carrying stuff to the truck. This thing got loaded like a mutha. All of our fragile items and furniture were wrapped in shrink wrap and handled with more care than I would have used on our junky furniture. In fact, there were a couple of items that I was hoping they would break....I'm looking in your direction, indestructible 5 dollar Ikea coffee table that we've been trying to break for 5 years....
It took them about 3 hours to pack up the entire house. I kept offering them lunch, but they kept refusing saying that they brought their own and that they would eat on the way from the old to the new place.
As they are packing up the truck, our energy level really starts to drop. Luckily Paul and Joyce were on hand to help with the finishing up process. As our furniture slowly disappeared, it became more and more apparent that there was more water damage to our place than we had realized. Last summer, the idiot people that lived upstairs (dumb and dumber) somehow managed to get their washing machine drain plugged up resulting in water getting into our kitchen. We came home one night and turned on the kitchen light, it immediately shorted out and I look up and the whole fixture is filled with water. We could have just thrown a goldfish and a bunch of pebbles in there and had a new pet. Anyway, we found that the water had made its way down the wall onto the wood floor in the living room, leaving a nasty looking rotted wood mess. Add this to all the dust bunnies and crud underneath our appliances and its amazing that we didn't die of toxic shock from breathing in that place.
With the truck filling fast, the guys ask me which items we NEED to have taken by truck and what we can take on our own. I show them what we want to take and they start packing it in. One of the last things we asked them to move was this giant succulent plant that we inherited from Rena's aunt and uncle. It has thrived in our backyard and it was heavy when we got it, I’ve tried to move it a couple of times, but have always been put off by both the weight and the amount of spiders in/on/around it. One of these guys bear hugs the pot and carries this heavy assed plant all the way to the truck. When we get to the new place, he does the same thing up the stairs and out onto the patio. The guy was a real die hard.
We eventually arrive at the new place and the guys get to work unloading. Through all of this we are talking to the moving guys about the classes they are taking, the trips that the foundation takes them on, how much they enjoy being in the house and how they like doing a kick ass job on their work assignments. I didn't know much about the foundation before we hired them, but by this point I was extremely happy to be giving our cash to them rather than to some other jackhole place. They get all the furniture in and then start running the boxes upstairs...and I mean RUNNING. These guys were animals. They said they like to get done quickly, not only to save us money but so that they can get back to their house because they are having a BBQ that night. They quickly plowed through the remaining boxes and totaled us up. The cost for the move (we found out later) is about half of what other people have paid for similar services in the area, without having to put up with the used carsman-esque mover crap, and at the same time allowing us to donate our cash to a good cause. We found out at some point during the day that the guys don't get paid at all, they just have to do the job as part of their house duties. So it is in their best interest to get done early.
One thing I forgot to mention, after trying to get our precious precious couch up the stairwell into the living room, they decided it was a no-go. So we had to hoist it up over the balcony and in through the sliding doors. They wrapped the couch in a layer of plastic, a layer of blankets and then a thick layer of shrink wrap. Two guys lifted and pushed from the bottom and 2 movers and I grabbed from the top and pulled it up over the railing and into the living room. It was pretty sweet to see.
Near the end of the unloading, Kyrie (Rena's Sister) and Nader showed up and were ready to help us unpack or to put up cabinet doors. The place was in no shape for either of these things, and we were in no shape to do much of anything. I was exhausted, so I pretty much fell asleep upstairs while Rena and Nader attempted to put the grill together with Kyrie managing the process. Towards the end they find a huge dent in the front of the grill, and I awake to hear Nader yelling at someone at Lowes about it, over the phone.
We decide to deal with it later, they leave, and we go out to eat, come home and go to sleep. Our first night in the new house:. Its a weird feeling. Everything still feels like "that place we are working at but have no real connection to". Hopefully that will change soon.
Taking stock: one last thing. We still have an incomplete kitchen. We found out the countertops aren't coming until April 24th and the island is still in pieces in the dining room (we need to build that so we can give dimensions to Rena's dad for that countertop), and there are various places where we haven't installed ceiling lamps. Luckily, we have a fridge and some paper plates...so we should survive.
Goals: Move on up...to the east side.
pics
Well after our exciting Friday night, we wake up extra early to get things done for the move. I went to bed last night feeling like ass, and woke up feeling the same. The big things that we need to do this morning are to move the fragile things (Rena's harp, my computers, sat. dish receivers, etc...) We get up, I pack the rest of the office, Rena hits the bedroom. Last night again it felt like everything was in slowwwww motion. But this morning we are knocking things out quickly. We load up the cars and head to the new place. As I am carrying my 2 huge monitors up to the 3rd floor I start to think about how glad I am that we hired movers. I am too tired to carry all of our stuff up all those stairs. This is the first time that I have ever used movers, and am nervous because of all the horror stories that I have heard about them adding charge after charge and holding all of your stuff hostage with demands for special lunches and cash. So my apprehension starts to build.
We unload our junk and head back to the old place. The movers only take cash, so I hit the bank and Rena hits the Starbucks. We get back to the old place with about an hour and a half before the movers arrive. They are due at 10 and Rena's mom and Paul are coming over at 9:30 to help. We continue taking things apart - we pack up the rest of the office and start to take our bed apart...and I hear a truck outside....I glance out the front door and see it....Delancey Street Movers. They are half an hour early. This is unheard of in the moving world. We are not really ready. If we would have had that last half hour, we would have been fine. The guys show up and I invite them in....they look like a line of recently released convicts. This is probably because they are a line of recently released convicts. The Delancey Street Moving company is part of the Delancey Street Foundation. It is sort of a half-way house for former prisoners, substance abusers, and people who need help. These people agree to live at Delancey for 2 years, learn a trade and stay away from their old habits. The trades include moving, culinary (they have a really nice restaurant up in San Francisco) and construction.
These guys were the most respectful, nice people that we have had the pleasure of meeting throughout our home buying experience. They went through the house, sized everything up and started carrying stuff to the truck. This thing got loaded like a mutha. All of our fragile items and furniture were wrapped in shrink wrap and handled with more care than I would have used on our junky furniture. In fact, there were a couple of items that I was hoping they would break....I'm looking in your direction, indestructible 5 dollar Ikea coffee table that we've been trying to break for 5 years....
It took them about 3 hours to pack up the entire house. I kept offering them lunch, but they kept refusing saying that they brought their own and that they would eat on the way from the old to the new place.
As they are packing up the truck, our energy level really starts to drop. Luckily Paul and Joyce were on hand to help with the finishing up process. As our furniture slowly disappeared, it became more and more apparent that there was more water damage to our place than we had realized. Last summer, the idiot people that lived upstairs (dumb and dumber) somehow managed to get their washing machine drain plugged up resulting in water getting into our kitchen. We came home one night and turned on the kitchen light, it immediately shorted out and I look up and the whole fixture is filled with water. We could have just thrown a goldfish and a bunch of pebbles in there and had a new pet. Anyway, we found that the water had made its way down the wall onto the wood floor in the living room, leaving a nasty looking rotted wood mess. Add this to all the dust bunnies and crud underneath our appliances and its amazing that we didn't die of toxic shock from breathing in that place.
With the truck filling fast, the guys ask me which items we NEED to have taken by truck and what we can take on our own. I show them what we want to take and they start packing it in. One of the last things we asked them to move was this giant succulent plant that we inherited from Rena's aunt and uncle. It has thrived in our backyard and it was heavy when we got it, I’ve tried to move it a couple of times, but have always been put off by both the weight and the amount of spiders in/on/around it. One of these guys bear hugs the pot and carries this heavy assed plant all the way to the truck. When we get to the new place, he does the same thing up the stairs and out onto the patio. The guy was a real die hard.
We eventually arrive at the new place and the guys get to work unloading. Through all of this we are talking to the moving guys about the classes they are taking, the trips that the foundation takes them on, how much they enjoy being in the house and how they like doing a kick ass job on their work assignments. I didn't know much about the foundation before we hired them, but by this point I was extremely happy to be giving our cash to them rather than to some other jackhole place. They get all the furniture in and then start running the boxes upstairs...and I mean RUNNING. These guys were animals. They said they like to get done quickly, not only to save us money but so that they can get back to their house because they are having a BBQ that night. They quickly plowed through the remaining boxes and totaled us up. The cost for the move (we found out later) is about half of what other people have paid for similar services in the area, without having to put up with the used carsman-esque mover crap, and at the same time allowing us to donate our cash to a good cause. We found out at some point during the day that the guys don't get paid at all, they just have to do the job as part of their house duties. So it is in their best interest to get done early.
One thing I forgot to mention, after trying to get our precious precious couch up the stairwell into the living room, they decided it was a no-go. So we had to hoist it up over the balcony and in through the sliding doors. They wrapped the couch in a layer of plastic, a layer of blankets and then a thick layer of shrink wrap. Two guys lifted and pushed from the bottom and 2 movers and I grabbed from the top and pulled it up over the railing and into the living room. It was pretty sweet to see.
Near the end of the unloading, Kyrie (Rena's Sister) and Nader showed up and were ready to help us unpack or to put up cabinet doors. The place was in no shape for either of these things, and we were in no shape to do much of anything. I was exhausted, so I pretty much fell asleep upstairs while Rena and Nader attempted to put the grill together with Kyrie managing the process. Towards the end they find a huge dent in the front of the grill, and I awake to hear Nader yelling at someone at Lowes about it, over the phone.
We decide to deal with it later, they leave, and we go out to eat, come home and go to sleep. Our first night in the new house:. Its a weird feeling. Everything still feels like "that place we are working at but have no real connection to". Hopefully that will change soon.
Taking stock: one last thing. We still have an incomplete kitchen. We found out the countertops aren't coming until April 24th and the island is still in pieces in the dining room (we need to build that so we can give dimensions to Rena's dad for that countertop), and there are various places where we haven't installed ceiling lamps. Luckily, we have a fridge and some paper plates...so we should survive.
# posted by Tony Starr @ 10:18 AM 
