Moving Day: An Epic.

[CharlieH]

As you may or may not know, SarahH & I bought a house!

We made an offer on April 1, it was accepted on April 2, we closed on May 15. Fairly quick process, no?

OK.

So Friday, May 23 was moving day -- Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I was staying home to supervise while Sarah went to work.

My mother-in-law had an appointment in the City and didn’t want to leave my father-in-law home alone, so she had asked if he could help us out in any way with the move. “Of COURSE,” we say. PS – my father-in-law doesn’t drive anymore; if he can’t get a lift, he takes a NJ Transit train wherever he needs to go.

So, the movers show up on my old doorstep at 8:20 AM, as planned. Great. They’re going along loading stuff into the truck and I get a call at about 8:40 from PC Richards, delivering the Sony 40-inch to the new house. “We’ll be there in about a half hour-45 minutes,” they say. Fine.

I tell the head moving guy, “Listen, I gotta go over to the new place because I’m having a TV delivered and I’ll be back in about an hour or so.” Fine.

So I go, the PC Richards guys are already there and they bolt the Sony to the wall. It’s frikken AMAZING! We put a DVD in to test it out and …well…Michael Strahan was sitting in my lap! Unbelievable.

Anyway, I start heading back to the old place to supervise again. On the way, I stopped in Stop ‘N’ Shop to grab a Pepsi. As I’m leaving there, I get a call from my father-in-law. He says, “My wife went into the City today and thought it would be a good idea if I came down to help out where I can.”

“No problem,” says I. “We’ve got just the job for you: you can help us finish screwing in the new handles on the kitchen cabinets!”

“Great,” he says. “Now, what train station do I get off at to get to you?” So I tell him and he goes, “Oh. Well, I may not have enough for train fare.”

So I said, “OK, I’ll call Leigh (my sister-in-law) and see if she can either pick you up & drop you off down here or give you some money for the train.”

So I call Leigh and she puts my brother-in-law on the phone – he was working from home that day. So we work it out that he’ll drop my father-in-law at our old place, seeing as he didn’t know where the new place was. Meanwhile, as I was talking and driving, I realized that I didn’t have enough cash to tip the movers & cable guys later, so I headed back to the bank to get some more cash.

So while I’m on my way back to the old place, I get a call from my office. We had some notes coming due and some proceeds coming in from a note sale, but I had already had this move scheduled, so I made myself accessible via cell phone. So my boss says, “The payout didn’t go through. We’re $160,000 short.” I said, “What do want me to do?” He says, “Call Jay [my assistant] and talk him through making a transfer. His hair is standing on end right now.”

So I call Jay and he’s not at his desk. Now what? So I call my boss back and he says, “Call his cell phone.” So I call his cell phone. Not there. I leave a message. He calls me back 2 minutes later, cool as can be. “Oh, no. I handled it, no problem.” I said, “Are you sure? ‘Cause I’m here to talk you through it.”

“No, no. I’m fine. It’s done.”

OK

So by this time, I’m about back to our old place. I turn the corner…no moving truck, no men hauling furniture. Bad…very bad!

So I turn around – don’t even park – and head to the new house. My first move was to call my brother-in-law, who by now is blocks from the old place. So I said, “Don’t go to the old place, go to the new one: I’ll give you directions.”

He says, “Well, I’m almost at your door. I’m coming up to your stop sign.” I said, “OK, take a right at the stop, sign and…”

He goes “Wait! Did you just go left at the stop sign?” I had. He says, “Well, slow down. I’ll follow you.”

So I pulled over and he caught up with me and we caravanned, finally, to our new house.

He comes in and immediately starts exploring. Meanwhile, my father-in-law starts screwing in door handles and I’m pacing, wondering where the Hispanic men with the big truck could possibly have gone with our furniture.

Then, my brother-in-law leaves. Fine.

I go to call the moving company and as I’m talking to them I see the truck pull up. Whew! So they’re unloading our stuff and I’m telling ‘em where to put things and so on.

I get a call from Cablevision to install the cable/phone/internet. “I’m running ahead of schedule and would it be OK if I came over now?” Absolutely!

So the movers go along and bring stuff in.

The Cablevision installers arrive – one guy and a trainee on his third day on the job. So I show the lead guy where I want the modem installed and he asks if there was a phone line in the room. No. “Well, I have to drill, then.” I said, “You do whatever you need to do.”

I go back downstairs and I’m talking to the movers and talking to Sarah on the cell phone and I hear the smoke alarm go off. I think nothing of it – probably sawdust got in there.

Then I hear and see the lead cable guy come bolting down the stairs yelling “FIRE! WE’VE GOT FIRE!”

So he runs down the basement and turns off all the circuit breakers. Then we all go out to the side of the house where he starts yelling for a hose.

I give him the nozzle and tell him to run with it. I turn on the water and he gets the flames out.

Meanwhile one of my new neighbors saw sparks & flames coming out of the side of the house and called 911.

Turns out, he drilled right through the electrical conduit on the outside of the house where it runs into the electric meter.

And then put it out with water.

An electrical fire.

With water.

Well, the Fire Dept. showed up and made sure everything was cool with their thermal imaging cameras and J C P & L came and shut the service off from the street.

I told the cable guy, “Man, you’d better go play the number tonight, ‘cause you’re the luckiest thing on 2 legs.”

He says, “Whaddaya mean?”

I said, “Well, first of all, I don’t know how you didn’t get shot across the room when you hit the wires…”

He goes, “I was holding the rubber handle on the drill.”

I says, “And number 2, you DO realize that you put water on an electrical fire, right?”

He goes, “Man! I didn’t know what else to do…”

So we called an electrician we knew and he came and put new wires in, J C P & L came back and turned the power back on around 9:00.

And that was day 1 in our new home.

[NickPapagiorgio]

Wow that is an insane story. A just moved as well, here in the new house just over a month and thankfully nothing as crazy as that. I don't whether it was foolish, or to applaud you to have all those things scheduled on the same day. I had the cable come a few days after I moved in because I was worried about coordinating it with the move. Also, I can't believe that you left the movers alone at your old place while you ran to the new house for the TV guy. I would have been paranoid, that they would have broken something or put a hole in the wall of my old place or something like that. I am not even sure my movers would have allowed me to leave...haha.

But glad you survived that first day. Where did you move to by the way?

[kingdiggler]

Was it expensive to get movers? The fiancee and I moved into a three bedroom condo, but will eventually buy a home. I'm not looking forward to renting the truck and carrying all that crap again.

[CharlieH]

Originally Posted by NickPapagiorgio

Wow that is an insane story. A just moved as well, here in the new house just over a month and thankfully nothing as crazy as that. I don't whether it was foolish, or to applaud you to have all those things scheduled on the same day. I had the cable come a few days after I moved in because I was worried about coordinating it with the move. Also, I can't believe that you left the movers alone at your old place while you ran to the new house for the TV guy. I would have been paranoid, that they would have broken something or put a hole in the wall of my old place or something like that. I am not even sure my movers would have allowed me to leave...haha.

But glad you survived that first day. Where did you move to by the way?

Well, first of all, we had done some preliminary hauling ourselves, so that there was hardly anything left in the old place besides the big furniture. Nothing valuable was left in there, so I really wasn't worried. If something did get broken or a hole was put in the wall, I couldn't do anything about it anyway. Besides, the lease is in our name until May 31, so we have the rest of this week to fix anything and rescue our security deposit.

We moved from renting a townhouse in one end of Basking Ridge, NJ to owning a single family house halfway across town. Phenomenal neighborhood...

[CharlieH]

Originally Posted by kingdiggler

Was it expensive to get movers? The fiancee and I moved into a three bedroom condo, but will eventually buy a home. I'm not looking forward to renting the truck and carrying all that crap again.

3 guys, 5 hours, $825. I tipped them $40 apiece.

[NickPapagiorgio]

Originally Posted by kingdiggler

Was it expensive to get movers? The fiancee and I moved into a three bedroom condo, but will eventually buy a home. I'm not looking forward to renting the truck and carrying all that crap again.

A lot depends on how far you are moving, etc and where you are moving from. I had a relatively large one BR apartment, with a decent amount of furniture (certainly not a ton) and I got two guys for 4 hours, plus one hour of travel for less than 500 bucks (this is just outside of Philly, I would suspect around NYC for it be a bit more expensive). Tipped them 40 I think at the end of the day so not too bad.

[lgm6986]

Originally Posted by CharlieH

We moved from renting a townhouse in one end of Basking Ridge, NJ to owning a single family house halfway across town. Phenomenal neighborhood...

Basking Ridge is a beautiful community. Best lof luck.

[CharlieH]

THANKS!

[Medfordian Slip]

Whatever you do, don't attempt to close on both the house you are selling and the house you are buying in the same day, and combine that with moving the same day. That experience would be longer to type up than Charlie's!

[A$$hole from El Paso]

I empathize.

Moving is one of those no-win propositions. When I moved from a condo to a townhouse, I had hired movers to put stuff into storage. They did a great job so I hired them again when it came time to get the stuff from storage into the new place.

About 8:00 AM they hadn't shown up yet. 9:00 AM. 10:00AM. They finally call back -- they're having trouble with their truck. Noon. No movers. I told them I have a moving truck I'd rented because I was getting furniture from three stores on the same day. They were welcome to use it. They never showed up at all. I wound up doing the moving with my wife and a 120 pound co-worker who didn't provide much in the way of muscle.

This time I moved from the townhouse down to Texas. I did the usual screening of vendors, checked references, etc. I went with a firm that was highly recommended and had close to the lowest price. They show up and seem to do a great job.

When I'm driving through Texas I get a call from the moving company. They're planning to charge me a fuel surcharge and a few thousand for the extra boxes, tape and bubble wrap needed to pack up some of the irregular-shaped things.

After screaming bloody murder at them and doing whatever research I could from the phone while driving I figured I'd pay up and fight it after the fact. Fortunately a bribe in the form of beer and a huge sandwich worked wonders and the foreman on the Texas side crossed the fuel surcharge off the bill. That was about $1200 savings but there was still the matter of the supplies. As they brought boxes in I counted and came up with the price of the materials.

I then showed them their own printed price list for supplies along with the letters I'd prepared to the Interstate Commerce Commission about their blatant price gouging. About 90% of that charge magically disappeared from the bill, too. I was OK with the 10% since they had provided some additional supplies.

Next time I move, I think it would be easier just to sell everything you own and buy all new when you arrive!

[NickPapagiorgio]

Growing up we moved from Long Island to NJ and the movers decided to stop on the way for lunch...that sounds reasonable....but oh yeah they decided to get completely hammered and didn't show up to our new house until after 10pm and were drunk off their asses. Needless to say kind words were not exchanged.

[bornredhead2]

I thought things like this only happened to Mule. Are you related by any chance?

[Mule]

Originally Posted by bornredhead2

I thought things like this only happened to Mule. Are you related by any chance?

I would have sent my father in law on a train to another state, kicked out the t.v. guy and put porn in the new t.v. and nailed my wife on the empty floor, told work to **** off, shot two of the movers as a warning to the others for being retards and held a shaved off electrical extension cord to the cable guy's nuts after the power was turned back on for lighting my house on fire.

That's how I roll.

[FrankStylV7]

Originally Posted by Mule

I would have sent my father in law on a train to another state, kicked out the t.v. guy and put porn in the new t.v. and nailed my wife on the empty floor, told work to **** off, shot two of the movers as a warning to the others for being retards and held a shaved off electrical extension cord to the cable guy's nuts after the power was turned back on for lighting my house on fire.

That's how I roll.

And then he wakes up rolling around in a puddle of his own urine, feces and vomit.......

[KingOlerud]

Hey Charlie...

Get a message to your dad to start doing a better job of "watching over you". Did he have a sick sense of humor or something?

Best of luck to you and yours....