Long story short, we’re moved in to the new house. Long story long, it wasn’t without some annoyances and trauma. As you know, it started with our power being turned off Friday morning and it only got better from there.
Not house-related, but we had an appointment at lunch Friday to go visit a cat that we were considering adopting…a fully declawed Tabby that we were REALLY excited about (I really really want a Tabby). However, he is almost 20# (not a problem) and unfortunately as we discovered while visiting him, a nipper (a problem). We did not want to bring home an alpha male that bites/nips. So that was disappointing—it’s rare to find a fully declawed cat. Now on to house stuff.
I had called last week to find out about switching our water service. They told me it had to be done in person. Fine. Annoying to have to make the trip, but fine. So Tom had been meaning to get to it while he was home packing and moving, but never made it. So Friday afternoon, after closing (4pm), I went. So I get there and wait in line for about 15 minutes, and…they tell me they don’t service the new address (ARGH!) so I had to go halfway across town at 4:30 on a Friday to start service! (Yes, it was my fault for not asking and merely assuming the new house TWO miles away would be the same water…but annoying.) Anyway, before I left, I asked for a letter of recommendation for the new water place so I could hopefully avoid a deposit. She said “just have them call us” — okay. So I get to the new place and ask about avoiding the deposit and she said they need a letter. I said “They said just to call them to get the reference” and she said “Yeah, we don’t do that. We need a letter. And they will charge you $5 for it.” I said “You have GOT to be kidding me.” She assured me she wasn’t. I told them “You two water companies should really talk to each other. I can’t be the only one this happens to.” Then I wrote out a $45 deposit check. ARGH. (I will be getting the other water deposit back, but still.) Oh, and I asked about when I might be able to get my deposit back… “Once you have lived here for five years…” OMG! FIVE YEARS!? I was not a happy camper. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but stuff like this just rattles my cage.
So I get home, still fuming, and run into Tom on the road, taking a trailer of stuff to the new house. I tell him what happened with the water. So I was getting dinner ready and Tom seemed to be taking forever but I really didn’t think much about it. He finally comes in and says “I can top your water story” and proceeds to hold up the plastic tray from our grill and says “This is all that’s left of the grill.” Our $600 grill. I literally said (pardon my French): “You are fucking kidding me.” Apparently the strap broke and the grill went FLYING off the trailer doing 40mph. Luckily no one was in the opposite lane where it landed (although he did have to stop traffic to gather the pieces). And of course we can’t afford another $600 grill and I don’t want a cheapie grill now that we’ve had the best. UGH. We’re laughing about it now, but man, that just sucked hard core. (Actually, the grill really isn’t in pieces…but the smokestacks are crushed, the lid is buckled so it doesn’t close, and the knobs and such are missing. Apparently the gas line survived, along with the gas tank, so Tom and Roger think they can try fixing it.)
More utility fun. Tom called LAST WEEK to switch cable service (internet/tv). It was supposed to be turned off on Saturday at the old house and ON on Friday at the new house. Saturday morning…neither had happened. I called and…oh, wait, I didn’t call from our home phone because they turned that off Saturday morning, apparently at the crack of dawn (I scheduled it for Saturday, and they tell you “sometime Saturday” but it’s apparently first thing). So I had to waste my TracFone minutes ON HOLD forever while they told me…they didn’t have a disconnect order OR a connect order for either residence! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. And it gets better. Apparently the lines haven’t even been run to the house yet (“Are there painted lines on your lawn? No?? Hmmm.”), so it could be UP TO TWO WEEKS to get service. No one told Tom this when he called to switch service A WEEK AGO. ARGH!!!!
And did I mention that the A/C was NOT WORKING at all on the second floor (we have two units, one for each floor)? We discovered this Friday after closing when Tom first walked in, about 5pm. Like you could get anyone to come fix A/C at all this time of year, let alone a Friday afternoon! But Roger came to the rescue and managed to find our contractor (who he happened to see in the neighborhood) who called the A/C guy…who, of course, happened to show up Saturday morning WHILE WE WERE GONE. Another call and the guy was scheduled to come back out Sunday! Phew! (So, this is jumping ahead, but our first night in the new house was spent on the air matress on the first floor where the A/C was working.) Apparently what had happened was the builder had the A/C set SO low that it froze the line.
Then we had been running late on packing, what with the 4-hour Friday power outage when Tom couldn’t get into the house (no keys, garage door opener didn’t work), but we were still aiming on being done by 3pm when the carpet guy came. But in the meantime, we were still loading stuff into the new house. (Actually, Roger and Tom were loading and hauling stuff to the new house, Dick [my bosses partner/myold Staples manager] and I were hauling boxes into the new house.) Anyway, around 2 we went back to the old house to get the last of the little things, still trying to beat the carpet cleaner and, of course…he was EARLY! In retrospect, we should have said “Sorry, you’re going to have to wait until 3!” But instead, we just piled all that was left into the garage, kitchen, and back porch (all areas he didn’t need to clean). Technically the house was ours until midnight, but we wanted to be DONE by 3. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite like that. Anyway, by this time we’re just exhausted but we have to finish. So it was power washing the garage floor and loading last-minute outside stuff like hose reels and hanging plants.
So around 5:30 we were back at the new house to shower to go have dinner at Roger and Ursula’s (which was fine, since we didn’t have much food available). So I have to find the shower curtain and liner and I get it all together and hang it up and…it’s too short. There was a good 6″ of space between the bottom of the curtain and the bottom of the shower. (We have a shower now, with just a little lip on the bottom.) I was about ready to cry. Not that it was a big deal…I was just exhausted and my entire body hurt and we were upstairs without A/C and all I wanted was a simple shower! Luckily the rod wasn’t screwed in—it was just a tension mount—so we could move it. Well, actually it wasn’t a tension mount because we couldn’t change the width—all we could do was slide it down the wall…which worked, but now it’s out about 4″ too far so the curtains are at an angle. And I still managed to get a huge puddle of water on the floor. And we had the crappy showerhead because we didn’t have the plumber’s tape to install our own showerhead. OH YEAH—I forgot—we also didn’t have hot water since no one had turned the hot water heater on—but luckily it was SO hot upstairs that we didn’t want a hot shower—cool was just fine.
This isn’t directly related to us, but just an update: we talked to the buyers on Saturday afternoon (they showed up while we were there), and he was asking us THEN where he had to go to turn on water and power. This was after I already told his agent THREE WEEKS AGO and she told him, plus I told him personally about the water because I had to give him directions, plus the messages she left about the power issue on Friday. He is a nice guy, but totally clueless.
So Sunday Tom had to go back again to take out the laundry sink…and stuff we forgot in the kitchen like my purse and the vacuum (I thought Tom was loading everything into the car and Tom thought I would at least grab my purse). Hoo boy. I’m glad we at least know the buyers a little and they’re nice enough to not destroy or steal anything!
The A/C guy came and fixed the A/C. Now it’s working like a charm. I painted the office…I didn’t really want to paint so soon, but we wanted to get that room set up, and once all the computer stuff is in and all the cords are all over, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to paint, and we didn’t want to have to set the room up twice…so I painted it. It wasn’t too bad—the painter’s tape I used this time did its job wonderfully…but we somehow ended up with a dime-sized blotch of paint on the carpet. OH MY GOD. I wanted to scream! I blame it on Tom, LOL, because I had everything covered with a drop cloth (because I was PARANOID about not getting paint on the carpet)…and at the very end, he came in to help fold up the tarp and… later when we’re setting up the office, I noticed the paint. Hoo boy. It never fails.
Sunday dinner I start making something…and realize the plastic utensils we’d been using are just not going to cut it for this meal…so we go on a 20-minute hunt for silverware. Of course it’s not with all the other kitchen stuff because I totally forgot about it, so it’s in an unlabeled “last-minute item” box. Or so I thought. Turns out it was in a “kitchen” box—actually in the kitchen that I’d already opened—I just hadn’t fully unpacked it.
Oh, and the cats. OH MY. They are soooooooo confused. They didn’t like being in the carriers of course, but we only let them out in one room (with their litterbox) while we went to dinner at Roger’s. We let them out when we came home and oh my, the crying and meowing… They freaked out whenever we left them and they couldn’t understand the upstairs and downstairs and got especially confused with the balcony. They would be downstairs crying and we’d call them from the balcony and they just meowed louder and louder, never looking up. It was like they were crying for us to come get them and lead the way. It was so funny. It’s better now after a day, but the first night, Fuzzy started crying in the middle of the night and Tom had to go find him and he carried him upstairs to the litterbox—that was what he wanted. He apparently got lost or couldn’t find it or didn’t remember… now, a day later, that’s been okay, too. It’s been an adventure.
So that’s where we are. Now we just have a ton of unpacking and painting to do….