OT: Adventures in Moving

[Deleted]

Hi Firebird,

We had a similar story (also Bay Area). Moved 4 doors up the street. Thankfully we were bright enough to hire movers to move the family furniture (big, heavy antiques) but we were too cheap to pay them to move the boxes. We were moving into an elevated rancher so the main entrance is the second story. No one could carry the 7' long x 3' wide 300lb 100 year old solid oak library table up the front staircase. We watched one young guy hoist it over the railing. I remember thinking at the time, this is one the best $500 we spent.

Of course our bright idea of simply driving up the street and moving the boxes ourselves was unbelievably stupid and time consuming. I think it took 15 trips (so 2 days) to move all our crap. We would have been so much smarter to let the movers load up the truck and MOVE ONCE. But we did learn our lesson. The following weekend DMIL was to move to our old house. When she said she just needed the movers to move her furniture and we could drive back and forth between San Francisco and our little coastal town (about 15 miles) both DH and I said "NO!" in unison.

But my favorite moving story is when one of my tenants was trying to move out of my San Diego area rental house. He had lined up movers for Saturday but they didn't show up. He finally found someone who would move him on Monday but he had to have all of his stuff moved out because the termite company was coming to tent the house. It's 3-4 days before one could access the interior of the house again. I couldn't reschedule because the next set of tenants were moving in the following weekend and of course people were moving into their place. So we moved all of his stuff (2900 sq.ft. house so a lot of furniture) on to the driveway. And while the neighborhood is a decent one, there are a fair number of undocumented laborers who work in the area (house cleaners and gardeners) who like to go "shopping" on the weekends. So my poor tenant had to sleep on his couch in the driveway to keep his stuff from being liberated! ;D

[Firebird]

So my poor tenant had to sleep on his couch in the driveway to keep his stuff from being liberated! ;D

Oh wow, that sucks! I was hoping we'd find some way of getting our couch inside so we didn't have to do that, haha.

[muttleynfelix]

Glad you got moved in!

When we moved into our house, we got 10 inches of snow 2 days before. Our new house was in the country with a LONG driveway. We found the neighbors with the only plowed driveway and begged them to plow our driveway. The U-Haul still got stuck on the steep portion of the driveway and my BIL had to tie onto the end of it with his pick-up and tow it up the driveway. Then the manager had told us that we could keep the u-haul until the following morning. Well, 3pm we were making trip up to DH's house with his brother and the u-haul company called asking where the U-haul was!

I'm not sure if that beat my MIL and BIL move out here from CO last year. DH and his other brother drove out to help (12 hr trip). Their mom was not anywhere near packed when they got there. They spent a couple days helping her get all ready to go. Their brother was pretty much ready. But it was about 11 when they left Co. Springs and not an hour down the road there was an accident that blocked traffic. Most people were turning around, but there was no where to turn a 24' U-haul around! So, they waited for like 3 hrs before they could continue on. DH got home at 4 am.... and the next day he had to go help them unload.