Moving Tribulations

April 30, 2007

And so, an era has ended. The 512 house has officially disbanded.

Will, Chris and I officially moved out on the weekend, with Will and I headed to a sweet place down the hill in the Castro, and Chris over to a cute cottage in Berkeley with his girlfriend, Sonia.

The last 10 days have been a blur of dust, heavy lifting, organizational chaos, hellish logistics, and just plain being overwhelmed. As soon as I got back from Calgary, it was directly into the craziness. Thankfully, Will and I got possession of our new place on the 21st, so we had 9 days of overlap.

We spent a few hours on a Sunday (22nd) at Ikea and picked up some good pieces. I know, I know, I swore that I'd never buy Ikea again, and then I realized that my last stuff was the cheapest Ikea I could get at the time, and if you look at the "more expensive" stuff, you can get decent pieces. Of course, you have to put EVERYTHING together. We are so Ikea'd out. Will is the king of reading those wordless instructions.

So, Will headed out of town for work for most of the week, which added another layer of complexity. With over 5 years in one place, I never forgot about how many logistics you have to deal with:

• changing your address for every bill, magazine subscription, credit card, bank, car registration, car insurance, rental insurance, etc. Even though I signed up for Mail Forwarding with USPS, you still have to make sure you change your account details for every credit card, etc. so that you can still use all your cards!
• our house ended up donating everything we could to Goodwill (they'll pick up large pieces of furniture), or getting it hauled away through "bulky item collection" with Sunset Scavenger because it was crap. Depending on your zip code, Goodwill only does residential furniture pickup on certain days, so if you don't plan accordingly, they won't be able to pick up everything you want to donate at one time. The bulky item collection has strict standards on what they'll take for you and you need an itemized list prior to them scheduling a pickup.
• setting up the new utilities. We had previously split up all the utilities and bills, and setting up the new ones are just another item on your "to do" list. Ick!
• finding boxes. I ended going to U-Haul and picking up a bunch of their boxes and packing supplies. They have a great kit for kitchen glasses and stuff that I used for all our wine.
  
• hiring movers. Yup, there's no way I was going to lift the desks and heavy boxes. And I didn't want to deal with renting a truck. See below for more about this, which turned out to be the best idea about the move and I will always use movers in some capacity any time I have to move.

Will got back into town on Thursday night before the move and jumped right into the fray. We ended up packing the boxes and moving them down from the 2nd or third floor to the first floor, as we now had room because all the crappy furniture was gone, and to minimize how many flights the movers would have to climb, thus limiting their time on the clock. Oh, my aching back...

Here's a picture of Chris on Friday before the move, in his room after he had taken down the temporary wall and enjoying the view before leaving:


We had hired two guys from Corrib Moving & Storage, a relatively new company started by some Irish guys who have been in the business for many years. When I was searching for movers, I had scoured Yelp, and tried calling Pat Ryan Movers initially, but they were booked solid, not a surprise considering all their great reviews. So, I tried Corrib Moving and got in touch with Kevin, the owner, immediately. He was very personable, informative, and we were able to book their services immediately.

Kevin gives you an estimate on the phone based on the information you give him and then follows up with an e-mail estimate that summarizes the agreement made on the phone, which is very helpful. We had agreed to a rate of 2 men @ $100/hour. They have a three-hour minimum, and charge for a 30 minute travel time after the move.

On the day of the move (Saturday), our movers (Dave and Charlie) came on time at 8:30 am, were very friendly and hustled from from get-go. They moved our behemoth furniture like it was nothing, rounding two flights of stairs and never hitting anything or damaging a thing the entire time. They loaded and unloaded the truck in just over two hours, and even helped us put our bed together. It was insane how awesome it was to have these guys help us. They were so nice too! If you ever have to move, use these guys.

So, we spent the rest of the weekend unpacking and settling in. We also spent some time on Sunday making sure the old house was cleared out.

The theme of this move has been one of challenge and repetitiveness. This is because almost everything we do has to be done again or at a later time. There were about 5 trips to Goodwill, multiple trips to Ikea (three times to get a pant rack that they were out of stock even after we called ahead and confirmed that they had them in stock...grr!), Comcast has to come back because the cable box we got doesn't work quite right, Cheap Pete's was out of the frames I wanted and they are supposed to be in stock next week (right...), and so on and so on.

Anyway, we're settling in and it's all good. We love our new place and are excited to be where we are now. More incentive to come visit us?