affordable services | OUR LIFE IN 3D

14 May 2013

Moving update….

I know some of you may be looking for pictures and updates from our new location. The truth is we are still wading through a few more boxes in most every room. We have moved in! But it is not a Home Sweet Home yet.

The good news is we have great neighbors all around us. This neighborhood is filled with kids! Dylan’s new best friend is Deidra, a nice 10 year old girl that lies beside us. They are already planning a sleep over on Friday! We still have to install some lights in these rooms….

I have to take a moment and point out my friends at Palmetto Movers. This is the company I arranged to move our possessions from one house to the next; keeping them in a truck over night while the houses went through closing.

Not only did they get started 2 hours late, with 2 employees instead of the scheduled three (one of the two was hung over), they also forgot to bring a truck with them! (!!!)

The two employees showed up at my house about an hour late then decided to go to the U-Haul center for a moving truck. They drove there in their car and returned with the truck and trailer. Only thing was one of them forgot to drive the car back that took them there, leaving the two without transportation for their ride home. It appears I paid for them to go to that U-Haul depot as they were on the clock. I guess it was a good thing I was only paying for two; to do a one person job that should have been done ahead of time, instead of all three.

I had to keep pumping them full with Mountain Dews and Protein Bars so they could get the job done in a timely manner. They were paid by the hour after all. I tried to set the pace as I became the (missing) third man to pack up our things on the truck. If I slowed down, they slowed down I noticed.

The next day the unloading got put off as it appears the paralegal for the buyer of our home forgot to put in the closing statement where our loan was being paid off by the sale of the house. Yes, 30 minutes before we are to go to close to buy our new house, my mortgage guy says the previous sale of our home was invalid due to this error. A new HUD statement needed to be drawn up and signed by both parties in order to transfer any type of funds in the sale.

Well, it’s a good thing we were living in our car at the time! We made it to that attorney and signed the forms and made it to the attorney’s office for our new home purchase on time at 2:00pm. The trouble was the buyer of our old home had to work until 4:00pm and could not sign the statement any earlier.

So we sat on the curb at our new house, our trusty movers by our side, waiting for the word we were allowed to move in. Tick, tick, tick. Finally at 5:00pm we got word “the closing was going to the banks.” It was over. We should be able to move in….

And that’s what we did. We didn’t have keys to the house but I did know the combination to the garage door opener. So, pumped full of Mountain Dew, my trusty team kicked it into gear. We had minimal damage, scratches or breakage moving in. I ordered some pizzas as we were getting close.

Our Realtor finally called and asked how we were doing. She’s says, “Oh no, the money didn’t transfer yet. Your house hasn’t cleared the closing yet.”

“You are kidding, right?”

We went ahead and started filling the house up with our belongings, the entire time waiting for a “Yay” or “Nay” on the move in, wondering if or when the police might show up. We kept going after all, these trusted movers were on the clock! They did OK. They only broke a leg or two on some chairs and sofas and scratched some end tables and washing machine. I bought them a pizza at the end of the move. Then the head mover handed me a bill for $90.00 more than what we agreed upon….since we got done so late and they couldn’t return the truck that day. Never mind they showed up 2 hours late the day before, they were a man short day 1, broke some stuff, and I fed and hydrated the them. I was so tired I wrote the check and tried to put the whole experience behind me insted of arguing the point at the end of the day. I just wanted to be done at this point.

Between them and the certain Paralegal it made me wonder how some people survive in the business word. Such mistakes or errors in customer service would not last that long in my company; or that of my wife’s.

Breaking news….before I get too nasty on some people the blows here keep coming.

If you have a garage you most certainly have to step ‘up’ into your house when you enter your house. This suggests your house sits on a cement slab. Well last week I noticed water seeping out between the top of the cement slab and beneath the floor of the house. Think about that for a second. There is water coming, sitting somewhere beneath our floor and on top of the cement slab it sits on. …in a brand new house!

Can we catch a break?

So the builder’s plumber comes out. He gives me some lame excuse why. Meanwhile the water keeps seeping out. Another higher-up builder comes. He says the water is coming from a shower drain. The problem is we have never used this specific shower.

So they are going to tear out the back wall / sheet rock in my garage to dry the area and try to find the source of the water. AND…open up a hole in our laundry room and probably tear up the marble floors in the master bathroom …and said shower and more than likely the scallop shaped tub..in order to find and fix this drain.

Should I get a lawyer? My past experience of selling a house says termites like to chow down on wet wood. Should I get the termite people out there?

Last month I tried to take these setbacks in stride. After all we were selling our clunker and buying a new one. Now, I’m afraid, I feel like I am becoming not such a nice guy. And I am sorry for sounding like such a whiner here (continuing)). I think I need a little more break until things improve.

PS..we found another great nanny (in a long line of great nannies) to take care of the our little gems while we are at work. And today Dylan is taking a tour of her new school that she starts next fall. I turn 29 on Saturday…and my parents are travelling down to visit (to spoil the grandkids not really for my birthday)…after I travel up to there section of PA on a business trip this week. And life goes on…