Building/moving to a new home – day 83

The movers come in two days and we just ran out of vault space…

I learned a hard lesson on this move. I should have estimated volumes more closely. I relied on the rules of thumb used by the Smart Move people – five vaults for a small three bedroom house. It appears that we have an 1825 square foot house with enough tools and equipment for a much larger house!

Each of the five vaults has a capacity of 285 cubic feet, making a total of 1425 cubic feet. We exceeded the capacity of the five vaults by 300 cubic feet of stuff!

So there we were…the clock was ticking and we had no time to order more vaults. The new house is not finished enough to store things in and the workshop is the scene of constant last-minute construction activity. Our two nearby storage units are packed to the brim….

Of course! Get another storage unit! I called Tracy at the storage facility this morning and she set me up with a 10×10 storage unit. Two suspenseful hours later, we had filled up almost all of the floor space in the unit. Two more hours and my crew of helpers had packed every large object we own into the remaining Smart Vaults.

We have been packing boxes and loading Smart Vaults since 8:00 am
Sunday morning. It is Tuesday night and we ache all over, but we have
made significant progress. Three of the vaults are packed to the brim,
while two still have room for more boxes. If I get a chance tomorrow, I will take a picture of a packed vault to show you how efficient they are.

We are left with a house that looks like a disaster zone, because in the final hours I was raking things off shelving units and out of cabinets so the really heavy objects could be carted away and packed into the vaults by my helpers. My reasoning was that Gretchen and I can easily box up small stuff later, but we must make our deadline for getting the vaults loaded. The Smart Move truck will arrive on Thursday morning.

We are also expecting a major storm around the same time, so things might get pretty interesting for the next few days.

I could have saved myself all of this excitement by doing a simple survey of the volume taken up by each piece of furniture including the shelf space required for all of our possessions. Just envisioning each item surrounded by a box would have given me a much better idea of the total volume required.

Meanwhile, at the Floyd end, things are progressing nicely

Late today, I received a call from my on-site contractor, Bob Eich. There were 8 trucks in the driveway all day and progress was being made on all sides!

The electric company is installing the transformer and laying the cable so we should have power AND high-speed Internet in the next few days.

The porch has been added to the house and the attic crawlspace has been dried out.

The house has been completely shingled and the siding is now complete.

The automatic door has been installed in the workshop and the entry door has been fitted with hardware, so we have a secure building.

The workshop panelling is essentially complete.

The well water people called and are ready to install the pump at the well and the waterline to the house.

With a little more work and some good luck with the weather, we should have temporary accommodations ready for us at the workshop by next week. Until then, we will be living like high-tech Gypsies in an almost-empty house with two overwhelmed cats.

When all of the boxes are gone and the only furniture consists of our airbed, a couple of folding tables, and two open cat cages, I think the cats will get the idea that their best choice is to get in the cat cages so we can all depart and go to Floyd where the rest of the furniture will be waiting.

It will be another grueling day tomorrow, and I may not have time for blogging but I hope to catch up before we close down the house and our Internet connection. Thanks to all who are following this saga. We love your comments and your suggestions.