Every time we move, I swear the next time we move we are hiring movers to do the packing and heavy lifting. Then the next time rolls around, and I get to feeling frugal (ha!) and decide we can do it all ourselves. This is almost always a mistake. Oh, the moving gets done, but not without a bunch of cursing, late nights, and usually some damage to the furniture. And at the end, I swear we are never moving ourselves again.
So Thursday rolls around, and we close on the new house. We head straight from closing to U-haul, and get started. The first load goes ok. We had to remove only the front panel from the crib, rather than take it completely apart. Other furniture was more difficult, and we did manage to damage the awesome, and heavy, bed we bought we we moved here. Moving things up the stairs at the new house was a pain. But things were moving along. We knew we'd have more help on Saturday, so we tried to prioritize.
Our last load of the night was supposed to be the washer, dryer, and fridge. I rented an appliance dolly along with the U-haul, and thought it would be easy - after all, we had moved all of the appliances into the house without one! The washer and dryer were fine, if heavier than I remembered. The fridge, not so much. On the last corner before the front door, my husband said to tilt it "this way" and apparently his idea of "this way" was my idea of "that way" and my fingers ended up smashed between the fridge and the wall. Ouch. The fridge did not get moved that night.
A quick trip to the ER made sure that nothing was broken. A night of broken sleep made sure that the prospect of still having to move stuff was enough to make me want to cry. My husband's coworkers came to the rescue with a suggestion of a moving company several had used with great success. I was doubtful that they would have any availability (it being 2 days before Christmas), but they said they could come out at 8 a.m. Christmas Eve.
It was wonderful. They moved the rest of the furniture, the fridge, bikes, lawn mower, basically all of the heavy stuff, and took it to the new house. They then moved everything in, and moved all of the stuff we had moved only downstairs to the appropriate place upstairs. They were even able to move the elliptical machine upstairs - a machine so heavy that I can't even move it a few inches by myself. These guys are my heroes. In less than 3 hours, they had moved stuff that would have taken us a whole day. And I don't think I heard them swearing even once.
If we ever move again (no!), I'm hiring movers from the start.
Just to plug the moving company: Midnight Hour Moving Company, Dallas. They were excellent. Despite the hourly rate, I felt the movers were efficient without being reckless. They also offered cautionary advice, and downplayed their ability to move a heavy exercise machine upstairs. (They managed it). The charge was less than estimated, and we are very satisfied customers.
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