We Like to Move It, Move It...NOT!

When Dante described the Nine Levels of Hell, he somehow missed Level Ten: Preparing to Move.

In the six weeks since I last posted I've been caught in the Moving Two-Step. Here's how it works.

Step One - Move everything out of a room, including emptying the closet, so the painters can reach all the walls and ceilings.

Step Two - Move everything back into the room, only this time add everything from the next room they're going to paint. Then move everything back the next day. Repeat until every room of the house has been emptied, painted and put back to (semi) normal.

So far, so good. ...



Result? The walls and ceilings look fabulous. But - oh, wait! Now the doors, which seemed passable before, now look dingy. Have the painters come back and paint all the doors and window trim.

Result? Fabulous - bright, clean paint everywhere really brightens up the place. But now the carpets look bad against the fresh paint. Call the carpet cleaners, and move the furniture back and forth so they can access the maximum floor space when they steam clean the whole house.

Result? The newish carpet came up great. The carpet we never got around to replacing still looks like crap. Only now the clean spots make the bad spots look even worse. And where the heck did that rust stain come from?

And sooo - We bite the bullet and arrange to replace all the original carpeting that's left in the house - four bedrooms and the family room. Two of the rooms are empty - hurray! - and one is nearly empty. Except - oh, wait! We forgot one thing. We've been packing the closets with things we are bringing with us. And now the closets have to be emptied.

Again.



Step One: Empty all the closets, stuffing everything into the guest (formerly the kids') bathroom and in our bedroom, which will be the last one to be recarpeted.

Step Two: After the new carpet has been installed in the other rooms, put everything back (again), only this time put everything from our bedroom and our closet in those rooms, too. And after our room is done, move it all back again.

By the way - Did I mention we have a couple bookcases in our bedroom? And in the family room? And all of our furniture is solid, which means HEAVY. If I have to haul another piece of furniture from one room to the next, it will be too soon.

I feel like we've just rebuilt this house from scratch. I'd post pictures but somehow in the packing process I managed to lose the photo card for my camera.

To sum up, I have only one word for this: