The Long Haul

Our challenge with fixing the walls was compounded by the fact that we had to be out of our rental apartment by the end of August and the plaster work wouldn’t be finished until the second week of September. Fortunately, we had friends who were able to sublet their studio apartment in Manhattan to us for September. (Many thanks to Kanika and Ali.)

We considered putting our belongings in public storage for the month but the thought of placing all of our worldly possessions in the hands of a stranger was absolutely terrifying. Instead, we opted to turn the two bedrooms in our new apartment into our own personal storage units.
So at the end of August the movers came to transfer our our precious goods.

It took the movers nearly 12 hours to move us to our new place, just three blocks down Eastern Parkway. While our rental apartment building had an elevator, it moved like molasses. And instead of being able to take our items out the front door of the building, the movers had to navigate the dark bowels of the building’s basement to the moving truck that had to be parked on the street behind us. Once at our new building, the movers weren’t able to find a parking space right in front so they had to leave the truck several doors down and use dollies to wheel everything to the building. Then they had to carry everything–including a full bedroom, dining room, living room and office worth of furniture and nearly 80 boxes– up the building’s front steps and one flight inside. (At least it wasn’t raining.)

Our sofa wouldn’t fit through the front door of our apartment, so we had to call a “couch doctor” to disassemble it. Unfortunately, the “doctor” wasn’t making house calls that day; so we’d had to wait until the following week to put the sofa in its new home. There was no room in our building’s tiny lobby to leave the sofa, so the movers took the sofa back to their headquarters.

At the end of the day, both bedrooms were packed to the brim with furniture and boxes–including a box containing my husband’s clothes that was supposed to have gone to the sublet. The movers were a little over zealous and swooped up boxes from the old place before we could mark them ‘Do not take.’ My husband ended up with only five pairs of underwear and a few shirts and pants for the month of September. Luckily, he decided to go shopping for more clothes shortly after we settled in.

The move was so arduous that the moving company’s manager called us the next day to complain. He felt his guys deserved more money, despite the fact that we were given a flat rate quote for the move that was determined by our responses to an online questionnaire. The company never came out to survey the move location or items. I feared they would hold our sofa hostage unless we gave them more money. (We didn’t and they didn’t)

Watching the movers labor for nearly half-a-day, we knew it was a difficult move and tipped the movers generously. But that wasn’t enough for Frank, the lead guy on the job. We found out Frank quit that day.