All Settled In

The ABF fella delivered our stuff last Wed. (6/14/06) late in the afternoon. We pack and load, ABF picks it up and delivers it. I was very pleased with the turn-around time for this. We arrived in Palmdale on 6/9/06 - early, so for all of our belongings to arrive in just 6 days is incredible. Especially when one considers that when we moved from Redondo Beach, CA to Knoxville, TN it took the moving company that we selected at that time OVER 7 weeks to deliver our possessions.

Unfortunately the ABF driver wasn't able to open the trailer so we could not get at our stuff. The loading ramp had jammed itself in such a manner as to make opening the trailer door more than 3 inches impossible. So there I was looking at boxes of our stuff so close............ and yet so far away. After about 45 minutes of manhandling the trailer door the ABF driver was able to enlist the help of a construction worker who is building other new homes in the neighborhood. Fortunately these two men together were able to dislodge the ramp enough to clear the door and thus provide me with access to crushed boxes, damaged furniture, scuffed and marked mattresses, sofas, etc. I asked the driver to please place the ramp in the garage. I knew I wouldn't be able to unload the trailer till the next day and I didn't want the same issue to reoccur in the morning. It's very windy in this part of the world. I didn't really think the wind would knock the trailer around enough to re-lodge the ramp again but why take the chance?

The next day 2 movers, Erik and I all unloaded the trailer in less than four hours time. Of course it probably would have taken even less time than that if Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest in Knoxville had loaded up the trailer properly. However, when reading isn't a priority or even possible I suppose it's very difficult to determine that boxes labeled "Books" should NOT be placed on top of boxes labeled "Fragile". How else would these braincases be able to determine that heavy items should not be placed atop light, fragile things? What? By picking up the box and figuring out, "hey, this one is heavy, but that one is light. Hmm, I wonder in what order I should stack these." In the house we had all the heavy boxes on the floor and lighter to lightest boxes stacked on top. Thus they took the top boxes off, carried them to the trailer, placed it on the floor and just reloaded everything opposite of how we had it. Brilliant!

Anyway, many crushed boxes and damaged belongings later our house looks like a home and everything is in its proper place. Well, almost everything. Currently the patio table is hanging out in the dining room with a table cloth adorning it to help to conceal the fact that it belongs out in the yard and not in a formal dining room. Since it is very, very light I don't wish to see the patio set flying about in the wind crashing into the house, or worse, into the dogs. So for the time being the empty dining room is less empty. The base for the patio set is helping my poor broken dresser to stand on its own 3 legs, since the 4^th leg looks like it was twisted off, see pictures below:

Thursday we unloaded, Friday we put everything in place and broke down most of the boxes and bagged up much of the packing paper, Saturday we hung the pictures and broke down the rest of the boxes. By Sunday the house was pretty much finished but was still awaiting a few small details - like towel bars, toilet paper holders and shower curtain rods. The KB Homes dude stopped by Monday (6/19/06) and took care of these things so now our house is really done. Oh, well, uh, except for the dryer. We have an electric dryer and the hook up in the house is for gas! Hopefully soon we'll remedy this.