Moving the Move

Well, we will not be moving this coming Friday, Nov 13, as planned. Given all of the insane craziness of the last 2-3 weeks, that's probably not a bad thing in the long run. It's just frustrating, especially since it is largely our own fault. We did not get the water upgrades completed at the house in time to simply transfer the water service from the old owner to us. (I would like to point out that I was in charge of scheduling movers, DH was in charge of scheduling plumbing.) We (ahem) did not even get a plumbing assessment until last Friday, though we thought we had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done from our very thorough home inspection. Turns out, a few things were not mentioned, and there are several additional "recommended repairs" that it would be easier to go ahead and do while we are replacing the toilets (which we already knew was required).

The original plan was to have the assessment done Friday morning, purchase toilets Friday afternoon, have repairs done Saturday (no additional charge with this company for weekend work; part of why we went with them), and have water transferred on Monday. We wanted to be sure and transfer the water before it was cut off, since it can take "up to 5 business days" to turn it back on if it has been turned off. The kicker is that we didn't know exactly when the water would be shut off. We figured it was sometime around Wednesday of this week, give or take a day. The seller had agreed to Nov 7 in the contract, but he mentioned at closing that he had extended it into this week "sometime" to try and give us enough time to get everything changed out, which was very nice of him. Only he couldn't remember exactly when it was. But we (ahem) figured if we had the repairs done Saturday, we could take the certification over Monday and have service transferred by Tuesday at the latest. No problem. Except that one of the toilets had to be special ordered because the house is older and modern standard toilets are too big (deep) to fit in the master bath! And it is shipping from Louisiana (that's about 550 miles (890 km) away, for those unfamiliar with USA geography). It won't be here until Wednesday.

Great. Now we're racing the clock. Plumber has promised he can have all the work done Wednesday so we can go to the water department on Thursday. You can see where I'm going, can't you? When DH dropped by the house this afternoon to try and change out the shower heads, the water had already been cut off. If we'd had the repairs done Saturday, we might have made it. Instead, we have no idea when they will be able to turn it back on, even if we do go in first thing Thursday. It's possible we could have it back on by Friday, but Monday or Tuesday next week is more likely.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't really want to move into a house with no running water, especially not with a 5-year-old. That just seems like a very very bad plan. And knowing how government departments work in general, I highly doubt they will have the water back on in less than 1 business day. We could always go ahead with the move but still sleep at our current house, but do we really want to spend all weekend sleeping on the floor in an empty house? I don't. My parents were also supposed to come this weekend, but with everything else going on with their parents (see yesterday's post), they really need to chill for the weekend and relax, not come up here unpacking boxes. The logical course of action is to delay the move. It will also give us extra time to do all those little things (like ceiling fans and such at the new house) instead of having to bust our rumps to get done before Friday. We called the movers, and it was absolutely no problem to shift it out a week. "It happens all the time." So as much as I hate to put it off for another week, in other ways, I am relieved to have some of the pressure off. With everything else going on, I was really starting to feel like I was going to crack. New move date: November 20. See you there!

Currently feeling: bumped out, but not all that upset