Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Building/moving to a new home - day 100

The devil is in the details

In project management, it is generally understood that the last 5 percent of a project requires an enormous amount of effort, so when you feel that a project is 95 percent complete, be prepared for an uphill struggle to break out into the clear.

We have made great progress in the last 100 days, but there is a lot left to do. One hundred days ago we had 3 1/2 acres of forest with a well and a septic system. Our plans were to build a workshop this year and a house next year. Hurricane Katrina changed our plans. Then rising cost of materials made it advisable to complete construction while costs could still be managed. Today we have two buildings and five vaults of household furnishings on the site - some final assembly required.

Connecting Part A to Part B

Yesterday, our contractors teamed up to dig trenches between house and workshop and install power, water, and phone lines between the buildings. We should have power and water working in both buildings by the weekend, if all goes well.

Today, we expect Citizens, the local phone cooperative, to connect up our DSL service. Once this happens, we will be able to do research and order materials online without skipping down to Cafe Del Sol or to Chateau Thompson.

Note to those who plan to be their own General Contractors: An internet connection is one of your most valuable assets. You will use it to get answers, find materials, and to stay in touch with suppliers. When you cannot get online, you will waste hours you cannot spare.

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud! (With apologies to Flanders and Swann)

As we get closer to putting in carpets and furnishing the house, it becomes apparent that something is wrong with the current picture. Our walls are pristine white, but our floors are covered with several inches of what looks like donkey-crap. It is the local clay mixed with large nuggets of gravel.

We have a boot brush at the door and we all use it, but the clay is tenacious and usually covers the lower six inches of our boots and a good portion of our pant legs.

Our yard, except for the gravel driveway, still consists of 2 inches of glare ice punctuated by islands of sticky clay. The only thing that stops us from falling on our butt is sliding into a convenient outcropping of clay. Any work done off the graveled area involves clay and more clay.

When we walk back on the driveway, our clay-covered boots pick up gravel which doesn't fall off until we walk into the house. Through this simple process we are gradually bringing the outside indoors.  :)

When we have a front porch and a means to keep the clay outside, we may be able to bring in furniture without messing up the house. That will be a project worth blogging.

I have ordered boot scrubbers and will purchase a new shop-vac to clean up the floor and give ourselves a fresh start, but I would appreciate any suggestions from those of you who have experience living with this problem. I have been advised by my contractors that we can expect four more months of wet weather and mud before the ground firms up and the grass seed takes hold.

Is there a solution that will let us keep the inside of the house clean and leave the clay outside? I have seen some boot brushes with water jets, but would like to hear from someone who has used them.

Building/moving to a new home - day 98

A Big Day at the New Homesite

We started the day by widening the driveway. Michael Shortt's father delivered a truckload of gravel and Michael's son and his Bobcat created more parking places.

Gretchen says that our front yard is now a giant turnaround. She may be right because we find that country living means having room for all of our contractors to park at once plus leaving enough parking space for our friends to drop in and see what we are doing. The UPS truck driver has to fend for himself.

The driveway widening was necessitated by the impending arrival of the five Smart Vaults with most of the St Lawrence household goods in them.

Using Smart Move is a smart move

The storage vault approach to moving has a lot to recommend it when your house is still full of contractor tools and every square foot of floor is covered with thick gobbets of drying clay and gravel from the driveway. Your household goods are safely protected until your house is really ready for furniture.

Our five Smart Vaults were delivered on time and unloaded in less than an hour by Ivy Harvell, a UPS/Overnite employee from the Charlotte, NC terminal. Ivy placed the vaults exactly where I wanted them on our newly created driveway parking spaces. He was a pleasure to work with.

We set the Smart Vaults up as an entrance arcade for the still-unfinished St Lawrence home. These vaults will flank the approach to the front door until we have the finished flooring installed, at which point we will unload the vaults in a veritable frenzy of interior decorating activity.

The whole Smart Move experience was so effortless that I would recommend it to anyone who needs temporary storage on the sending or receiving end of their move.

The only disappointment was the inability to track the Smart vaults as advertised. The customer service rep who had been so helpful in setting up the move completely dropped the ball when it came to  arranging for me to track the smart vaults with the built-in GPS tracking system. She said tracking involved some sort of a setup by a technician and she was going to send me an email wih the necessary codes and passwords. It never happened. I would guess that this free service is not actually debugged yet because it should not require a technician to activate tracking.

Bottom line: Smart Move offers a convenient containerized shipping system at a firm price for the homeowner. It is a total and welcome change from the traditional moving experience. Just don't expect to track your shipment online yet.

We've made our way through the smoke and are now a wood-burning family - almost

By means of a very intense phone conversation with the Blue Ridge Heating and Air installation team, I managed to convert a January 3 date for completion of our stove installation to an early morning arrival today.

They arrived and set to work and eventually discovered they had not brought the necessary parts, so one member of the team was dispatched to the nearest store which was 20 miles away.

The remaining installer did a creditable job of installing the roof-mounted kit for the wood stove and we finally thought we had a working wood stove. I started a fire, which drew very well, but the blower didn't work. I was assured by this "experienced" installation team that the blower would come on when the stove got hot enough (109 degrees F). I was gullible enough to believe them.

The team then finished the installation of the pellet stove, which had been smoking ever since it was first installed several weeks ago. They packed up their tools and presented us with a final bill which included $900 of installation labor that the salesman had failed to mention or itemize. We had paid in advance for these stoves and had taken great care to ask was everything included in our invoice. We had been assured by Bob Martin that everything was included. It was not.

We made out a check for the balance of the invoice, including $900 of unanticipated expense and bid our installers goodbye.

A half hour later I verified that the house wood stove was hot enough to burn the hand and yet the blower would not come on. I called our installers and gave them the choice of returning to the scene of the crime now or tomorrow morning. They wisely decided to came back and arrived within the hour.

After giving me all sorts of explanations why the blower wasn't supposed to run, I told them to short out the thermostat so I could control the blower no matter how hot or cold the stove was. It took them another fifteen minutes before they managed to replace the faulty thermostat with a jumper. After that the blower worked as I wanted it to.

We ran both stoves for the rest of the day. The wood stove in the house is an excellent source of heat. The blower produces a high volume of warm air which raised the temperature of the entire house in a relatively short time. When we install the overhead fans, we should have no problem distributing the heat evenly.

The pellet stove is still producing an unacceptable amount of smoke inside the workshop. It appears that the stovepipe is still leaking. I read the installation instructions again and will contact the factory for an alternate stovepipe configuration. I will contract with another firm to install the new stovepipe, as I do not trust Blue Ridge Heating and Air to do the job.

They sell excellent brands of wood stoves. It is too bad that they know so little about the stoves that they sell. From the problems I have seen with these two installations, I feel that a customer puts themselves at risk by having this company install their stove. Other customers may have different experiences entirely. Let the buyer beware.

Tomorrow is another day

The pace is picking up. Tomorrow, a trench will be dug between house and workshop to house water pipes, electrical cables and CAT 5 cables for DSL and telephone.

We will finish piling up the cord of firewood delivered yesterday and dumped where the trench is to go tomorrow.

I will probably devote a few words to the problems we encounter with the local clay. You may have some suggestions for dealing with this stuff.

More later...

Building/moving to a new home - day 96

Burned by a stove dealer

Some otherwise reliable companies exhibit a strange dichotomy. They pay attention to you during the sales cycle and seem to answer questions intelligently. Then, during the delivery/installation cycle things begin to fall apart and you get strange nonsequitur answers when you start asking questions.

We bought two stoves from Blue Ridge Heating and Air in Christiansburg. One is a pellet stove and one is a wood stove. We paid in advance, which may have been a mistake because the sales part of the business seems to have lost interest in seeing that we get an adequate installation.

The installation people we have met are friendly and try to be helpful, but they tell a different story than we hear from the sales people. They are also unreliable when it comes to delivering what is promised.

We got the first clue that we might be in trouble when the installation crew showed up the first time without one of the stoves and missing half a ton of hardwood pellets which they had lost in a ditch on the way to our house.

They installed the pellet stove without the fresh air intake we ordered and were going to leave without testing the stove. I got them to fire up the stove and it seemed to work, so they left with a promise to come back with the other stove, the missing half ton of pellets, and the missing fresh air intake.

I asked them about the fresh air intake before they left and they said those were sold only on gas-fired stoves. I immediately checked with the salesman and he said they came with the pellet stove also and would be installed when the installers cam back again.

We ran the pellet stove for a few hours and noticed that the workshop was filling up with smoke. I called Blue Ridge Heating and Air again and was assured by Bob Martin that it was the oil burning off the stove pipe. When I asked how long this would take, he said he had one which had smoked for months!

I now knew that I was dealing with an extreme case of poor customer service and I had better get busy if we wanted a working installation.

I got a flashlight and examined the stovepipe. Small jets of smoke was spurting out of every joint in the stovepipe. I talked to the installer and he said he could use high-temperature silicone to seal the joints in the stove pipe. I did not bother asking him why this wasn't a standard practice for pellet stoves, since the stack runs at a positive pressure because of the blower that forces air through the combustion chamber.

When the installer came back he did not bring the fresh air adapter I had purchased. He said that the fresh air adapter would not fit on this stove! My confidence level was reaching new lows.

He told me he was going to drill another hole in the wall to let the fresh air in. When I checked later, he had marked the hole position where the air inlet would be covered by snow drifts! Fortunately, he had not drilled the hole in the wall.

I am going to have a meeting of the minds with these people Tuesday morning. I want to know exactly what it is they sell and who is telling the truth. If I do not get good answers, we are going to get a competent crew to finish installing these stoves and will deduct the charges from our final bill.

These people claim they cannot guarantee or service a stove they don't install, but from what I have seen so far, their guarantee and their service is highly suspect. I have had three conversations with Bob Martin and with someone named John and I continue to get reassuring statements and no results.

Unless I see a change in their operating basis, I would have to say that Blue Ridge Heating and Air carries a good line of stoves, but I would get someone else to install them. This really does not make sense, because these people have been in business for years. Surely these issues would have been sorted out long ago.

Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I owe Fred an apology as he warned me about this company and I did not heed his advice.

I have questions for my readers who may have had similar experiences:

What do you think? Is my stove dealer just blowing smoke?
How have you solved this kind of customer support problem?

Merry Christmas!

Gretchen and I appreciate your continuing support for this weblog and for cheering us on during our new house project.

We may not be living in this house yet, but we celebrate the Christmas Season with a wreath that promises a new future and many Christmases to come. We hope that most of you are enjoying the companionship of friends and loved ones.

For those who are protecting us in far places, we offer thanks that you have the courage to handle the hard tasks and terrible sacrifices that are required to purchase freedom.  We hope that you know that your efforts are deeply appreciated by all who value liberty and justice. You are the people who are actually making a difference. We wish you all a safe return.

I am thankful for all of the friends who have helped make this weblog what it is today. Your advice and support have helped Ripples evolve from a personal journal to a continuing series of essays focused on improving the quality of life and developing meaningful work.

Your support has encouraged me to continue publishing books and to develop ways to encourage others to find the life and work that they deserve.

We are entering a new phase of our lives with this move to Floyd. We look forward to becoming active members of this community and I plan to write about the cultural and social trends that continue to shape this unique region. It promises to be most interesting.

We have been warmly received by this community and hope to be able to return the flow by contributing in like measure.

This scene in the Cafe del Sol is typical of the enthusiastic welcome we have encountered ever since we arrived. Santa's helper, Ann Bower, is asking Gretchen if she has been good this year.

I would definitely say so. Very good, indeed!  :)

Our Christmas greetings would not be complete without thanking Doug and Amy Thompson for taking us in and providing a Christmas haven for us and our cats. They have given us shelter and a measure of friendship that we will never forget. Thanks to them, we are enjoying our happiest Christmas ever at a time that would otherwise have been extraordinarily difficult.

Building/moving to a new home - day 93

The pace is picking up

As the sun struggles to make it over the hill on this sub-freezing morning we are poised for another day of activity at the new home site. Patches of glare ice lie in wait on all secondary roads and many driveways are actually impassable. This makes for extremely hazardous driving and throws a big crimp in delivery schedules, but we seem to have found an answer..

We were able to lay down enough crushed rock on our job site to ensure that work could continue in all areas. As a result, Our well drilling contractor was finally able to get his trucks and ditch digging equipment out to our site and start the final phase of getting us connected to the well that he dug so many months ago.

Yesterday the wellhead was prepared for installing the pump and some preliminary work was done on the long trench from the well to the house. This trench for a water pipe and the electrical cable for the pump will pass under the driveway. To ensure that the driveway will not have to be disturbed in the future, a pipe will be installed under it as a conduit for the water pipe and power connections. The trenching and the laying of pipes and electrical cable will occur today.

By the end of today, we should have a complete well water system installed. This will include the submersible pump down in the well and a water tank in the crawlspace of our new home. Once that is done, our on-site contractor will install the hot water heater and connect the well water system to the house plumbing.

Another trench will be dug from the house to the workshop to bring water to the workshop, which has its own water heater. This should occur in a few days.

Today's site activity will also include hooking up the new electrical service in the workshop. At this point the 8000 watt auxiliary generator, which has been running for many weeks to power the job site, will be shut down and prepared for its long-term use as a back-up emergency generator.

Important Note

I had mentioned in an earlier post that water damage had occurred to our house modules because of improper preparation for transport to the site. The builder, Souther Heritage Homes, responded promptly to my request and put in temporary heaters to dry out the wet areas. We did a walk-through yesterday with Jason, the installation manager, and Butch Jarrett, our sales contact, and satisfied ourselves that the dampness has now been totally handled and that a program is in place to handle any damage to the drywall.

The modules are extremely well-built and they survived the long trip to the site and being hoisted by a crane and being placed on a foundation with virtually no stress cracking. I was impressed, as I have seen more evidence of drywall joint stress cracking and nail pops on some new homes that were built in place.

There is more to be done by the builder, but we need to get the house heated before this work can proceed, which leads to the next big action item, installation of the wood stove.

Upcoming event of note

We are expecting delivery of our Dutchwest wood stove tomorrow. The hearth will receive its final polishing today, so all will be ready for this most important event. I have even ordered an initial delivery of firewood, so we can begin using the stove immediately without having to get out my chain saw and making some.

This installation requires that an insulated stovepipe be put through the roof, so I will be watching the process quite closely. This is not an area where a quick and dirty installation will suffice, as we are providing a conduit for extremely hot gases through a joint which must be leak-proof for many years.

There is an elaborate through-the-roof installation kit involved which provides both insulation and sealing, which I will describe in a future post.

Building/moving to a new home - day 91 - update

We got Traction!!

Yesterday, we had treacherous glare ice as far as you could see. Today we have traction and all is well.

I called our grading and excavating contractor, Michael Shortt, and asked if he could do something to handle our glare ice problem. First thing this morning, he sent one of his men out with a Bobcat front loader to make a usable driveway for us.

By the time we arrived at 9:00 am, a 200 foot skid-proof driveway of crushed rock had already been laid down. It took only a few minutes to work out a way to add skid-proof walkways to the house and workshop so that deliveries of heavy appliances and wood stoves could take place.

I have been told by almost everyone including a few contractor that putting down fine crushed rock is a waste of time unless a base of large crushed rock was laid down first. Their thinking was that the lighter rock would  merely sink into the soil and would be wasted.

As an engineer by training, I tend to be more pragmatic in my approach to solving problems. We have a problem: about an inch of glare ice over frozen ground which is hard enough to defy four-wheel drive vehicles and deliveries which must be accomplished in the next week before more snow falls.

My solution: we should throw crushed rock at the problem until it disappears.

Michael Shortt and his crew provided me with that solution quickly and economically in 20-degree weather. i could not have asked for more.

I am extremely fortunate to have developed a working relationship with this superlative contractor who doesn't tell me that things are difficult - he just gets things done...on short notice...in all kinds of weather.

Michael Shortt is the excavator to call on if you ever have a building project in Floyd. He has been invaluable to us in getting this project pushed through.

When the Virginia Department of Transportation couldn't spare the resources to widen the state road leading to our house, Michael did it. When the utility company needed land cleared to lay cable, Michael did it. When a neighbor needed assurance that any damage to his property would be remedied, Michael was part of that negotiation and will be part of any solution that is required. That kind of backup is invaluable when one is trying to accomplish things that have not been tried before. We recommend him highly.

If what you need is something he doesn't do, he will recommend someone reliable who will do it. The contractors we used to build our foundation and our workshop were all recommended by Michael Shortt.

Some observations about contractors

Since I was acting general contractor managing this project from 175 miles away, I feel that our continued success against all odds was due to the support of this well-respected local contractor.

He also had the willingness and generosity of spirit to provide valuable advice to me as a first-time general contractor without laughing at my ideas or unusable suggestions. No one could ask for more.

If you ever tackle a large project of this sort, I would suggest that you go with the contractor who treats you with understanding and respect, rather than relying on the fact that someone is "highly qualified". The contractors attitude says a lot about your potential for executing a successful project together.

I found some highly qualified contractors who only worked well with large management firms. What that told me was that they were good at following orders, not in developing creative solutions in partnership with a home owner. This gets revealed when you ask a contractor for references.

Always ask for references and always check out the references. Make sure the references are people like yourself and for jobs like the one you are planning.

Building/moving to a new home - day 91

We got POWAH!! We got Internet!!

From this point forward we should be able to make rapid progress in establishing a viable home and business environment in Floyd, VA.

These drab enclosures mark a major transition in our lives. The pad-mounted transformer on the left supplies us with 400 amps of 120/240 volt power for home and workshop. The slim green box houses the telephone connection that brings us telephone and high-speed Internet service. Even though our house is out in the country, our utilities come in through underground cables.

No longer are we refugees stranded in the awful gulf between homes. Thanks to the hospitality of Doug and Amy Thompson, we have been able to stay in communication with family and friends, but there is no substitute for having our own base of operations.

When we arrived at the homesite yesterday, a contractor was already filling in the trench that brought the power and phone cables to the nearly completed workshop. An hour later, he had installed the meter and we were good to go as far as electrical power is concerned. I was pleased to see that the power cables were 3/4 inch in diameter, as the run from the transformer is about 200 feet.

The telephone company still needs to do its peculiar magic before we can log onto the Internet, but that too should be handled in the next few days.

Unlike some family and friends who are content to live "off the grid" as a solution to finding a satisfying lifestyle, I feel that we live in a connected world and a satisfying lifestyle has to involve involve open communication.

There is incredible power available to those who are in a position to communicate with those who live and work elsewhere. Communication is the first step in harnessing the power of relationships and mutual efforts. Since communication requires power, the appearance of these two green boxes on our property signals the beginning of a new cycle of communication and opportunity.

More to come

We are still battling glare ice on our street and on our driveway. I had scattered dirt on the icy snow so I could walk without falling, but this did not handle the entire driveway.

The delivery of our new refrigerator and stove was stymied when the delivery truck could not negotiate the final 200 feet to the house.

The well-drilling contractor is unable to put in the trench which will bring a water line to the house.

The heating company will not be able to deliver our new wood stove until there is a safe way to carry the 420 pound stove from thwe truck to the house.

Hopefully, we will have a solution to this problem today. Our excavating contractor will spread gravel on the driveway until we have more stable access to house and workshop. This is our immediate hurdle to overcome, as we must have water, heat, and an operational kitchen.

When we have these handled, we will tackle floor coverings, unpacking Smart vaults and furnishing the house.

A question for readers

This series of posts has developed a life of its own and I would like to continue developing the theme through the establishment of a fully working house and workshop environment. On the other hand, there are business, aging, and post-corporate issues that I enjoy writing about and these get short shrift with the amount of attention I put on the new house cycle.

I am concerned that so much writing about building a new home will be a distraction for those who are looking for more philosophical and analytical articles about life and work.

My question for you is: Should the house articles be spun off into a related blog, which would have a link from this site, or should I leave them as part of this increasingly eclectic site?

I know that readers have less and less time to read, so my instinct is to leave everything in one convenient place and let readers decide whether today's offering is worth spending time on.

Let me know your thoughts!

Building/moving to a new home - day 90

You can't make it without friends

I am sitting here at Doug Thompson's computer striving to recapture the events of the last 28 hours before they vanish into the wastebasket of old memories. Thanks to the hospitality of Doug and his wife Amy, we and our cats are enjoying the warmth and comfort of their hillside home while glare ice and and hostile 20-degree weather lock down the surrounding countryside.

It takes special kind of friends to invite us and our cats to bunk with them on short notice. The situation verges on the mystical when these friends greeted us cheerfully and fed us a delicious dinner of lasagna with garlic bread after we have arrived at 10:30 at night! Suffice it to say that we four weary travelers enjoy full bellies and a good nights rest as a welcome respite from a long day of non-stop effort.

Gretchen and I started our final day of packing shortly after dawn yesterday. We realized that we had to find  viable options to solving our problem of insufficient space for our "stuff" and insufficient time to pack it for transport while cleaning a three bedroom house and workshop.

By 8:00 am, we had identified and packed 10 boxes of excess "stuff" which could make a critical difference in our departure plans, if we could only find a way to make them "disappear" for a few days. I called my good friend Gerry Brown who has helped me design and build some of my most challenging woodworking projects.

He and his wife Cindy graciously offered to store our boxes of household goods until I could return to pick them up. One big objective was being accomplished through the assistance of friends.

Gerry and Cindy had already let me use their new utility trailer to take several trips to Floyd and they invited us for dinner during the last crazy days of our packing marathon. Good friends like these are a treasure. They have promised to visit us in Floyd and we are going to take them to the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd County Store and show them the simple pleasures of life in Floyd when the weather is a bit more civil.

I called Charles Nevins, the neighbor who had helped me pack the Smart vaults, and explained that I wasn't out of the woods yet and I needed help with the worst kind of packing of all. Charles is unflappable, as you would expect of an Army veteran who served in Korea, Germany and Vietnam, and he just laughed and said he would be right over.

He spent the next five hours helping me clean out my workshop and skillfully packing all of our remaining household goods into the Subaru, The Dodge van, and the trailer. We could not have done it without him because after a week of non-stop packing and carrying of heavy boxes up and downstairs, Gretchen and I had reached our physical limits. Old injuries had gotten stirred up to the point where it was so much of an effort to climb stairs that we were constantly aware of the possibility of losing our balance while carrying heavy boxes. When your knees start to go while you are carrying a TV, you realize that hiring help is a necessity.

By the time Charles left at 2:00 pm, we had loaded most of our household items and the rooms were almost empty except for our suitcases and the cat cages, with cats safely inside. The cats were remarkably calm during this last day of packing, and it seemed as though they recognized the signs from our previous moves. Instead of yowling, they slept or watched as we rushed through the house handling the hundreds of last-minute details that come with shutting down a household.

Even with our best efforts, it took us three more hours before we stood, car keys in hand, ready to begin the trek to Floyd. It was 4:45 pm and the sun was low in the sky. We had been working for almost twelve hours and we had a 175 mile drive ahead of us, but we were refreshed at the prospect of beginning a new life in a new home.

The drive was uneventful, although our last few miles was enlivened by increasing amounts of black ice on the main roads and hard-packed snow and ice on the final few miles to our new home. Our new driveway was 200 feet of glare ice unbroken by tire tracks. Amazingly enough, we were able to negotiate it safely, although I fell down several times once I got out of the van. At one point, I kept sliding down the slope to the house and was only able to make my way back by crawling on all fours.

I finally was able to make my way out to the emergency generator. It was now 27 degrees, but the generator started on the third pull. With the generator roaring behind me, I made my way back to the new workshop and raised the new automatic door. After a few minutes of reshuffling contractor equipment, I was able to make room for the Dodge van, with its cargo of live plants. Readers may remember that I described Gretchen's four crates of plants. The actual count was eleven crates of live plants! Our final step of this long day's move was to park the Dodge van in the insulated workshop, leaving the trailer outside.

I transferred the cats from the van to the Subaru, closed the workshop, shut off the generator, and backed carefully down the glare ice of the driveway without incident. The sure-footed Subaru took us safely down icy roads and up the icy hill to Doug's house where we were greeted by Doug, standing in his stocking feet and beckoning us to come in. What a wonderful end to a most challenging day!

Building/moving to a new home - day 88

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Moving
How come we have so much stuff?"

It is midnight and we will be leaving our Lake Monticello home in about 12 hours. Gretchen and I spent all day packing and tidying up the place so we could leave it as we found it, clean and empty. I filled in two cat doors, repaired a commode seal, and spackled over all of the holes we put in the walls. That's the good part. We still had the bad and the ugly to deal with.

I made another trip to our local storage lockers late today and we are tapped out for temporary storage space. I have loaded two 10x10 lockers and one 5x10 locker from floor to ceiling. I thought I underestimated our vault requirements by 300 cubic feet. Wrong! I underestimated our storage needs by 1500 cubic feet! That was the bad part.

The really ugly part of this move comes tomorrow morning. We still have another 250-300 cubic of "stuff" sitting in our empty house with only a Subaru, a 15-passenger Dodge van, and a 6x10 utility trailer to carry it all. The cat cages alone take up 10 cubic feet so you can see where this is going. All of the remaining "stuff" is what we planned to take with us because it is so valuable, fragile, or because it is alive.

Gretchen is the plant person in our family and we are taking four large crates of house plants including her her collection of miniature African Violets and her 20-year-old ivy which had to be painstakingly torn from the walls of the master bathroom. It has been moved many times before and it happily takes over any room where it is placed.

I have worked this problem of excess, but valuable, "stuff" over and over and have come up with only one possible solution. I will have to impose on a friend and get him to let me store four large cartons in his basement for a few weeks. This will handle about 32 cubic feet of valuable "stuff" and should allow us to carry the rest with us.

I will take a picture of the fully loaded caravan and will post it when we next have internet access. I think stuff just accumulates over time. I can remember when all of the stuff I owned would fit in a Volkswagen bug!

If any of you are planning to move in the next decade, I would suggest that you start getting rid of excess stuff. You will barely have enough time, if you start now. Otherwise, you could end up im my situation, out of time and out of space. I reserved excess storage space early, but it wasn't enough. Tomorrow is Sunday, so the storage unit office is closed...

Tune in tomorrow to see if and how this problem is handled.

Building/moving to a new home - day 86

We are closing out one phase of our lives and starting another

The UPS/Overnite truck arrived at 11:45 am today to pick up the five Smart Vaults. They were fifteen minutes ahead of schedule and considering the icy roads and and the distance from the Richmond terminal, it was more than I expected.

An earlier pickup was canceled by an ice storm, so I spent many hours clearing and salting the driveway in the hopes that we would have no problems today. My efforts were rewarded because the pickup went off without a hitch. The Smart Vaults are transported by UPS/Overnite which is a heads-up outfit with excellent equipment and capable people.

Today's pickup took only one hour and the heavy vaults were handled with great precision and skill. Compare that to your typical moving day scene in which the agony lasts for hours as you watch your possessions get manhandled by crews of questionable skill.

My five vaults were taken to Richmond today and will be put into a double trailer for transport to the UPS/Overnite terminal in Charlotte, NC. Early next week the vaults will be loaded on a flatbed trailer with a forklift and delivered to our home site in Floyd. The elaborate routing is a result of legislation which limits the hours that a driver can spend on the road in one day. Three steps are required to get our vaults to a point 175 miles away.

Smart Move has developed an interesting business model. Smart Move is in the container rental business and has outsourced all of their transportation functions to UPS. It seems to give them a great deal of flexibility as they were able to service me when PODS could not.

Based on our experience so far, I would recommend that anyone who needs a containerized move should check out Smart Move. The company website has a complete description of the services provided and I have found the company quite willing to extend their service area beyond what is currently listed.

This company has also addressed one of the major nightmares of moving, finding where your household goods are at any moment. While in transit, each Smart Vault has the capability to be tracked via a Global Positioning Satellite (GAPS) unit. Tracking information for your containers is available on the Smart Move web site, so you always know where your goods are. They also track the shipment by the UPS Pro# or tracking number associated with your contract. Your shipment is tracked by both Smart Move and UPS/Overnite, so you always know where your good are located.

We should see the vaults arrive on site December 21, weather permitting, which is fine by us because the hardwood flooring has not been installed yet. The vaults will sit in front of the new house until we call Smart Move to pick them up.

We still have more to do

Waving goodbye to the Smart Vaults was only one step of many that we need to complete before we can depart for our new home in Floyd.

Our part of the closing happened this morning. We signed all of the documents at a title company just down the road. When the buyer signs the documents a few days from now, the title company will go into action registering the transaction and dispersing checks.

We have more household goods to put in storage for transportation to Floyd at a later time. This is the 300 cubic foot overflow that I wrote about in an earlier post. I will probably rent a U-Haul truck and take it down in one trip.

I have a few minor repairs to make on the house that were part of the sale contract. These will take less than a day, but had to be put off till the very end because one of them involves removing the cat door to the outside, which will drive the cats, and us, crazy.

Last of all, we have to pack everything that we have to take with us in the two vans and a trailer. This includes cats, plants, food, clothes, towels, pots, pans, everything we will need until the vaults can be unpacked.

The trailer will carry all of the gasoline-powered tools and everything that does not travel well in a closed vehicle. It should be quite an undertaking.

Our current plans are to spend all day Saturday finishing up the last minute details of departing the house. On Sunday morning, we will point our caravan in a southwesterly direction and drive three hours to our new homestead in Floyd, near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

To keep things interesting, I have learned from Doug Thompson that we should see a severe storm Sunday afternoon. Never a dull moment!