4 – The Move (part 3a of trilogy)

Moving day is closing day, January 31^st. It never dawned on me to move on any day other than the day you sell your house.

Your friends tell you, your real estate agent tells you and your lawyer tells you, ‘Don’t move on the day you sell your house.’ The reasons are many with the principal one being the deal might not get done.

Money has to change hands on closing day and in most situations you need the money from the sale of your house to pay for the house you agreed to buy. In turn, the buyer of your place needs the money from the sale of his place and so forth and so on. This domino effect can pile up and this pile up can induce gridlock among the lenders and during the registry process.

Even the minutiae loom large. You may have to book the freight elevator (if you’re moving into a freight elevator situation) and you should get out of your place promptly; it’s similar to checking out of a hotel room by 3 p.m. Finally, you have to clean your place. While all this is going on, of course, the movers are still tossing boxes you carefully labelled ‘fragile.’ Oh, and on this particular day, it was minus 15 degrees Celsius¹To those still in the Fahrenheit ages, we’re talking 5 degrees. Yes, that’s ice underfoot the movers. Yes, that’s aunt Lily’s ming ashtray they’re playing hockey with during their break..

And lest we forget, you’d probably like to paint the odd room where you’re moving to and that goes on better if said room(s) are empty. And before you move why not take a minute to see that everything you ignored when you did the 30 second tour of the place on open house day works.

So the typical plan is to overlap the purchase of your new place with the sale of your present abode; carry two properties for a couple of days or so. But why would you do that, I ask myself, what could go wrong?

So how bad was it? Well, for a start, fortune smiled on us. All the financial and legal hassles and the key exchange were dispensed with around noon. But the move was still moving at our old place. When the truck was finally packed and came unstuck from the snowbank (see footnote), I hustled my buns to the new place to direct the unloading while my wife and the cleaning person were left to meet and greet the new owners who are looking at their watches and mouthing the words, ‘Haven’t they ever stayed in a hotel room? It’s 3 p.m!’

Moving day takes about twelve hours and we didn’t have far to go. You try to force a smile at your new surroundings but you’re tired and hungry and surrounded by boxes that are precisely  labelled, ‘Stuff from the basement.’

But you showed ‘em; you can move the day you close!

Bears repeating, what could go wrong?

The scream is blood curdling. Not since Janet Leigh in Psycho has the world been party to such a fright. The curdling belongs to my wife and she’s in the master bathroom in the shower in our new abode.

This must be the first time I didn’t admire my wife while she was in the shower. There’s a distracting geyser of Old Faithful proportions coming from somewhere and pounding the 8 foot ceiling. I assume it’s the shower but once a modicum of calm surfaces I realize that the cold water tap on one of the sinks has blown its top.

Showing the male cool that the gender is famous for, I fit the tap back on and hold it as best I can which partially stems the flow and direct my wife to crawl under the sink and turn the shut off valve.

‘I don’t see any shut off valve,’ my wife, semi-calmly, reports back the naked news from underneath the cabinet.

Now I’m sure most male readers are rolling their eyes, ‘What do you mean there’s no shut off valve? Of course there’s a shut-off valve. Here, you try to hold down the tap and I’ll shut off the water.’

I crawl under the cabinet. Oh oh, she’s right. There…is…no…shut…off…valve. Now what?

‘Get dressed (I was tempted to say, ‘We don’t have a minute to lose, don’t bother getting dressed …’ ) and go down and get the concierge.’

‘Hi, I’m the concierge, oh my, I have a water key.’

‘How do you use a water key?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is there a supervisor?’

A pause, dear reader, as I must mention that all this chatter is taking place while I’m holding back the dike and though I’ve been known to exaggerate on occasion, this was no fun day at the beach. To the condo’s credit, the system produces tremendous water pressure. Two-hands-on-the-tap-to-hold-the-tap-down type of water pressure. The water is now semi-directed into the sink but the floor is 4 bath towels deep trying to stem the equivalent of a spring run off.

Picture this, three lost souls in a bathroom with one of them holding a water key which looks like a piece of pipe of no known purpose at-the-ready pointing aimlessly at the ceiling. A key it does not resemble.

The supervisor arrives.

‘Hi, I’m the supervisor, oh my.’

We are now four lost souls in the bathroom with one of them holding a water key.

‘Hi, I’m a neighbour, oh my, give me the water key.’

We are now four lost souls and a found one.

‘See those brass discs on the wall? That’s where the shut off valves are located.’ Four lost souls peer at a corner of the bathroom vainly looking for anything that resembles a keyhole. And with that the neighbour pries off one of the discs, notes that everything is wallpapered over, but guesses at its centre and jams the water key through the wallpaper and into the wall and turns the water key.

The water subsides.

‘I’ve got to get to work,’ the neighbour announces and tosses me the water key. The concierge leaves, ‘Oh my.’

The supervisor leaves, ‘Oh my.’

Now, to be truthful, if I’d had a water key²Can’t make this up; the previous owner packed our water key. I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. And as I look around the condo, I realize a water key is also needed in the laundry room. And where the water key isn’t needed, shut off valves aren’t guaranteed to be there.

We called Paladin Plumbing  – ‘Have water key, will travel.’

We also talked to the condo hierarchy

‘‘Oh my, that’s awful,’ sympathized the admin manager, ‘but your condo is your responsibility.’

‘True,’ my wife parried, ‘but If Niagara Falls comes to visit us, it visits all of us and I think the condo should feel it’s their responsibility, too.’

So starting now, every new tenant not only gets the key to their condo but to their condo’s water and a tour of its force.

An addendum to, ‘What could go wrong?’  A chair we destined for our son in Virginia dropped a leg between here and there. Said leg surfaced many weeks later and is currently resting with us until either Virginia visits us or we attempt to cross the border. ‘Do you have any wood products to declare?’

So ends the ‘moving’ trilogy. From facing all the crap through the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding staging and finger-crossing showing to the eventual sale and then the move, we got from there to here. So was it all worth it? Well it took a four part trilogy to cover it all which is saying a lot. And yes, our new address has a gorgeous terrace which is usually bathed in all-day sunshine so things are looking bright.

With one small caveat: there’s a tap on the terrace.