Moving Day - coming soon!

I swear I hardly have time to post these days. I knew this would happen as soon as we signed the papers on the new house. I must be clairvoyant!

We have been working hard to get everything done that we wanted to before moving in. The house was remodeled, but there were a few things we wanted to change - like repainting the entire interior, changing the carpet in the bedroom, tearing out the closet in the bedroom and having California Closets design us a new, more efficient, closet system - little stuff! ;) But we're almost there. We're both so ready to move in!

The thing that has been hardest about it all hasn't been the actual labor. It's been all the little roadblocks that get thrown up. For instance, we have a gas valve that's inside the house that needs to be capped before we have the gas turned on. No problem. I call the gas company last week, tell the lady I need to have the valve capped and get our service turned on. After going through the whole rigamarole to set up my account and set an appointment to have our service turned on, I ask her to verify that this appt will be for both the capping and turning on service.

"We don't do that - you'll have to get a licensed plumber to do that."

"A plumber? I think you're misunderstanding me. I have a valve to a GAS line. The GAS line won't be used anymore, so we need you to cap it before you turn the gas on."

"We don't do that - you'll have to get a licensed plumber to do that."

"The GAS company doesn't cap GAS lines?? I have to have a PLUMBER do that?? That doesn't sound right. A plumber wouldn't lay my gas lines. Why would he be reponsible for capping it? If he screws up a water line, my floor gets wet. But if he screws up a gas line, my house explodes. You really don't cap gas lines? You - the GAS company??"

They don't. You have to hire a plumber. At the rates that plumbers charge. Who the hell knew that? So, I had to cancel the appointment to turn on the gas, and I've been asking around ever since for names of plumbers that someone could recommend so we can get the line capped and THEN turn on our gas. Shockingly (that would be sarcasm), no one has provided me with the name of a plumber they trust - just lots of horror stories about plumbers who didn't show up, only did half the job, tried to screw people into replacing the entire plumbing system when all they needed was a small leak repair. I think that's why plumbers charge so much. They know that people will never use them twice, so they get all they can on their one shot.

And that's just one example of a task that seemed simple but involved more than we thought it did, or should have, and ended up being more work and taking longer than we ever imagined. Thank God we didn't get the first house we tried to buy, which would have required an entire remodel. I think it would've killed us.