I was originally asked by my Sister-in-law to help prime their apartment on the last day of April before they moved. It appears that they agreed to cover over a few of the rooms that they themselves painted and needed some help. I'm not sure why they agreed to paint at all since the next occupants were expected to move in on the 1st of May. My guess is that they felt guilty for painting those rooms very bright colors.
The previous Monday and Tuesday I was in my basement taking apart our old hide-a-bed couch. Matt moved into the basement a few years back and wanted the old couch downstairs. I told him that he could have the couch but he would have to haul it downstairs himself. I was hoping that this would be a deterrent, since the couch is about 3 feet deep (the same width as the basement door, but wider than the bathroom door across the hall). This made for getting the couch down a real challenge. But a challenge he met quite cleverly by taking the door off its hinges and also the railing off the wall in order to get the couch into the basement. Well, he recently moved out and indicated that he did not want the couch anymore. I told him that I did not want to take the door off its hinges, etc. and would be cutting it up, but needed help getting the steel bed frame up the stairs. He agreed that he could swing by that Tuesday evening, but a desperate call from my Sister-in-law canceled those plans.
Even though they were having professional movers help (something I always regret not doing whenever I complete a move), the movers were not contracted to pack so they needed help packing. I always pride myself at being able to "pack more stuff into less space than is humanly possible", so having the opportunity to pack is always fun.
When we got there, most of the boxes they already packed were lined up in the hallway stacked from floor to ceiling. "What, there's more…" I asked myself; but like anyone who has ever moved, there's always more than you think. We tackled the kitchen and one of the bedrooms, but eventually had to stop around 11:30 because Sara had to get up early the next day for work and needed to get to bed. Even though I could have stayed overnight (since I was scheduled to paint the next day), I opted to go home with Sara and be her alarm clock. We all agreed that I would swing by around 8:00 AM the next day to help paint.
When I got there on Wednesday morning, the movers were in the process of removing the boxes from the hallway. It appears that we had to wait for the movers to finish taking all of the stuff from the rooms we were going to paint before we started, so we opted to finish packing while we waited. We finally started painting around 4:00 PM, but still the movers were not even close to being finished moving all of the stuff into the truck.
We started painting their Son's room first since it had paint on both the walls and the ceiling. The walls were painted fire-engine red and pencil yellow, while the ceiling was painted a royal blue with glow-in-the-dark stars painted (looked a lot like a flag). I think the first coat took the longest, because I did not get to the dining room until after 8:00. Luckily my wife showed up to help around 6:30 which made the work go a bit faster.
We opted to take a dinner break around 8:00 and also check in with my Brother-in-law at the other end of the move. It appears that the movers finally got everything in the truck around 7:00 two hours after they originally thought they would be completely finished. They thought that they could unload at the new apartment the next day, but had to unload that day since they had other moves the next day. This meant that we would be one person down for painting.
After dinner we moved onto the living room which only needed the walls painted (the yellow ceiling was not as noticeable as you would think). One would think that this would take less time since we only were only doing the walls, but I guess that the highlighter-orange liked to peek out from behind the primer more than the other colors and required three coats. Around Midnight, I opted to go back to the bedroom and start the second coat so as not to be overly frustrated. Luckily Dana returned from the new apartment around 11:00 so he could help paint in the living room.
Sara opted to go home around midnight so she could go to work the next day. Since they could not pick up the next day, I chose to stay the course and finish the job. I estimated that we would be finished around 3:00 AM, and may just sleep at the new apartment and return home on my own.
I was correct in that we did finish around 3:00. The last thing we had to do was to transfer the growth chart on the doorway since they could not take that with them. Once that was done, we did a once-over to make sure that we didn't leave anything behind, then left. I decided that I would just go straight home rather than stay in a room full of boxes and finally got home around 4:30 AM.
You always know who your friends are– they're the ones who help you move. I'm glad I was able to help and would gladly help again anytime.
