We recently remodeled our small row house in the city. We initially hoped to begin the project two years before it actually was able to start. Thanks to the bureaucracy that goes along with living in an historic district in a big city, the permit process delayed us quite a bit. Two years later, the project was set to begin in mid Winter. We were bumping out the back of the house on three levels. They had to excavate the basement portion by hand and would be knocking down one hundred year old brick. It all sounded dusty to me. We had to seal off the rooms at the back of the house. The rooms on the other side of that were being remodeled. That meant we needed some moving storage help for all the stuff in those rooms. I wish we would have just moved all our things out and into storage. It was such a mess.
We rented one of those outdoor moving storage boxes. The company delivered it on site. It was a big metal thing they moved around with this wheeled contraption. We slowly moved everything from the rooms in the construction zone to the storage container. It was in our backyard and we thought it could stay there the whole time the house was being remodeled. The contractors filled up our tiny yard with debris and equipment pretty fast. We were sad, because we looked forward to just being able to dust that thing off, open the door and unload our belongings back into the house when it was finished. The moving storage company was so very helpful, in spite of our reluctance. Our storage pod was scheduled for a pick up less than 24 hours away.
Once the moving storage people put our container in their warehouse, we figured we would not be able to get in it until they delivered it back to our house. But all we had to do was call a day in advance and we could access it. Our storage box was in an air conditioned and heated secure building at the moving storage facility. The key to our box was in our hands too. We ended up visiting the storage box a few times to look for things we hastily packed, add some items and repack in anticipation for the return delivery.
It is a very good thing our stuff was securely stowed at a moving storage place. Just like the remodeling magazines warn you about, our builders finally finished more than 5 months later than they thought they would. It was hectic enough to just get settled back into the house. So we dreaded the idea of having to make time for moving our storage box back home. Those moving storage people took the burden off us, once again. They dropped off the container, while we were busy mopping and moving things. Given that we had already lost the use of our yard for so long, we did not want that metal box hanging around in the yard. We asked them to pick up it a few hours after they delivered it. After we unpacked it, we were busy getting settled back in. When we sat down for dinner, we noticed the moving storage container was gone and we had a nice empty yard. Within a week, we were living comfortable in our new and improved house and had forgotten all about the remodeling.