The refrigerator didn't fit, but Charlie and I got a lot of stuff in there. I know the shoes are in there somewhere.
Everyone knows what a major undertaking moving can be, especially if you decide to relocate a thousand miles from where you have all your stuff. And we all have way too much stuff. The basic premise is you have to get all your stuff from point A to point B. If you have a lot of money, or a company that is relocating you, then you sit back and watch MayFlower or North American pack up your stuff, load it, and deliver and unload it at your new location. If you don’t have a lot of money, you do this all by yourself. This is about a refrigerator and a box of shoes.
The LG 30-cubic foot side-by-side refrigerator started life with us as a logistical problem from day one. It wouldn’t fit through the kitchen doorway, even with the doors removed. We had to tear the doorway out to the studs so the installer could get the refrigerator into the kitchen. Then, because of the water, ice, and crushed ice dispenser in the door, took almost an hour to get the doors back on. The doors are made of titanium, so they are very light but also dent very easily, as I later discovered, but it gives you a boasting point. “This refrigerator has titanium doors.” Sounds impressive doesn’t it? The LG, once installed, did it’s thing beautifully. I should add that it was the most expensive refrigerator on the display floor at the local RC Willey’s. If you haven’t bought a refrigerator lately, this put the price over the $2,000 mark.
The LG had been in place for a little over a year and a half when we decided to move. Since I knew I would never get anything close to what I paid for it, if I sold it, it had to go with us. Remembering how much difficulty the installers had getting the doors back on with no water leak, I decided I wasn’t going to go that route to get the LG out of the kitchen. I studied the situation for many weeks and decided the way to go was out the back slider off the kitchen. I measured it, and without the handles, which were easy to remove, it would just fit. I figured I needed another person to help, (two or three would have been better) and the weekend we decided to move the refrigerator to the cargo trailer, which we had also carefully measured, Charlie volunteered. I think, no I’m sure, he was sorry he did.
We measured the door again, and decided we would be 1/4 of inch too wide to get through it unless we removed the sliding panel from the door. Sounded easy. Took us 30 minutes. One of those sound-proof, four-paned, really heavy and real hard to get out of the channel, doors. Getting it back in took almost as long. We measured again, put the enormous and heavy refrigerator on a hand truck and started to roll it out carefully through the opening. We almost ripped the water connection off the back (we didn’t add that 1/2″ into the width, and as we turned the LG slightly to get it through the opening, we created the first dent in the titanium door. But the LG was outside. Now we had to roll it across the back yard, down the side yard, through a gate, down a hill, into the front yard, and into the garage. If we made it that far, we would rest before loading it into the cargo trailer.
This is where I almost killed Charlie. Things went well until the small hill on the side of the house. We stopped to adjust everything, and study the best way to roll it down the hill. Charlie would be in front, I would have the hand truck and the majority of the weight. As we started off, the LG gathered momentum and started to tilt to the left. Charlie worked diligently to keep the LG upright as we sprinted down the hill with it. He was running backwards, trying to stay a step ahead of the LG which was gathering speed. I tried desperately to apply the brakes, sliding down the hill on the back side of the monster, with the cabinet bouncing off my biceps creating bruises that would later look like someone had taken a baseball bat to my arms. At the bottom of the hill, the LG stopped and we gasped for breath.
There would be no headline in the “Reno Gazette Journal”, “Man Crushed By Runaway Refrigerator!”
We made it across the front yard and into the garage. I made a drink. We rested and remeasured the height of the LG and the inside height of the trailer. Two inches to spare. Then Charlie’s latent engineering skills took over.
“It’s not going to stand up,” he said matter-of-factly. “Don’t you have to measure the diagonal dimension if you’re going to stand it up inside the trailer?”
No, I insisted, it would fit. So we struggled with it up the trailer ramp, inside the trailer, and tried to stand it up. Nope. We studied the situation as I struggled to hold up the LG on my now throbbing arms.
“Won’t go, Charlie, let’s get it out of here.”
We got it back to the garage. That’s when I noticed the one inch dent in the upper part of the titanium door.
“Damn,” I said.
“Just put a refrigerator magnet over it,” Charlie suggested. “She’ll never know.”
TO BE CONTINUED….
WTF...What The Fluffy 