What was your worst house move ever?

[jb007]

Inspired by someone else's thread it set me thinking about my various experiences of moving house. So to start the ball rolling...

Had one move where the vendors were still packing when we arrived. Completion was supposed to be by 1pm. We ended up with our removal men dumping our furniture in the garden in the rain and us having to help the previous owners pack. The "man of the house" didn't lift a finger and was swanning about giving orders and generally being useless. By 5pm they still weren't gone and we were trying to assemble our bed so we would at least have somewhere to sleep and he was leaning against the bedroom door just chatting. His poor wife did all the work and we discovered they had booked into a hotel that night so they were not in any rush to get anywhere.

The next occasion I moved I didn't get the keys til after 5pm. It was January so was dark and cold and raining. There had been a problem with the electronic banking system which caused the delay. I ended up having to pay the removal men overtime. To make matters worse the vendor had left loads of rubbish including mattresses that I had to pay the council to take away and my sofa would not fit through the door.

I have stupid enough to move a few more times since then but they were definitely the two worse ones.

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

I bought a flat where I knew the vendor was leaving the country right after the sale, and was likely to leave a mountain of junk * for us to get rid of.

I specified that the place MUST be clear of furniture and all rubbish before completion, and I made the estate agent check in person before the money was paid over.
It meant a day's delay, , but I was damned if I was going to pay someone to take all his cr*p away. Sure enough, he had left a manky, filthy old sofa and a load of rubbish. He didn't like having to get it cleared, but tough.

I didn't specify 'clean' since I knew that would be an ask too far and in any case the place was going to be completely renovated.
*He left a stack of debts, too, but that's another story.

[CremeEggThief]

Moving to Durham from Bristol in 2009, I packed up everything and did most of the cleaning, as now XH refused to take time off work. The removal men came and took most of our stuff on the Saturday, leaving all of Sunday to clean and for XH to pack the car with essentials and everything else. Instead of leaving on the Bank holiday Monday morning as planned, XH fancied about all day long, putting pollyfilla in a few holes in the walls. There was nothing else in the house for me and then 6 year old DS to do. We literally had to sit on the floor and wait for 6 or 7 hours. Eventually, he was ready to leave at 5 p.m. when he'd arranged to pick up the keys from our new landlord in County Durham at 7 p.m. He had no shame about ringing her and telling her he would pick the keys up at midnight on a Bank holiday Monday (early Tuesday morning) and the landlord actually agreed. We finally reached our new home at 1 a.m. on a rainy night. I felt helpless with anger over it and 7 years on, it's painful remembering it all. Needless to say, the two house moves I've had since splitting up, have run like clockwork in comparison.