I Suck At Moving A Shed

after a pleasant breakfast with my friends this morning, i did what any normal person would do on christmas eve... i moved a shed. now, i suck at moving a shed. luckily, i did not have to move the shed by myself. i had a little help from the contractor.

for anyone curious, my neighbor is installing a new septic system because they never passed title 5. as it turns out, according to the land survey, my shed was on my neighbor's property by about two feet (1 foot 9 inches to be precise). unfortunately, neither karen nor i knew about the infringement because when we bought the house... the shed was already there. the shed was to have been moved when our own septic system was installed. that was almost seven years ago.

anyway, the contractor (george) asked if i could move the shed today so that he could finish installing the septic system. george also offered to help in the actual moving of the shed because he probably figured that i would have no means of moving the shed by myself... given the quick time frame.

so, the two of us attempted to move the shed today. the plan was to run straps around the base of the shed... connect the straps at the top of the roof with a chain... and connect the chain to the barrel of the excavator, which is a machine that digs or "excavates" (the machine has been sitting in my neighbor's yard for quite some time). from there, the excavator would lift the shed slightly off the ground... and over to its new location.

well... i climbed up onto the roof of the shed to shovel off all of the accumulated snow while george shoveled near the base of the shed. (i accidentally dropped a huge amount of snow on george because i did not know where he was standing at the time. i felt a little bad about that.) and for anyone curious... sitting on the roof... trying to shovel... not fun... especially when you have to sit on the roof with wet ice cold underwear. (i need better insulated pants, i guess.)

after running the straps beneath the base of the shed, we connected the straps to the chain. and from there, we were able to connect the chain to the barrel of the excavator. i would have loved to have driven the excavator, but i didn't know george that well to ask him if i could drive it.

anyway, it took us numerous attempts to actually move the shed. while george operated the excavator, i attempted to move and guide the shed to its new location. george must have thought i was a muscle-bound weakling because there were times when i simply could not budge the shed. it was awful.

needless to say, the shed finally moved to a new location. i don't think the shed is perfectly level or square for that matter... especially since the door does not close now, but i don't really care right now. my body aches too much to care. heck, i don't even like the shed. i'm just happy the shed is out of the way, so that george can continue installing my neighbor's septic system. i felt bad for holding him up.

as much of a pain it was to deal with moving the shed, it was actually nice to meet george. i think george felt bad for my weakling attempts to guide the shed because he gave me a discounted rate for his help. he even offered the use of some of his tools to help level off the shed if i wanted to. normally, i would probably take him up on his offer, but since i don't even like the shed... i will probably decline the offer. all in all though, george seems like a good guy and i'm glad to have met him.