Because we’re doing as much of our rehab work as possible ourselves and because we’re on a budget, we’ve had to source the associated materials ourselves.
The two largest items in terms of volume and weight have been the unfinished pine flooring (800 square feet worth) and the Ready to Assemble / RTA kitchen cabinets. Both came on pallets and had weights of 2-3 tons which was more than our vehicles could handle (both volume wise and weight wise). We hadn’t realized the full extent of what this meant when we placed our orders.
We sourced our flooring from our local Lumber Liquidators (local to our current home vs our property); they were the only low-cost source that we could find for the type of flooring we were looking for. Unfortunately for us, there was no Lumber Liquidators location in the area of our property; however, the helpful sales person did some checking and said that we definitely could have the flooring delivered to our rural location (it would ship from a store which was about 1.5 hours away, would cost us between $2-300, and could be delivered to and in our property’s garage even if we were not there so long as the carrier would have easy access to the garage; they would ensure this would happen via the notes they would make with the order).
As it turns out, the carrier did require our presence at the property for delivery; and, they gave us one day’s notice and a delivery window of about 3 hours; the person I talked to said that the driver would unload the pallet to the place that I directed. So off to the property I went the day of delivery. The driver arrived in a large van and without a pallet jack. Had I not been there, he would have unloaded all of the flooring directly onto our garage’s concrete flooring. Because I was there, I was able to grab some pallet substitutes (to prevent direct contact of our new wood flooring with our damp garage floor). It took a bit of time, but the flooring was eventually unloaded. All worked out well in the end.
We ordered our RTA kitchen cabinets online when the “store” had a 20% sale. This time, we elected to have the cabinets delivered to our city residence with the idea that we would then transport (a little at a time) to the property. I was home the day of delivery but had not read the fine print on the company’s shipping disclosure; because, it turns out that the delivery was “curb-side” only. Because the driver took pity (he did not have to) and because he had a pallet jack, he did agree to take the cabinets directly to our garage (about 100 feet from “curbside”). Whew! (Our cars will just have to endure the elements until all the cabinets are moved).
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