Glenn Shepard’s Personal Blog

I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the move into our new house went, especially considering that this was the first time I’ve moved since 1986. I was also surprised at how many people were involved and want to thank them.

1. Chris from Comfort Zone for standing patiently in that 97-degree heat while cleaning the evaporator coils and adding freon to the air conditioner

2. Jesse the cleaning lady who scrubbed every baseboard and toilet as if she were planning to eat off of them

3. Richard from Ace Exterminating for making sure Casa De Shepard remains bug free

4. Michael and Justin from Two Men and a Truck for hauling all of our furniture up the steepest driveway they’ve ever encountered

5. Jay from Comcast for hooking up our Internet, phone, and cable TV, and digging up the line in our neighbor’s yard to run a new one (hope she’s not in love with her grass)

6. Arborist Glenn Chrisman for making sure our trees and landscaping survive the heat

7. Jorge Sanchez and his two assistants for showing up on time at 7:00 am, painting over the hideous bright blue walls in the guest room and warming up the bland white walls in the hallways and great room, and working until he got the job finished at 8:30 that night

8. Rick Mowewe of Comprehensive Home Inspection for finding the leak in the shower so that we could get it fixed before we closed on the house

9. The contractor for repairing the leak in the shower

10. Lori at ServPro for drying out the leak from the shower

 11. Natalie at Rudy Title Company for her fastidious attention to all the details and answering my barrage of questions

 12.  Marvin from COIT  carpet cleaners for making sure it’s all “our dirt” in the house now

 13. Greg the yard guy for mowing the grass so that Brady can run and jump and play in his new back yard

 14.  Susan Sneed at Geny Insurance for taking such good care of her most anal retentive client

 15. Justin at PDQ Disposal for transferring the account from the house that flooded to this one

 16. Steve the electrician for explaining why the pigtail on the back of our dryer has 3 prongs but the outlet in the wall has 4

 17. Justin from CSS Alarms for measuring all the windows and doors and crawl spaces for alarms

 18.  Clint and Brian from CSS Alarms for installing the new alarm system and replacing the central vacuum system on a 100 degree day

 19. Mary Frances Rudy at Rudy Title Company for making the process painless

 20. The incredibly personable and helpful team at our locally owned and operated Ace Hardware, who have now stolen my business from Home Depot

 21 And most importantly, my beautiful bride who carefully planned, scheduled, and orchestrated everything so that her impatient husband wouldn’t get too frustrated with the process, and for making our new house a home.

While I don’t agree that it takes a village to raise a child, I now know that it takes a team to move into a new house.

Here’s a great example of why it’s a good idea to pay for expert advice on subjects we’re not experts on. At my realtor’s suggestion, I hired an arborist (I didn’t know what an arborist was before now) to inspect the unique landscaping in our new yard, and advise us on what to do to protect it from the heat (it’s supposed to hit 100 here in Nashville today). There was one funny looking little shrub which I told him I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, and he said “Are you kidding? That’s a Japanese Maple tree, and is worth about $2,000 in its present shape”. Still looks like a funny little shrub to me, but we’ll be keeping that baby now.

So far, this moving thing has been a breeze. Yesterday I found $534 in my sock drawer, and have no idea where it’s from or why it was there. Maybe I should move more often.

One reason it took us so long to find a home was because we were more selective about the location than the house itself. We wanted to be in a neighborhood where people aren’t strangers to one another, but still have privacy. Today we met our first neighbors while they were out walking their dogs. He’s an assistant Attorney General who also advises the homeowner’s association so that they don’t overstep their bounds, and she’s a nurse practitioner who went from house to house giving out Gatorade to flood victims. Though we haven’t met them yet, there’s a doctor two houses down, a physicist who works in nuclear medicine at Vanderbilt living across the street, and the woman next door does something in country music. As it was explained to us, everyone knows each other and is there if they’re ever needed, but is busy enough with their careers that they don’t have time to be nosy neighbors. Looks like we hit the nail on the head. Score!!!