Manor Makeover: That time it snowed penguins and polar bears

Let’s start off this installment of the Manor Makeover series with a confession, so as not to cloud the integrity of the text that will follow. I do not like winter and I do not really care for the snow. I tolerate the cold, dark months because I feel it gives me much more of an appreciation for the weather that I do enjoy — the sunshine and warmth of summer.

That said, I do admit to liking snow under certain conditions. The piddly snowstorms that cause chaos and havoc, but not major disruptions are annoying. If there is to be a snow, it needs to be one major snowstorm that shuts everything down for a day. It should be enough to be able to go out and go sledding or to make a snowman. Then it needs to be 80 degrees the next day so that it all completely melts.

I do not control the weather, so that ideal scenario I have conjured up in my head will probably never happen.

Even though I am #TeamSummer, I know that winter is a reality. But I never really had to deal with the nuisance of shoveling. When I lived in Philadelphia, I always lived in a planned community where snow removal was handled by someone else, typically a home owner association or management company.

Planning ahead

When I moved to Kroll Manor in 2015, it was midway through the fall. High on my to-do list was to hire a company to take care of shoveling and plowing for me. Before you roll your eyes and think that I’m lazy, consider this: There is an entire city block of sidewalks to shovel and a massive motorcourt and driveway. Taking care of all of that by myself would be a herculean feat.

It should come as no surprise that lots of companies were chomping at the bit to have my business — locally historic home plus lots of shovelable areas was a good thing for them. I found a company, signed a contract, and exhaled because I had one less thing to worry about.

Have you ever found that when you take preventative steps for something you almost never need them? For example, you put in sprinklers for the garden… and then it rains every day for the entire summer. Or you buy a snowblower and then it doesn’t snow for four years. That’s what happened for the remainder of 2015. Not a flake of snow.

The day the snow machine turned on and wouldn’t turn off

But that all changed on January 23, 2016.

I cannot tell you how glad I was to have had the foresight to hire a snow removal company. I was able to sit back and relax and wait for the team to swarm with the flamethrowers, pick axes, and bulldozers. I’m not sure if that is what I expected back then, but as I sit here today writing this entry that’s what I would have wanted.

Hours after the snow stopped falling, none of those things had happened. Not just the fantastical removal scenario I concocted in my head, but nothing. No one showed up. I phoned the company and they apologized for the delay, but said that they would be on their way shortly.

More time passed. By now, all of the nearby properties had been shoveled out or snowblown. The plows had made several passes on the main thoroughfare in front of the house. The secondary streets had gotten at least a single pass. Still, there was no sign of the company I had hired and fear was starting to set in.

Snow Plow 54, where are you?

I made another call to the company that I had hired — and I am choosing not to mention them publicly — and I was told that because there was so much snow, they were unable to traverse the streets yet to get to my property to remove the snow. When I was told that the streets surrounding my home hadn’t even been plowed yet, I pushed back and told them that the plows had taken care of the streets nearly 12 hours earlier. I was asked to be patient and assured that they’d be sent the following day.

At time point, I had yet to meet a lot of the people in my neighborhood. There had just been an article in the local paper about how “Allentown native buys Hess’s opulent mansion” and I was freaking out about how the new guy in neighborhood couldn’t be bothered to get his sidewalks shoveled in a timely manner. On top of that, there is a local ordinance requiring all homeowners to have their sidewalks cleared within a certain number of hours after the snow stops falling.

How hard can it be to shovel a driveway?

When I woke up on Sunday, January 24, there was still no sign of the snow removal team. Even though I had no plans to go anywhere, I realized that I should probably at least try to shovel a path from the garage to the street — just in case. The physicality and actuality of shoveling 100 feet of 3-feet-deep snow hadn’t yet hit me.

I bundled up, grabbed a shovel, and headed out into the day to take care of the snow. My first mission was to walk to the pool house to make sure that everything was safe under the weight of the snow. Kroll Manor is a large property, but not so large that walking to the pool house is a big deal. Well, on a normal day.

Trudging through three feet of snow requires a whole lot of effort. By the time I made it to the pool house, I was ready for a nap. You can see my path of snow resistance in the photo below.

I turned my attention to shoveling, but within 30 minutes I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to shovel the snow by myself.

Insert naughty words here: !#$!%^@

I made another phone call to the snow removal company to ask if they had any idea when they might be able to make it to the property. After a series of excuses, I was transferred to someone higher up the chain who had a stunning take on things: they had already cleared the snow at Kroll Manor.

What?!

I immediately sent a photo to that person’s cell phone to show that the snow had not been cleared. I was placed on hold for what seemed like forever and told that there was a miscommunication and the team was currently en route.

Panicked that the snow would never be removed, I sent a text message to the people that I had bought the house from to ask if they knew of anyone that could help me out. I was told that they had “a guy,” who would reach out. Within 30 minutes, the “guy” message me, told me his rates, and said that he would head over as soon as humanly possible.

Within 90 minutes of arriving, the sidewalks were cleared and the driveway was plowed. Talk about a lifesaver. I later found out he came to take care of the snow removal at Kroll Manor before he handled the properties owned by the people that had referred him to me.

Rubbing rock salt in the wound

The weather improved dramatically in the days that followed, but another storm was on the way. About ten days after the blizzard, I received an invoice for snow removal from the company that never showed up. As you might expect, at four-figures, it was not a small invoice. To say that I was furious would be an understatement.

I headed to my office and pulled up the video surveillance of the property. I downloaded footage from all of the cameras during the time period that the company claimed to have been clearing snow from my property and burned it to a DVD. Yes, in 2016 we were still using DVDs.

Armed with the DVD and invoice, I hopped in my car and headed to the company’s main office. I waited in a conference room while my account rep finished a call. When he joined me, I told him what happened. “Are you sure they didn’t clear your property?” he asked. I slid the DVD toward him and told him we could watch the footage. I’m pretty sure no one else had ever shown up with video evidence.

He assured me that it would not be necessary to watch the video and told me that the invoice would be canceled. I told him that I needed the snow removal contract to be canceled as well. He agreed.

Now, nine years later I am still using “the guy” for my snow removal.

And I still am not a fan of snow, despite what the video to the right of this text might imply.

Read previous entries in the Manor Makeover series

To read more from the Manor Makeover series, you can check out the previous parts here.