But no: the entire box fit handily. The only caveat is that if you lay the unit on its side, you must wait 24 hours before using it, so I don't get to plug it in until 2 PM tomorrow.
Got it home, got it inside, got most of the packing off; slid it down the stairs on the styrofoam "skid", took the skid off, made room for it. It now sits in a nice little cubby next to some other stuff; I can only access it from its right side but it's narrow enough (not quite square) that that's not an issue. So the lid goes up to my right rather than to the side that's away from me--big whoop.
The thing weighs 80 lbs with packing. No wonder the guy at the store was flinging it around like it was a box of feathers. The only part that really bothered my back was lifting it over the step up at the front door. The far edge, of course, caught on the lip and wouldn't slide up. Otherwise I had a harder time picking up the packing material that scattered when I lifted the box off.
I didn't even need to dig out my hand truck.
So, the next stage of my great adventure is complete: I have bought my first major appliance.
* * *
I think, actually, that most of the back pain I'm experiencing right now (which is not much) resulted from moving the stuff around in the basement: a few boxes of books, some other stuff, each of which required that I cantilever the weight some distance from my body for a few seconds.
I didn't need to move much, but what I did need to move was on the heavy side. It was also stuff which should not have been on the floor--books and the like which could be damaged if the basement flooded again--so I took care to ensure they were not on the floor.
I ended up making some sense of that area even though the niche for the freezer only required moving two items. I was in the mood to impose order where chaos reigned, so I did.
* * *
What I will probably do tomorrow is to buy two or three bags of ice and put them in the freezer, just to make sure it's keeping things cold before I put food in it which could spoil if it didn't work. Once I'm sure the ice isn't melting, then I'm going to clean out the freezer over the fridge!
There's a lot of stuff in there that I do not need immediate access to, like frozen homemade soup stock and several containers of frozen walnuts and pecans. Most of the meat can go into the freezer, as well as unopened boxes of microwave food (TV dinners and the like). The result ought to be a freezer that's a lot less jam-packed with stuff, and I won't have to toss anything that I'm likely to use later.
But even so it's going to be a while before the chest freezer is anything like full--unless I buy a quarter beef or something--so the bags of ice will also help to act as thermal mass. More mass=slower heating=running less often.
* * *
It's 2:30 and I've still got things to do; but I think I'm just going to chill until about 3, take a shower, go to therapy, and then do some of the other things.