Dear Stuff: Quit breaking down until after the house closes please!

Keep your fingers crossed that we get to April 14th with nothing else breaking.

Yesterday it was the microwave that gave up the ghost. Granted it was over 20 years old but still...

Before that it was the split heat pump/AC that wouldn't work properly.

Hope this doesn't come in 3's!

We signed a sales contract! Advice on moving options and strategies?

After just 10 days on the market, we had 2 very good, full price offers on our house plus a full price but weird one. We negotiated a few details and a sales agreement is signed. Inspection on Friday while we are out of town. Here we go.

Happy, excited, overwhelmed, hoping it goes all the way to closing, focused on family visit and house buying trip, and so on.

Any tips on what "PODS" type company to use to move? I've identified U-Pack, PODS, and United-Mayflower as all having that container option.

Once we pick a new home we can evaluate what furniture will fit and therefore to move as the new house will be quite a bit smaller overall and especially in the den. We will have a month to pack and dispose of large items that aren't going with us.

Looking for any advice on:
- what to pack ourselves vs paying to have them pack
- how to get good boxes for less
- finding pet friendly lodging as we drive across the country
- anything else you can think of for moving us, a dog, and our stuff across country.

This ride is getting exciting!

Can't wait to leave on our trip!

I'm finding it pretty weird that I didn't know how draining it is to have your house for sale. This is our third house but the first one we sold ourselves after 2 or 3 people looked at it. The 2nd house sold to the first person who looked at it and before it was even in the multiple listings.

Since this house went on the market on Friday, Feb 10th we have had at least 12 scheduled showings, an open house that drew 40+ people, and a day when 5 realtors popped by. Except for the realtor visits we have to take the dog and leave.

It is all good but exhausting. Today we have someone showing up at lunchtime and then a person coming back for the third time for 2 hours with their realtor, girlfriend and architect. No offers yet although in our market even once you have one you keep showing the house in case the offer is withdrawn.

Which leads me to my relief that we are leaving on vacation at the end of this week! Babysitting for 2 weeks after that sounds restful at this point LOL. My husband will be having to make all the sale related things work doing those 2 weeks while working full time and I don't envy him that but I'll be with our baby granddaughter.

Transitions are busy times.

Does the amount of energy required to make a life change ever keep you stuck in one that isn't working for you?

Wow - a flurry of interest in our house!

We had the first showing yesterday and the couple liked it enough to ask for the disclosure form. Three showings today and one Sunday morning with the open house in the afternoon.

Fingers crossed for a quick and easy sale!

How much would you downsize?

Someone asked me the other day if I would consider living in a "tiny house" - those 250ish square foot little homes. Absolutely not unless I was living alone and in a great location where I could be outdoors a lot.

However we are going down to about 60% of what we live in now. Our current house is almost 2400 square feet. We bought it when one son was in high school and it worked for us, but our 1700 square foot house (in a more expensive market) before that worked well for 4 of us. It was all about the layout and the ability to live outside as well or not as is the case here.

Of course until recently we all left all day 5 days a week too whereas going forward we will be retired and home more often.

The homes where we are planning to move are just over 1400 square feet with 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a den, living and dining rooms and patios. Plenty of space for us and for our family and friends to visit. We could go smaller but want the flexibility of what these models offer.

If you have downsized in retirement how much smaller did you go and why? If you are only considering it, what are your thoughts?

Small steps

We signed the realtor agreement, are pondering sale pricing and getting so close to our house being toured by strangers (and I'm sure the neighbors will all tromp through during the open house) so we are fine tuning our decluttering, rearranging and cleaning.

Went through the shed and put some items out on the curb for others to take. A car stopped before I even got them all there. Got to love curbside recycling.

The photos are off the refrigerator. I am startled each time I look at it LOL. It is so blank.

Removed from the coat closet door the hanging shoe organizer we used for hats and gloves. Hubby decided he could part with his worn out baseball hats.

A few more cans of stuff out of the basement. Disagreement over a couple of things so will revisit.

I am pondering how to hide any paperwork with SS# or other identifying info as well as legal documents. A friend has volunteered her house as a storage area but some things we may need to reference. If you have solved this when selling a house please share your ideas/solutions!

Onward today with more small steps.

Just Breathe!

We are scheduled to sign the realtor contract for selling our current house this Wednesday evening. Then one month until the listing goes up.

I have a lot of goals for this year but I think the overriding one is to just BREATHE. BREATHE through the stress of being out of control of the pace of events. BREATHE through the uncertainties of how all these changes will work out. BREATHE through my fears about driving cross-country with a dog with health issues. BREATHE & don't eat comfort food when finding my mind blank and blood pressure rising. BREATHE through the anxieties of potentially owning two houses at once with massively depleted bank accounts and double monthly home expenses.

I am confident it will all be fine in the end, but the process of getting there is huge and could be overwhelming if I let it be. I know from moving before and from leading large work projects that one step at a time with a good plan gets it done. Now if it were just that easy to address the emotional parts of life upheavals - even ones that are sought out!

On the check that off front, the main bath remodel is finished! We are not happy with some things but we won't be living with it LOL. It does look great - no longer stuck in the early '70s.

For those of you who wanted to see the finished product here it is. The goal was to have it be seen as a guest bath with a spa feel but still fit in with our 1941 house. Why do tiny spaces cause so much money to remodel?!!!

11 weeks and counting: To selling our house that is

We are in the midst of remodeling the main floor bathroom now.

It has been demolished and new plywooed sub floor put down. The sink outlet has been converted to a GFC outlet. The tub and toilet have been delivered. Progressing faster than anticipated and not bad surprises such as termite damage or wood rot. The original house was built in 1940 so you never know what you will find once you start opening things up but we were fortunate that there aren't any problems. The plumber is scheduled for Monday and the tile person for Thursday. The dog is coping well and the rest of the house except the family room is operational which is the entry for the construction workers. Yeah!

Moving is starting to feel like a very real thing.

Its finally demo day!

Its finally demo day! The downstairs bathroom is half demolished and they think they will finish today. No bad surprises yet but we do have a hole in the middle of the bathroom floor which will be cold tonight. The dog is coping pretty well, but hanging out upstairs LOL.

So happy that there are water shutoffs for just that bathroom so life goes on as usual in the rest of the house.

12 weeks and counting AND Day 3 of Get it Done December

Yeah! The painting on the outside of the house (trim, doors, addition wood siding, fence) and the living room ceiling is finished and paid for. Check that off.

In other exciting news,
- I moved the dog's crate, etc. upstairs for the duration of remodeling. She doesn't like all of this change. Just wait until they start demolishing the downstairs bathroom!

- We decided not to spend money on having the tree service prune large shrubs and cut off a trunk. Here's to renting a chain saw & learning how to use it.

And yesterday, Day 3 of Get it Done December in addition to regular chores, the two of us managed to:

- Buy new outdoor doormats and 12 bags of bark mulch.
- Work in the courtyard off the sun porch to rake, prune, spread bark mulch near newly painted fence, remove extra bricks, and put yard art out.
- Washed the window by the upstairs closets and ironed and rehung the curtain.
- Put the living room back together now that windows are painted. Washed the inside of the windows.

I wore my new to me charcoal vest with a new to me last year cranberry top and very old jeans to work my butt off today (did I mention all the week's clothing and household laundry was done too?)

13 weeks and counting: To selling our house that is

Good news - the bathroom remodel should begin on December 5th. I'm glad I didn't agree to have the demo done before Thanksgiving and then have to live with it for 10 days before they came back.

The outside painting and living room ceiling will start tomorrow. We have been hustling to have everything ready for the painters.

The leaves are falling faster than we can pick them up! 16 trash barrels of leaves and pruning bushes away from the house awaiting Monday pickup.

What else we did last week:

- I cleaned out the carport storage room so that the front window storm windows could be put in there when the painters remove them. It is customary in this neighborhood to take them off when selling your house. We aren't a fan as our house will be colder this winter.

- Put some items from the basement home improvement/maintenance stash out for curbside donation. Most went off to new homes. More to do.

- DH cleaned under the back porch where the dryer vents. It was as bad as he thought it would be LOL. He also decided to clip some wires hanging under there and found out one was live! Who leaves a live wire hanging outside a house under a porch? Not us. Add electrician to the list.

- I moved the dog's crate and some other things upstairs so she and I can camp out away from the painters this coming week and then construction for 2 to 3 weeks. I'm trying to think of things to do while I am home "supervising" but with restricted access to parts of the house. Ideas?

You know you are making progress when your to do list is down to less than one page!

21 weeks and counting - to selling our house that is

Progress!

I paid for the bathroom tile, the contractor says the work will start in about 3 weeks so just the Home Depot order to get in and delivered. Yeah!

We came up with a plan to deal with the landscaping amidst the drought. Some deep watering of course but we are also shearing back ground cover that looks awful and will compost and mulch the area. If it grows back great and if not I'll just keep it weeded.

We have a second cousin who is an experienced and successful realtor in S CA so we are going to see if he wants to take on helping us buy our next home even though it will be a new geographic area for him. We know he would have our back and could probably attend the inspection and walk through without us having to fly out to do it.

Goodbye October - 22 weeks and counting: To selling our house that is

It really feels like we have moved into countdown territory and big things still need to happen to prep this house for sale.

- Remodel main floor bath. Sigh. I tried to block out the problems of remodeling but they are appearing none the less. Today's is that we can't order the tile we chose for the tub surround because the tile supplier no longer carries it. Note to designer: must have all materials on hand when contractor is ready to start!

- We are entering a severe drought and our landscaping is starting to look iffy. Sigh.
- We still haven't decided how much of the painting that is left will be done by professionals. Must do very soon. Sigh.
- We still haven't decided exactly what pruning to have done by the tree service. Must also do very soon. Sigh.

But we are starting to talk about what we will and won't take with us when we move.

And our granddaughter is due to be born in 3 weeks. Life is good.

Oops, a Plan B would have helped! 23 weeks and counting - to selling our house that is.

Our preparation for listing the house is pretty boring at this point. DH keeps working away at fixing and painting inside the house. We are trying to get everything ready for the bath remodel. Otherwise it is routine house and yard work.

I'm really wishing we had done better at having a Plan B on a couple of fronts though. We were only able to get one quote for the bath remodel. It is definitely in the expected range but being able to make a choice would have been much nicer.

The second missing Plan B is in the area of dog boarding. Our dog has chronic medication and other needs so we have relied on one person to board her. Oops. A funeral in CA this Tuesday for an uncle of DH's and I can't go because there is no place to board the dog on such short notice.

I'm going to try to turn this into a positive and push myself to do lots of pruning & raking, some more sorting through belongings, getting more exercise, etc. The week also holds a vet appointment for a regular shot for her Addison's disease, a haircut for me, early voting and possibly attending book club. This one is outside around a fire and I really don't like sitting out in chilly weather and getting smoky so we will see LOL. Also I found the book selected too grim and quit reading very quickly.

What have you accomplished and what is on your agenda for the week?

26 weeks and counting - to putting our house up for sale

At least one of us was busy with forward moving actions re: the house this past week! Hubby has been diligently working on repairing cracks in the ceiling upstairs and next weekend will paint the ceiling in one room and some walls. I have been caught up in exhaustion from lousy sleep, yard work and other daily chores, meetings and lunches and just regular life in general.

Speaking of life and its unexpected turns - we were shocked to learn this week that one of our DIL's father died suddenly. We are going to try to go to the funeral in CA so have cancelled our Asheville vacation. Then we learned that my husband's uncle is failing very quickly so that will be another attempted funeral trip to the other end of CA. The silver lining is seeing loved ones in both cases.

We also have been learning and thinking about health care coverage once my husband retires. He has planned to retire at the end of May when he is still 64. I am 67 so I will have to pick up Medicare part B & D (or C) plus retiree coverage as my supplemental insurance at that time, but he will be on retiree coverage only for 5 months. We aren't quite sure how that would work especially with a planned move that makes us have to find all new doctors. More to learn. The bottom line though is that he is now considering continuing to work until he is past 65 so he would probably retire at the end of 2017. However we would still put the house on the market this Spring and move to CA once it closes. Then he would work from home and commute part of the time. It is all rather making our heads spin at the moment.

On a happy note, our dog is back to her normal playful, active self. Medication changes plus and antibiotic for a suspected low grade UTI and she is bouncy again. She is also quite happy that she now gets canned food to try to help her put back on the weight she lost.

I'm not going to set any goals for prepping the house for sale for next week since I seem to be doing other things at the moment.

Have a great week.

27 weeks & counting or is it 25 - to putting our house up for sale

Small steps completed this week.

- Washed the walls, treads and risers in the stairwell and found no painting is required
- Met with a potential contractor for the bath remodel; waiting for a bid
- Talked to our realtor who is now suggesting we list the house in mid-March to beat the rush.
- My husband managed to get the non-working chandelier down and Ace Hardware nearby had the right kind of socket to fix it! Working light again and little spent.

So why may we have 25 weeks left instead of 27 before the house is on the market? Our realtor is thinking that we may need to get a jump on the Spring listing rush.. The current plan is that I will be in Berkeley helping with childcare for our soon to arrive granddaughter from February 27-March 11 (assuming she arrives on schedule). We plan to be in S. CA the week prior to look for a home and to prepare for and celebrate my FIL's 90th birthday. So that will be a bit tight if we put it up mid-March.

Need to get on with all the prep a bit faster LOL.

Leftover to do's from last week:

- Work on cleaning basement floor
- Go through bedding and cedar chest; make decisions
- Try to thrift new coverlets/bedspreads for both beds
- Schedule appointment with the arborist to get bid for final pruning work prior to house painting.

I'm also doing a couple of meetings this coming week to continue transition my volunteer and officer responsibilities with my Friends of the Library group.

We just learned that my husband's 93 year old uncle is in hospice care. He is in California so there will be a funeral trip when he passes away.


We also found out the results of yet another blood test on our dog. Her liver function was not looking as it should be despite medication changes so a bile test was done to pursue the possibility that she might have developed a liver shunt which causes the blood to not flow through the liver. She is down to 15 pounds from a steady 16.2 pounds - dropped it all in 2 weeks. However, this latest test showed normal results! So now they are thinking she may have a low grade UTI and will test for that this week. We bought her some chunky stew canned food and she gobbled it down so at least we can get her to eat more. Generally she is happy and spunky - much better than before her medication changes for her Addison's Disease.

28 weeks and counting - to putting our house up for sale

Or 6 1/2 months minus planned 2 weeks in California with new granddaughter and a weekend in Asheville.

We seem to be caught in the regular maintenance mode rather than prepping mode. A carbon monoxide detector reached its planned obsolescence, the socket of a ceiling light fixture failed as did a closet light, yard work beckons, etc. The new bathroom vanity did arrive and we like it - whew. Still waiting on contractor bids. We also attended a memorial service Saturday afternoon.

End result - little progress this past week although I did remove some small items from the study. I need to get on the stick and get busy!

So here is what I could get done this coming week in addition to the routine and regular chores.

- Wash walls, risers and railing in stairwell.
- Work on cleaning basement floor
- Go through bedding and cedar chest; make decisions
- Try to thrift new coverlets/bedspreads for both beds
- Schedule appointment with arborist to get bid for final pruning work

And then there is the rest of life including lots of yard work, another blood test for the dog as we try to get her Addison's under control again, haircut for me, book club, Pilates, hemming new slacks and so on.

When your mind is more willing than your body

I'm pooped and sweaty and wishing summer would get the heck over with! But the last of the pile of bricks that came with this house 19 years ago are now at the curb ready for someone else to "enjoy". It doesn't look like that many bricks and using a wheelbarrow that had a full tire instead of a flat one made it easier but my body definitely wanted to quit before I was done. Heat and humidity - yikes.

I also finished removing a perennial bed. Now we are ready for leaves to fall. We live on a corner and this is the view of our back yard from the side street. Some flower pots and a can of paint on offer too.

It took less than 48 hours for them to be taken! Out by 10am Monday & gone by 5pm Tuesday. Got to love my neighborhood.

29 weeks and counting - to putting house up for sale that is

Whew - another hot week, a sick dog, plans to go to Asheville for the weekend to stay in a friend's condo, grandbaby to be presents bought, dinner with a friend who's husband died recently, property taxes paid (1st installment), more stuff leaves the house and YES, THE ROLL TOP DESK IS GONE.

The man who took it said he has always loved roll top desks so I think it will be a nice addition to his household. Now that it is gone the room seems huge and the blue wall will be much easier to paint. We are at the point of calling it Big Blue (its brighter blue in real life) and laughing a bit hysterically about all the painting we are doing. My husband is shaking his head and asking himself why he painted it a different color in the first place as we always knew we would sell this house this coming spring due to his retirement LOL.

We talked through what remains to be done that requires my husband or hired help to do. We are going to wait until the end of September at least to make decisions on what painting to pay for depending on how much he is able to get done on weekends. This weekend he is starting to paint the last feature wall and some patches on adjoining walls.

I'm feeling a bit frustrated because there isn't much left that I can do solo. Even things I could do like continuing to declutter require joint decision making. Oh well, soon the leaves will fall and I'll be spending a lot of time raking them. For now it is routine yard and house work mostly.

30 weeks and counting - to putting house up for sale that is

I've been taking it easy on the house front. It was my 67th birthday Thursday and I gifted myself a break from hard labor. In addition, the fall Friends of the Library book sale took up Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.

I did put in time outside with regular yard maintenance and with removing a flower bed and its brick border. Hauled the bricks to the curb and they were gone in less than 2 hours. More to haul from a stack behind the garden shed but the wheelbarrow tire needed pumping up first and is now awaiting reattachment to the wheelbarrow. Nice to know they will go easily though.

Inside DH put a patch on a wall where the drywall tape had come loose. He also grouted the new tile back splash in the upstairs bathroom.

AND - we found someone who wants the roll top desk! 4 someones in fact. I finally took some friends advise and joined the neighborhood list serve and within a few hours I had 4 potential takers. The first to respond is supposed to pick it up today but it is nice to know I have back ups. Also very nice to know where to list future large furniture items. SIGH - she hadn't measured her space and decided it was too large. On to the next person who said they would like it.

Plans for Week 30: It is starting to sound repetitious LOL.

The last feature wall (behind the roll top desk) will get painted over.
More yard work both maintenance and simplification will happen.
More decluttering will happen.