Sound Asssociation

I can still recall the nightmare I kept having in the latter stages of building our home.  We bought one of those Wagner power paint sprayers.  It worked well until either the bucket level dropped too low, or the sprayer experienced a change in paint viscosity.  When either occurred the sprayer would make loud, obnoxious belching sounds until we shut it off.  I had nightmares that sprayer was chasing me around the house, constantly making that bleaching noise.

Now my nightmares include the sound of packing tape as it's wrenched of the spool and applied onto a box.

The Home Stretch

We're nearly done.  Whew.  All the outbuildings are now empty (thankbob) with the minor exception of my studio which still houses two partially dismantled floor looms.  The Habitat for Humanity folks will be here on Wednesday, and the furniture/loom movers will be here Thursday morning.  Since all our beds are heading for storage, we'll spend Thursday night in our travel trailer.

Today is the day to say farewell to my Spanky goat and all of G's chickens, including our gorgeous rooster, Captain Kool.  Thank goodness I don't have to say goodby to my Hunter cat as he's joining us down at the beach.

People have asked us why we're moving as we have such a nice place.  It is a nice place, we built all of it ourselves.  And if we could pick it all up and move the whole shebang, we would've.  This rural, higher elevation place has gotten to be too much for us.  And holy cow, it's been nice to destash a TON of crap(!). Even G was shocked at how much had accumulated.  I told him it felt like the super long, heavy chain of Marley's ghost.  Too weighty and smothering.  I'm fairly certain we shall be destashing more once we find our new home.

We continue to look for a new home....more are coming on the market now.....but few fit our criteria: two car garage, one main floor bedroom, and about 2200 sqft.  It's the bedroom situation that has been the main hurdle so far.

Also, it only just now occurred to me.....I'm wondering about all our belongings in storage...and insurance.  I hate to pay for insurance, but now I probably should look into that.

scheduling

My job title when I retired was "optimization & process control engineer".  The old adage of time being money in a manufacturing field was never more true.  It was, at times ridiculous.  That job will take too long, trim some of those steps down, do more overlap, yadda yadda yadda.....

This would invariably set us up for failure about 90% of the time.  It got very old, constantly getting beat up for not making schedule.  Or hey!  Making schedule but suffering rework due to poor first effort due to excessive speed.

Here we are moving under a tight timeline.  The process is at the point where the schedule can go sideways quickly, not unlike a paper machine outage schedule.  It's likely a common point in any schedule in which steps must be done in some semblance of order.  And the closer you are to projected completetion date/time, the faster the process moves.  I'm sure there is a name for that phenomenon.....

Thus the urge to rough out a gannt chart.  Yes, I began doing that this morning.  It's very helpful in mapping out process flow when you've got a shortage of time.  We've got a couple of beach runs to make, people picking up stuff, many tasks in progress simultaneously....all sorts of fragmented loose ends to tidy up.  I've learned if I don't map them out, I will discount how long they will take in my mind....and then it's a horrid scramble to the finish.

We can't afford a horrid scramble as we're both exhausted and not thinking as clearly as we can.

We are packing and hauling all the things to storage except the furniture.  Some of the furniture will be donated, and we will hire movers to move the rest.  And I'm totally thinking of hiring the final cleaning.

My LYS(s)

i am quite fortunate to enjoy two wonderful LYSs (local yarn shops for you muggles out there).  One is located in downtown Kelso (LaFavorites), and the other currently resides in my garage in moving boxes and plastic tubs.  Holy moly do cones of weaving yarn weigh a ton(!).  Nothing like having reality smack you in the face.  And I'll just be brutally honest here and admit that packing it all away is giving me a minor amount of anxiety.

I hit a hard wall yesterday.  I've been super laser focused (soccer camp reference for my former workmates if any are reading this) and have been packing like a machine.  The stress is getting to me and I didn't sleep hardly at all Tues night.  By 1 pm yesterday I was a zombie, and I literally couldn't function with any brain power.  It was weird.  I'm waaaay ahead of Gary in packing duties so I took the afternoon off.  I tried to take a nap and failed, but I think just resting helped me a great deal.

I woke this morning feeling much better, ready to face the day and relocate my yarn shop.
This afternoon I've a local guild meeting to run.......

Report Card

We received our home inspection list late last night.  Of the eleven really minor items on the list we are asked to complete three of them.  Some items were super nit picky, like a couple of loose siding nails.

In the end we have to caulk the top of the chimney edging, fix one strip of hanging insulation in the crawl space, and vent one exhaust fan to the outside. We have two bathrooms and both have exhaust fans that we DID vent to roof vents when we installed them.  I wonder if one came loose?  Guess we'll find out soon.

Then there are two ads-ones which were not code when we built our home: hurricane straps on the hot water heater and CO2 monitor.  Not sure why the CO2 monitors....

Also?  I'm finding this entire process moving at lightning speed.  I guess thats how cash sales work....

Prep Work

This winter I went through several rooms in the house and did some major destashing.  It felt so cathartic!  And now I'm reaping the benefits....those areas are straightforward to pack up.  The areas that did not suffer a destashing are taking the longest to pack: the pumphouse, greenhouse, garage, and our third bedroom I refer to as "Gary's cave".  Ugh.

The inspection guy came yesterday morning, accompanied by the buyers realtor.  We had errands in town, so we left.  Who knows what he will find?  We're not expecting anything terribly bad, but you never know.  And gads, it's not like we have a ton of time to deal with much else right now....
That whole inspection thing feels weird.  I get it, and will expect the same when we are looking to purchase.  The buyers don't do email, so yet another thing to slow the process down.

Uncertainties.......

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

We are now packing.  The reality of our decision has smacked us in the face!
Selling a home on a deadline is sort of like a family reunion: you can plan the event to death, but once the process begins it takes on a life of its own.

The amount of packing materials one needs is staggering.  Thankfully we received a HUGE amount of boxes courtesy of our former employer and Gary's sons current employer.  Yet I needed a ton of smaller boxes.....we own an alarming amount of books.  So off to town for them.  And yes, I bought them at Home Despot before I was aware of all the political issues......at this point, I'm using them.

Yesterday I filled every one of those smaller boxes and relocated them to storage.  I think I packed most of the heaviest stuff yesterday.  I'm actually looking forward to packing the studio contents as those will be blissfully lighter boxes.

I was contemplating a fire sale for fiber I wish to downsize, and I will do that eventually.  It makes more sense to do that later rather than now.  So instead of packing my vendor booth in the truck for CO, we loaded it up for storage.  It will be in the verrrrrry back of our enormous unit until we have a home again.

A Revolving Door, Offers, and a Sale

When we decided to put our home on the market, we did so with a fair amount of trepidation.  Our location is rural and the road, while paved and well maintained, is steep in a few places.  We knew that this would greatly reduce the pool of potential buyers.  And this did, indeed, prove to be somewhat true.....one guy who came and looked at the place gave us feedback that the road is too steep for his truck.  Ha ha, that did crack us up.  It is steep, but after driving around other neighborhoods, we've discovered it's no steeper than many others in this area.

We were not prepared for the volume of showings we received!  It's high mud season here, so that tends to reduce home buying traffic......but not this year.  We received our first offer after four days on the market (wow).  It was ok, but not acceptable so we soldiered on.  More showings!  A guy from CA who was unable to get up here timely sent his realtor up here to take a video of our place.

On day five a truck pulled into our driveway as many others had done.....yet rather than turn around, they continued to pull up in front of the garage.  I notice it was a nice truck, from CA.  The man got out and took a look around, so I went out on the porch and asked him if he needed any help (G was also home).  They were house hunting and wanted to know if our house was still for sale.  I said yes and invited him and his wife in to look at the place, notifying our realtor at the same time.

They visited with us as much as looking around our place.  They are both older than Gary and I.  They've sold their home...it hasn't closed yet, but loan approved and their inspection passed....so it's pretty much a done deal.  Very nice people from a rural area in N CA looking for a rural WA home.  This was their fourth trip up here...homes were selling before they could drive up here(!). After looking all around, they begged us to sell them our place.  They've a realtor in town and I still wasn't certain how serious they were, so I asked them to get us an official offer through their realtor and back to town they went.  By late that evening we received a full price cash offer from them but they were really wanting to take possession on apr 10 when their sale closed.

Yikes(!). We were scheduled to travel down to CO at the end of March as I had a vending booth at YarnFest.  There was no way I could swing that and be out of a home we've lived in for the past 27 years.  So I was formulating a counteroffer in my head to recoup the lost $$$ I would incur by cancelling the CO trip.  We had to think about this a bit.

Mid day on day six we received an offer from the CA video man (as I had begun to call him).  It was ok, but the older couple's offer was still better.  And while we were waiting for the video offer, the older couple sweetened their offer quite a bit to entice us out by Apr 10.

The offer was sweet enough that we signed, on the spot.  Holy cow.  We did it!

Hiding Out

What do you do when you are bombarded by frequent, but oddly spaced home showings and you live far from town?  You hide quietly in your travel trailer.  Totally not kidding.  It felt weird the first time I did it....slightly voyeuristic.  I didn't really overhear much as the trailer is quite always from the house.  We kept some snacks and some crossword puzzles down there to keep us occupied.  That system worked great!

Now when it's our turn to look at homes, I'll be looking closely at any RV on the property(!)

Resurrecting the old blog....with focus on moving out of Kelso

So here we are, our heads still reeling from the process of selling our Kelso home.

We decided to downsize and move off the mountain we've called home for the past 27 years.  A huge step!  The first step was to declutter and deep clean.  Our home had broken a basic law of physics: Newton's law.  For every item that was inserted into our home, there should've been an equal and opposite reaction (another item already in the home should fly out....or be removed).  Our home has a ridiculous amount of storage.....and all of it was full.  It was crazy!  I had just been surviving the last seven years of my career and the house truly reflected that.

Several trips to the dump and the local women's shelter thrift store resolved the clutter issue.  Deep cleaning (omg the carpal tunnel aches I gave myself) took a few days and the results were great!

Finally!  We were ready for our realtor and her camera.  We had our home on the market eight years ago, two different realtors.  Let me tell you, find one that not only knows the business and strategies necessary, but one who can take amazing photos!  Sherri Kingsley did an outstanding job with photos....and I had two previous sets to compare....and hers were way and above more pleasing.

The local real estate market is ultra crazy with too few homes on the market.  If you find the home of your dreams, you'd best be prepared to pull the trigger instantly. We had to make a decision: get a loan arranged ahead of time, set up a mortgage and then try to sell our house......or sell our house first, maybe move belongings twice, but will be ready for our new home with cash in hand.

Since our home is located in a very rural location, thereby automatically reducing the possible buyer pool, we elected to get our home on the market asap while the inventory is still quite low.  Less competition!

So we listed our home.  It took Zillow (for those of you still using that app), TWO days to find our listing.  That's two precious days, folks.  My preferred app is Redfin.  I receive instant email notifications whenever a home that fits my criteria comes on the market.

And the Beat Goes On...

While there are still some projects in the works at the old homestead, it's turned into a really nice place to hang out and enjoy good food and good times with family. Michele and Terry dragged the old headboard out of storage and had a great bonfire with it while we were there over New Year's.

The weather was spectacular, in the fifties a couple of days before the end of December, and we were having to shed layers of coats and sweatshirts while digging clams in the afternoon. Hey, it's a rough job, but someone has to do it. Michele and I have determined that we want to retire down at the beach near Gary and Terry, too, so we spent a couple of weekends this summer, and several days on the latest trip seeing condos with a realtor. We pretty well explored the peninsula.

Gary brought over a nice salmon, which we rubbed and planked, served with a fresh salad and potatoes toasted in butter in foil on the bbq. Tasted plenty of good wine, played some pinochle, chatted and laughed our way through the weekend. The gals went down to Seaview and did some antiquing one afternoon, we all went out to the very classy Depot restaurant one night, and Michele and I went hiking at Ledbetter Point, and checked out a local pizza parlor I was considering buying.

The clamming was wonderful, and we limited out two days in a row quickly, then just dug enough the third day to make ourselves some clam fritter appetizers in a special Willapa Bay breading. Ended up taking home nearly six pounds of cleaned clams in my backpack carry-on. Bon appetit!

Better all the Time

Things are definitely looking up, after a couple of years' work by Terry & Gary. The cabin has gone from being an eyesore to a comfortable and fun place to spend time at the beach. One can prepare meals in the kitchen without fear of plague, and breathe the air without tasting mold any more. The most recent change on the exterior is the removal of the out of control jungle of shrubbery that surrounded the house. It's amazing how much bigger the place looks now.

cleaning out the old shop

let's see if new blogger version will let me attach photos...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Memorial Day 2010

Terry and Gary have done a fantastic job of getting the cabin habitable once again. New roof, new siding, piles and piles of garbage cleared away, brush cleared out, new sheetrock on the ceilings, new light fixtures, and a ton of cleaning and painting.  Gary had a couple of huge alder trees cut down, and we spent some time moving the chunks to the firewood pile for splitting. Some of the pieces were barely lift-able by two men, and Bruce and I worked up quite a sweat!

After all the junk was cleared out over the course of the last year, there's still a few things that we thought someone else might like, so Terry and Bonnie and Michele dragged them all out onto the back porch. I created a yard sale sign to put out front, and the sale began. Every Memorial Day weekend on the Long Beach Peninsula there's a peninsula-wide yard sale; literally thousands of sales going on simultaneously, which generates a bit of traffic. Once the gals figured out the correct sign location, we actually saw some of that traffic, and sold some items. The steel bowls in the picture to the left are something Grandma Pat saved from one of the hospitals along the way. No one wanted to buy them, but I brought a few home for utility bowls around the garage and house. They'll make great scrubbing solution bowls for painting and house cleaning, I think.

After the lumber was cleared, there was a great big aspen stump in the middle of the back yard, so Gary hooked up a logging chain to the front of his truck and pulled it. It took several attempts to get it to come loose, but we were finally able to move it to the side of the road. Then, unfortunately, there was a big hole that had to be filled in, which we did by hand.

We all went for a walk down on the beach on Friday evening while the weather was clear. It wasn't all that crowded for a holiday weekend, and I caught a good photo of a bald eagle surveying the waves, perhaps looking for his next meal.

Our next meal was shrimp scampi, and I was certainly glad to see that the kitchen was way cleaner than it was last year. No qualms at all about cooking and serving a feast. We all gathered around the table to fill our bellies, and later on to play some cards and reminisce.

On Saturday, the weather kept us indoors for the most part, so we worked on painting and cleaning things. I put a coat of primer on the ceiling and walls of the "meat locker", after clearing a few things out of the way, and the rest of the crew painted in the entry way, kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Such an amazing difference in the place now!

Note the absense of piles of trash on the couch, the pretty new fireplace insert, and a ceiling free of tobacco stains and cobwebs.

On Sunday afternoon, Michele and I decided to go exploring, so we drove up to Oysterville, a historic fishing village, and took a walking tour. It was pouring down rain and we were wearing our slickers, so we didn't get too wet. Our first stop was in the Oysterville Church.

About a half a mile further up the road, there's a fish market that was quite busy with the weekend trade. We saw some fishermen out in the bay, despite the terrible weather.

On our way back to the car, we surprised a local having lunch in his neighbor's rhododendrons. We drove around for a while after that, looking at all the houses for sale along the coast. The depressed real estate market has really taken its toll. There were tons of vacant homes, condos, and mobile homes with signs in front of them.

In search of a mocha, latte, or maybe just a good cup of coffee, we headed down the coast again, stopping in Long Beach at a little drive through for a cup of Nirvana. We decided to continue south to the town of Ilwaco, and wandered around the boat basin there, watching the fishing boat crews clean up after their day on the water. I gotta book a charter there sometime.

We decided, due to the weather, and the possibility of spending some time with our son on his 96 hour leave from the Marine Corps, to leave on Monday. It poured rain nearly all the way home, making driving a bit white-knuckle when I had to pass semi trucks and couldn't see anything but the yellow line on the left side of the road. We did see some spectacular rainbows, including a couple of doubles. Here's hoping you find the pot o' gold at the end of your road!

Transformations...

As the year winds to a close, our cabin lay snug in its new outer coat: a new roof, siding, and windows! The siding sports a light gray primer, it will be a darker gray next spring. The focus now points inward: we need ceiling insulation in the addition, and a ceiling throughout most of the cabin. We can't afford to completely sheetrock the place - holy cow is that expensive!!! So we're painting the paneling (wood lover that I am - I never DREAMED I would paint like this). First, two coats of Bins. Smelly stuff, but very affective. Then two coats of latex satin paint. Aaaahhhh! The ceilings in the den and the entry kitchen (when you first enter the cabin) are existing old stuff that is filthy and would be difficult to replace. So: two coats of Bins and some ceiling white, and an amazing transition!! Heck, I even slept in the cabin this past weekend. And I survived with all digits intact! We're headed back down in a couple of days - to celebrate my birthday and dig clams for three straight days! Yahooooooo!

A Year in Review...

Earlier this year we started out here... Now look! This past winter..... And now! Another older view....notice Michele's respirator! And now.... And now the work inside has also begun....Binz (or however it's spelled) - think super killz odor/mildew/ super sealer.....applied in the old den (soon to be guest room) The den....at the beginning! Just look at it now!!!

All Done

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Originally uploaded by spinpygora

Here's the new fireplace door all installed. It has two bifold glass doors and that chain-mail type curtain inside (cuz you can't have a fire in there with the glass doors closed!)

I uploaded this iPhone photos to Flickr, then tried to paste them into my blogger software. This used to be very easy to do. Apparently too easy and caused problems, so now you have to link your Flickr acct to the Blogger account and you end up posting single photos in a blog entry.

I am NOT liking this! Photos look much better uploaded to hardrive,. then uploaded to web server. What a pain.....

It's About Time!

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by spinpygora

I've not been to the beach cabin since September. Holy cow! My work/personal schedule for October was horrendous...and I've nobody to blame but myself for the most part.

The siding and window job has not yet begun. I know the contractor wanted to be helpful, but sheesh, if you're not going to get to the job until after hunting season - TELL ME! Believe it or not, I'd rather have the truth the first time rather than after the fact. Needless to say, when we stopped by to talk to the contractor at his place of business.....I stayed in the truck. That was probably better for all parties at this point(!)

So the siding/window job is starting on Monday (it'saboutime!). They really do wonderful work - I just hate slipping deadlines. Also getting a quote on insulation/sheetrock for the ceilings.

We did go to the beach this past Wednesday. I took a day off, partially because I wanted to go to the beach, and partially to spend the day with Gary. Between my work hours and his hunting schedule, we'd not had a decent conversation for two weeks...and they'd had 100 mph wind gusts at the beach - we were concerned.....

The cabin survived the high winds just fine. We did have some water on the new subflooring in front of the fireplace and on either side. We'd taped up the opening of the fireplace with heavy plastic, but it was not enough for those strong winds. Lucky for us, our new fireplace door had arrived, and we spend the morning installing it!

As Promised...

A photo of the new roof....and the rotten siding.......and the jungle of vegetation...... New siding begins in two weeks! Yay! That includes new windows!!! We cannot keep grinning at our new roof!!!

Ruh-Roh! Or Maybe TMI??

Ok, that is Scooby-Doo for "uh-oh". I've spent the better part of my entire life on septic systems. Hmmm, that previous sentence sounds like I've got medical issues..... What I mean to say is everywhere I've ever lived (college and Longview being the only exceptions), my places of residence have been on a septic tank/drainfield. This is not a hardship as long as the system is properly maintained. You know what's coming here, don't you? A little voice kept whispering to me that the beach cabin septic system has likely not been maintained (a fair assumption given the physical condition of the cabin itself). When we removed a portion of the floor in front of the fireplace, we both scooted underneath looking for uh, more boxes, and perhaps buried treasure. My dad had been told his father's silver dollar collection was underneath the house. No treasure (how sad....) or boxes (thankgoodness!) but off in the distance towards the back of the house, I could see a small pile of what looked like, uh, toilet paper. Ok. Fine. Let's call the plumber. We are NOT going to deal with this ourselves. Yep- the sewer line under the original cabin is in good shape, the sewer line under the addition was not glued together and has come apart under duress. Duress? Oh yeah, a MAJOR case of ivy in the sewer lines has caused our plumbing issues. Where is that septic tank, anyhow? Just north of the deck. Where are the cleanouts? Oh yeah, UNDER the deck. Guess who has a new trapdoor feature to their deck. Uh-huh, that would be us. This is not a casual ivy problem, this is largishly thick woody stems in the septic tank and into the sewer pipes. This has been an issue for several YEARS by the look of things. The tank itself is in good shape with a rather thick and sturdy metal lid which is in remarkeable shape considering its age! The plumbers, bless their hearts, dug deep holes beneath the house and removed "the evidence". The bathroom smells much nicer - oh, especially after the plumbers removed the toilet (it was merely sitting on top the pipe, not fastened (!), installed a new flange and wax seal before properly seating the toilet. So, in my best "bathroom humor voice" I am happy to report we have an audible water-feature sound....at least until the tank fills up. No photos for this post! Roof photos coming later..... We are on the contractors list for our new windows and Hardie plank siding! Yay!!! I feel like renting that Tom Hanks moving "The Money Pit".....