House is back on the market

In the next day or two the house should show up in MLS and in Picket Fences, our FSBO magazine.  Since this is the third house and I've worked in real estate (80's) and banking we thought we would use Flat Fee Real Estate, we are using them to list in MLS, there is no lock box with this service so we will have to let the real estate agents in and when buyers call from our FSBO ad we will have to show the house. Everything we are hearing is the market is picking up and houses are starting to sell, sure hope we get her sold this year.

All of our ducks are almost all in a row, just making some final decisions on what state we will declare residency.

This weekend it's suppose to get in the 40's and sunny, great weather for cleaning out the garage, shed and workshop once they're done we can say the house has been totally gone through. Where oh where is our buyer, we are so ready.

Until next time...

Getting there

What a busy few days it has been around here. Waiting to hear back from Flat Fee, had a few questions but as soon as they are answered we will get the house listed once again.

Dave has the furnace all set, handy having a maintenance tech as a husband. Purging is as done as it can be, on the main floor all the closets and cabinets have been gone through. There is very little kept that won't be going in the RV, of course there will still be the final push of getting rid of some clothes, dishes in case we are here for another holiday and just a few things that will require a run to Goodwill when we sell the house. Aside from the garage the house has been cleaned from top to bottom. The first level still has some piles of stuff, this is the garage sale area. Packing is as done as it is going to get until the final packing takes place, just a few pictures and wall hangings-don't want to have to fix the holes don't have that paint anymore. There are 3 boxes that are partially packed, will also finish them when we do the final pack. So the house is as ready as it's going to get, of course there are things that need to be done but the quandary is do you invest in new carpeting. new windows, new furnace and such or do you keep the house price a little lower, we are going with the second option, why spend good money when someone else may come right behind you and change it all out. Before we head to Maplewoods for the season we do have the garage, a shed and workshop to go through, we should have until the end of April to get those things done, VT is not conducive to early openings at their campgrounds. So by the end of April (5 1/2 weeks) we still have a lot to get done including my trip to FL to drive my folks home and a garage sale.

Heard from the boys this week. David had been in Philadelphia visiting his girlfriend Laura. While out and about he lost his wallet, of course that added a lot of stress to an otherwise great weekend. After filing a police report and having to jump through a few extra hoops to get on board his flight he made it home safely. He hopes to head back east in May or June, all depends on how $olvent he is after he closes on his new (to him) house. He is in the final stages of purchasing his first home, it is a short sale in Surprise AZ, bought it for what we sold our first house for in 1985, and his is just a few years old.

Tom, our younger son, called to share some news with us, me in particular. In the last few years Tom has started bowling on leagues, he inherits this interest from both Dave and I, since highs school and through the late mid 2000's I had bowled on a weekly bowling team and when Dave worked nights he used to bowl on an early morning league. Until recently my friend Rene was still on the team we were on together when we left NY 20 years ago. Anyway Tom called to share his news of bowling his first game over 200, 213 in fact on St Patrick's Day, think the beer may have helped. Too bad it wasn't in a league, no other recognition, I'm thinking of sending him one of my old bowling patches from my over 200 games, found them not too long ago and didn't get rid of them yet. Tom is also hoping to come out east this summer, he's thinking of June for his birthday. Since we are headed west in October we will be seeing both boys so if they don't make it east this summer no problem.

Snoop has acclimated well to living here. While I'm enjoying him I do realize we are no where near ready to commit to a furkid right now. We are looking forward to getting back to the campground where there is usually a dog or two to pet and love.

Now that I have the house under control and have finished the projects I wanted to before we left for the summer I can really start thinking about what to get ready to pack and even start some planning on our trip, as long as it's about RV'ing and not the house, had enough of focusing on the house for a  bit.

Until next time..

Carbon monoxide poisoning

It's the last day of winter and of course we are getting a snow storm, we'll see how much it brings. Can't wait to be done with snow and cold, if we have our way we'd never spend another winter in it.


Monday after gym got my $ for the bottles, was good to see Nate & Josh Cookson were still working there, they're from our neighborhood and we've watched them grow up, just don't get to see them much anymore. After a stop at U-Haul Carol and I headed to lunch at Applebee's talking and laughing the time away. After few more stops we headed home where we found Dave home from work early, seems he may have a bit of carbon monoxide poisoning. He thinks on Sunday he may have inhaled a bit of fumes and they'll just have to work themselves out of his system, he ended up taking Tuesday off, he has to be back on Friday so will have a few days more to recover. I had  carbon monoxide poisoning once while working at the bank, seems we all did, shut the branch down for a few days, so we do know it'll take a bit to get out of his system.

Took stock of my packing supplies, U-Haul will buy back any unused boxes, since I'm just about done and I still need one box (didn't get one long enough for two things when I was there yesterday) I will plan to go back the next time I go to the gym. I'm keeping a few medium boxes and I still have some picture\mirror boxes for the last of the things when we sell the house. So for now I have 1 box to pack and some straightening up, as soon as Dave gets the furnace fixed we'll get the house back on the market.

Until next time....

Furnace

Yesterday Dave got a temporary fix done on the furnace, have to order a fan motor or something. During the afternoon we got the paperwork done for Flat Fee Realty, going to try this route for the summer. We know the house needs work but it is a good large home with income potential at a decent price, we just need the right person to come through, sure wish they'd hurry up and get here. We don't want to put any more money in since inevitably it won't be what the new owners want, we think we've priced it accordingly, time will tell. Meanwhile the pile for the garage sale grows, the room with the stuff for the RV doesn't seem to be accumulating much from house these days. Went through the laundry room and now have more stuff to get rid off, lots of paints and chemicals, I'll do it after gym one day.

Snoop seems to be settling in fine, finding his places to hang out and his part of the bed at night. He's bonded to me, the other day we were sitting in our office and Dave was holding Snoop, as I came towards the office Snoop jumped off of Dave trying to get to me, well he ended up in the garbage can and couldn't get out, I was more concerned he had hurt himself so didn't get the camera out, but afterwards I was laughing so hard I started crying, just too funny.

Off to the gym now the on to errands. Need a few boxes to pack up some larger peices and need to drop off our bottles. In VT we have a bottle deposit, so there are a lot of fundraising bottle drives. Our campground Maplewoods is collecting bottles to fund a play ground, instead of taking the bottles with us when we go I'll return them today and save the $ for when we get out there.

Until next time...

Oil and Snoop

Woke up this morning to a chill in the house, yesterday Dave mentioned he should check the oil tanks, we'll he didn't, not that it would have made a difference if he had checked since it was so late in the day when we had this conversation. Now awaiting a phone call from the on call delivery guy and we'll get to pay a special fee to have him deliver today, hope this house sells soon.

Yesterday we decided to help a friend out, we are dog sitting her daughters Chihuahua, Snoop. At heart we are large dog people, our last four footed kids were Rottweiler mixes, Strider was the smallest at 115 pounds and his brother G.O. was 125 pounds, we lost Strider to bone cancer in 2010 and G.O. we lost in 2011 to Grand Mal seizures. We decided at the time to not get another dog, last year camping we enjoyed all the dogs we came across, we were actually asked to adopt a puppy at one of the campgrounds we were at. So we are test driving having a small dog around, so far so good.

At 8:30 the oil man came, Dave paid the "here's your sign" fee of $100, we took on 200 gallons ($738) and the house started warming up. But there is a motor thingy that has finally bitten the dust, so the furnace kept shutting off. We were having our close friends over for dinner so while Mike gave Dave a hand getting things set up for the night, Les and Deb met Snoop, Carol could report to her sister Snoop was doing fine. We did get in another fun evening playing mexican train and enjoying everyone's company. Deb showed me the progress on the quilt, all I can say is Wow, it sure will look beautiful in the RV.

Until next time...

All done packing for now, almost

Today I finished boxing all the stuff that was ready to be packed up, moved it all to the garage where we are storing all of our go to storage stuff. In the garage awaiting their move to a storage unit we have so far 13 med, 10 small, 10 book, 2 picture, 2 stemware and 1 wedding box, a total of 38 boxes, not bad considering how much was in this house a few years ago, and it was all just stuff. The things awaiting garage sale day and the stuff already gone has not been missed. Why did we have so much stuff.

Last night I met my good friend and former co worker Angela for dinner, what a great time we had. It was great catching up on our families and lives. Just as I figured she was very supportive and a little in awe of our decision to fulltime and asked lots of questions. She recently attended the Champlain Valley RV Show, we discussed what she saw and I tried to share what little knowledge I've gained in the last year. We made plans to try and get together with the husbands soon, maybe they will make it to Maplewoods for a visit.

We ordered Dave a toolbox for the truck, Brute Commercial Fifth Wheel Tailgate Tool Box. Since we will be in the RV at least 7 months this year he wants to have his tools with him, can't say as I blame him. We still have to figure out if we are going to keep the tailgate and tonneau cover on.

I'm feeling good about what has been accomplished in the last month or so. We are much more ready for D day whenever that gets here, since we still have to live here we do have furniture and such still around in some rooms, but don't look in the cabinets and such they're pretty empty.  We have a few more places to go through but they all require Dave's participation, since it is his weekend off we plan to tackle the laundry/furnace room and garage, after that it's the shed and shop. Come on buyers we're ready to move.

I was looking back over our bank statements from last year, on 3/21/12 we put down the deposit for the Mountaineer. What a difference a year makes, can't wait to see where this journey takes us!

Until next time...

Purging Almost Done?

By Monday evening the main floor of the home had been gone through, stuff had been sorted,if we were going to store it I moved it to the pile to be boxed up, other stuff headed to the garage sale pile and then a few things made it to the room we are storing all of the stuff we've accumulated over the winter for the RV. I then went into the attic to start the migration of  30+ bins and other assorted things to the first floor. I had made a bit of headway when Dave came home from work, OT day so he gets out when he's had enough. At work Monday Dave discovered over the course of your career you can take a total of 3 years of leave, Dave's mind started going. Well another scenario has arisen, once the house sells he would take the first winter off for 6 months, come back in early May then apply for another 6 months once winter gets closer, this would provide us with enough to spend 6 months with out working, just touring around the warm sunny spots in the country.  Well after discussing this new scenario and running the numbers I went to shut up the attic, Dave insisted we finish emptying it. If we finished then it would be the last time we would have to be up there, 20 minutes later we had it emptied, our last trip to the attic. How good it felt to do something for the last time.

After waking at 11:30 and never getting back to sleep Tuesday started with all the 30+ bins sitting in our bedroom,it's 24'x24' so we had the room, since it wasn't a gym day I got started on moving the boxes downstairs right away. By the end of the day it all had been gone through, there's now 2 bins for the RV, 4 medium (16"x16") boxes of Hallmark ornaments, 1 medium box of Christmas decorations and 3 small boxes of Christmas decorations, still have to finish boxing some of it but that's what the final result will be. That's still a lot of Christmas stuff I know but when you consider there were 20+ bins stuffed full of Christmas stuff it's not bad. There are now 8 bins of stuff for the garage sale and 6 bins of stuff for my mom, hope she's ready. I plan to take the boxes to my folks house before I go get them in FL. Now to figure out a time for the garage sale.

A lot has been accomplished over the last few weeks towards the goal of purging. The laundry room, garage, a shed and shop still to go, most of the stuff in those places will not go with us so it's a matter of junking it or selling it. I look around the house and don't see anything that needs to be boxed up, just gotten rid of. The garage sale pile is huge, starting to tell friends about looking through it, it would take at least two truck loads to get it to Goodwill. When I think about how much we got rid of a few years ago and now this new pile it's just mind boggling. Lots of dollars, but so far haven't really missed anything we've gotten rid of. If we had thought about it we might have kept the big screen TV, pool table and card table for staging the first floor, 20-20 hindsight is great.

Today was a gym day, still tired from not sleeping Monday night but working out has helped the energy level. Spent the afternoon catching up on other blogs and looking forward to dinner out with a former co worker.

Angela and I worked together at the bank, while I'm at the tail end of the baby boomers she is nearer to the beginning. We worked together just over 6 years and enjoyed each others company immensely, we haven't seen much of each other over the last few years but with my new found semi retired status I am trying to catch up with some old friends. Angela and I have rowed Dragonboats together, walked all night in the Relay for Life and when I would go away on a road trip she was right there along with us. Angela would hang a US map in the break room, as I would update friends and family of our travels she would mark our route, when I returned we spent many a lunch talking of the things we had seen, some places she had been earlier in her life so she could really imagine them, she so enjoyed when we did Route 66. Because of Angela we always were aware of being in a new state, had to find Angela a rock, I'd then put them in a ziploc and write the state where we found it. In 2011 when we went on our 6 week 14,000 mile road trip I was no longer at the bank and hadn't talked with Angela much so there was no collection of rocks made though lots of discussion of ones that looked good, even did it last fall walking along the ocean. Recently while cleaning out the curio cabinet I pondered what to do with all the sea shells we collected over the years, Angela!!! Sure hope she wants them, don't want to throw them out.

 Heard from my niece on Facebook today, next week they head to Corpus Christi. Last year my brother bought a sail boat and they spend some of the school breaks down there. If the house was sold we could plan to meet them there, oh well one day.

We have friends in IL, they used to live back in NY, he was the photographer at our wedding, it is their son's birthday today.  He's 26 today, same as our older son, they were childhood friends though I doubt either remembers. Well on Facebook Rene said something about remembering a picture taken with the mom's and their son's (there were 3 couples) and of course who just got done putting all those photos in the computer :) so off I went to find pictures and I found the moms and sons and the dads and sons and they are now on Facebook, everyone is getting quite the laugh. What memories it brought back, the 80's big hair, gold chains those were the days.

Until next time...