I must apologize for being so absent these past few months! We’ve had a busy summer and fall with weeks worth of company, a move into our new home, cleaning the old house and coordinating showings to prospective buyers. I’m happy to say we now have a buyer and, fingers crossed, we’ll close in a few weeks. It’s been a long slog, for sure!
But we’re now settled into the new place and have (almost) found a place for everything we moved over here. Doug can finally get all our vehicles into the garage!
What We Learned Along the Way
First, we should have cleaned out the old house of all our non-essentials before we moved. We tried to get rid of the old stuff, but ended up moving most of it over to the new house. Then we went through the painstaking process of sorting through everything and making a number of trips to Goodwill. We’re not done yet. There’s still a few more loads to go!
It’s amazing how much “stuff” we had! I won’t bore you by listing it all, but suffice it to say we filled numerous truckloads. At some point we looked at each other and said:
Me: I wish we’d cleared all this stuff out of our old house sooner.
Hubby: Why didn’t you tell me to get rid of all this stuff before we moved?
Second, we shouldn’t have put our old house on the market as soon as we did. We were planning on a “best case” scenario in terms of timing. (We’re such silly people!)
We had hoped our new house would be built much earlier than it did, but noooooo! In addition to a few other items, there was a problem getting concrete work done on a retaining wall that delayed us over a month. A month!
Then we failed our first inspection and had to fix some things. One of them was a pane of glass that needed to be replaced in an upstairs bathroom. The window was one and one half inches too low and close to the shower and required tempered glass in both the upper and lower panes. (Just in case whoever was in the shower would feel compelled to leap out of the tub and fall into the window.) Trouble was, the upper pane was not tempered. Lo and behold, we couldn’t get the glass quickly — it was on backorder! So we waited two weeks for this dinky little pane of glass to arrive before we could re-schedule the inspection.
FINALLY we passed the followup inspection, got our Certificate of Occupancy from the Building Department and started the big move!
Appliance Adventures
Once we were into the new house, you should have seen us trying to get used to our new appliances!
The new clothes washer is fully digital with a locking lid and a HUGE drum. The first time I used it, the darned thing got off balance and tried to wiggle its way out from between the stationary sink and the wall. I couldn’t figure out how to get the lid to unlock so I could re-balance the load. I started whining about how I wanted my old washing machine back from the old house. We were seriously considering swapping out the new appliances for the old. Eventually, I calmed down and figured I’d try to get used to the mechanics. I reasoned it’s better to have a brand new washing machine than one that’s 15 years old. (Or is it?)
Our next adventure was figuring out how to start the dishwasher. Do you think it occurred to us to open up the booklet of directions? Nope. We figured it couldn’t be that difficult. So we experimented by fingering our way across the panel of digital “sensors” and finally hit upon the one that started things up. Once you hit the Power button there are 14 different options to choose from to get the kind of wash you want. Then you hit the Start sensor. But you’d better be quick about slamming the door shut because it only gives you four seconds before it shuts down. Then you have to start the whole process over again!
Finally we figured it out but we didn’t hear anything happening. So there’s Doug and me leaning over with our ears pressed against the dishwasher listening for water sloshing around inside. It seemed like minutes had passed with the two of us crouched over waiting for sounds that signaled success! Now that we know what to expect, it’s old hat.
Home Sweet Home
It feels good to be in our new home after years of going through the building process. Our marriage is still intact despite the construction issues that cropped up. Our kitty Snickers has settled in and initiated our new carpet with a number of thrown-up hairballs. We’re getting used to the sound of the heater coming on, which makes us feel like a jet aircraft has launched from our rooftop.
And the house I had built after the wildfire will now belong to someone else. Hopefully they will enjoy it as much as we did.
We’re home now and we’re blessed!
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