At this time, we had been in our own home for a year-and-a-half. It was January 2019 and we had finally gotten all the boxes unloaded, set up all the rooms, and cleared out the garage so we could park both cars inside. We had renovated the kitchen and half bath to make Kathy happy, installed new front and rear doors to stop the leaks, and replaced the 50-gallon tank water heater with a small electric tankless model since the old one was living on borrowed time. We had two different water heaters in past years start leaking all over the basement and it was never fun having to stop everything and fix the problem. Much easier doing it on your own timetable. But now our commitment to the new house meant we would have to sell this house, and soon. We called our realtor and set up a timetable to close on the house during the summer.
I had just cleaned the garage and installed the tankless water heater
If you've ever sold a house you know you don't just put up a sign and hope for the best. Years of watching the various home shows on TV convinced Kathy of our need to prep the house for it to show the best. This meant fixing up all the little things yet undone that would surely be noticed by a prospective buyer, and staging the house by de-cluttering every room. Nobody knows how to "clutter" a house better than Kathy, and I say that in the most positive way. When you live in a home you make it your own by painting it your colors and decorating it in a way that makes you feel comfortable. The surroundings of a new house may be new but it begins to feel like home when you see the familiar. That might mean a wall full of family pictures, shelves full of knick-knacks, or a garage filled with junk while your cars sit out in the driveway. Prospective buyers are not interested in your decorating know-how but prefer to see more of a clean blank slate from where they can start their own journey. So we started packing up all the extra stuff and cleaning the entire place to show its best. I'm always amazed at how I put off fixing all these small projects "until later" only to never get them complete until we are ready to move. (Note to self: Do better on this next project. Get all the little things done right away!)
These shingles would not lay flat so I tarred and clamped them
Our next project in the house was to have been new laminate flooring. Some of the glued-down hardwood pieces near the front and rear doors were deteriorated from rain penetrating the old doors. I did not relish the thought of tearing out all that glued-down flooring, carefully removing all the baseboard, installing the laminate, and then just as carefully re-installing the baseboard. It never occurred to me that the floors were perfectly acceptable if the bad pieces were replaced, but my son thought of it and suggested I leave the floors as is. The floors were still unacceptable to Kathy because it was the dreaded "orange" wood, but now it meant we had one less project to do, and she wouldn't be there to see it. My son even had a better reason for saying so, in that I could use all the laminate flooring I had already purchased when we did the basement build. Problem solved, at both places. After realizing the usefulness of items already in the house, I made sure to save all the items that would be helpful to me in the new build that weren't needed in this house. Certain lights that were Kathy's favorites were removed and replaced with others I had around. I removed my Nest thermostat and put back the one that originally came with the house. I took the water softener with me as nobody I talked to in Georgia had ever even heard of a water softener. I ended up with a collection of small items that would help me in my new project, but didn't affect the house I was selling. In the past I had left everything behind and always regretted it. This time, no regrets.
I took my stack of flooring with me to the next project
So by the time May rolled around we had packed up many boxes, cleared out the clutter, and cleaned everything within an inch of its life. It was time to call the realtor to get this house on the market. This was the same realtor who had gone out of her way to help us get the house in the first place after many disappointments when deals fell through. She surprised us with her suggested listing price, took all her photos, wrote up the details, and the listing went live. After just three days and numerous showings, we had an offer that would lead to a closing about 45 days later. The obligatory inspection showed the need for some shingle repair which we had fixed. We had never had any leaks during out two years there but had seen a folded over shingle which led to a number of minor issues that were repaired. By the end of June we had finished all the packing as we prepared for the closing.
It's always exciting when you make it to the successful closing!
In a perfect world, our house would have closed the day before we closed on the new house. I'm sure you know we don't live in a perfect world, not yet anyway. We still had not heard of a closing date on the new house so we figured it would be September or later. We now had to figure out what to do with our stuff from now until we could move them into the new house. Jon and Myric were getting their house ready for the market and it would not make sense to move everything back into their house. We checked out storage units in the area but there were very few available and they were all small. We'd need several of them. In the end we found a local company that rented large storage containers by the month, delivered them to your house, and then picked them up and stored them indoors until you needed them. Our goal was to fit everything into this one container but that was a goal unmet. Despite my best efforts at packing tightly and to the ceiling, we came to the back end of the container with more stuff to go.
One last garage sale to find a home for the last few items
Since we needed a place to stay until we could all move to the new house, we moved our bed and a few items to Jon and Myric's bonus room. As they say, deja vu all over again. We held an impromptu garage sale and disposed of some items, gave some more to Goodwill, and then sat down and cried. I can't remember if we really did or if we just felt like that but the fact remained we needed to find more storage space. We decided to check storage units once again and found a nice one close by that was indoors. It was small, like the others we had seen before, but we only needed enough room for the last necessary items. Many trips in the car later, we had the storage unit filled and the house empty. It was a bittersweet moment as we had really enjoyed living here in this house. But there was no time for sadness as the closing was right around the corner. After all the necessary signatures the house was no longer ours. We were exhausted but we were moving on.
No doubt the renovated kitchen helped attract a buyer for us
After moving back into Jon and Myric's home temporarily we started helping them prepare their house for listing. I went down a list of items to be fixed while Kathy helped with the cleaning and staging. After it was listed we made numerous mad dashes to straighten up the house and go somewhere else while prospective buyers examined the house. Their experience would be a little more frustrating. Several made offers only to back out days later. We were all happy when they eventually closed, though it was a couple months after moving into the new home. In the meantime we had the closing on the new house, thankfully using the funds from our sale to complete that purchase in August of 2019, nearly seven months after signing the contract.
Two days later, Kathy and I emptied Jon and Myric's house of our items and then proceeded to the storage unit to empty out those various items. These all went into the basement. The next day our storage container arrived at the house and we decided to hire a couple strong young guys to empty it for us as we were just fried by that point. All of these boxes and furniture items also ended up in the basement, with some of our daily living possessions going into a couple bedrooms of the new house until we could finish the basement. We would once again be faced with living in a home while building. Those boxes and furniture pieces were moved countless times back and forth in the basement as we cleared out space to work on a section, and then moved on to the next. Would it ever end?
Furniture and larger items stored
Jon and Myric had all the items in their old house moved to the new house a couple days after us. Kathy and I took a few days in Gatlinburg to clear our heads for the next stage of the new house project. The house was built over an eight month period (on and off, with a lot more "off" than we would have liked) and now our basement apartment project would begin. Yes, we had thought about what we wanted to do down there and how we would do it, but we were just now able to look the basement over and get a clear picture of what we had to work with. There were many thoughts about the project that were discussed over our time in Gatlinburg and on the trip there and back. But when we returned the project would begin in earnest, and each day we would be just that much closer to having a place of our own once again.
Arktander
(aka David Andreasen)
