Project Backyard: The Beginning

Our house came with almost no landscaping. We have grass. A poorly done (and half-finished looking) raised garden bed on the front of the house.  A set of temporary stairs to get out of breakfast room and into the back  yard. There is a sprinkler system that has served to keep the grass alive, though one of the sprinkler heads was placed below the afore-mentioned breakfast room sliding door and therefore waters our temporary stairs as much as it waters as the yard. 

We did add a bunch of “trees” last year. By “tree” I mean “twig with roots”, most of which we lost to some combination of drought, excess water (ironically, from poor drainage around where the sump pump empties), and our lawn service’s mowers.  Guys on commercial mowers don’t recognize six-inch twigs as landscape features unless they are surrounded them with large patches of mulch or edging. Yes, we paid for mowers and not for trees—mowers were cheaper.

We have exactly  two trees that are bigger than a foot tall, and both are more bush-sized than tree size. Neither are in the front of the house. The raised garden bed and another small patch of yard between the driveway and the front steps both have some perennials, including irises that were divided from ones we grew at the old house (which in turn came from my mother-in-law’s garden in Iowa).  So the yard is not completely bare.

It is time for some landscape work. Actually, it’s way past time for some landscape work, but we finally have the financial resources to attempt something.

First up: the back yard. The temporary stairs need to go.  I would really like to move our patio table out of the garage (where it has been collecting random boxes of junk). I would like to grill in the backyard rather than the driveway. I’m sure our neighbors will appreciate that as well.

We don’t have a good idea what we want in the yard. Just a vague idea that it should look “nice” and “in keeping with the house”. We need trees. We need some privacy screening along one side of the house for noise and headlights from the nearby road. We need a place to sit, and a place to grill. We want to keep a large grassy area available.  We are not planning a large swing-set (as one kid doesn’t care to swing and the other will outgrow it all too soon), but do have one smaller climber to install and want room for the kids to play. We have kicked around the idea of someday putting in a pool, though we aren’t sure and the kids aren’t old enough for that yet. We love the idea of an outdoor kitchen or a screen room or a fire pit or any number of other fancy features, but kind of want  to take things in phases and not overspend right away.

We do not have a walk-out basement, but the breakfast room door is about four feet above the grade of the yard, and it is smack in the middle of the back of the house.  That makes part of the design harder. We could go with a low deck, or steps down to a patio, or some combination thereof. We could build it toward the street-side of the house so that the entertaining space is closer to the road (with some traffic sounds) and runs behind the family room. Or we could build it towards the opposite side of the house, farther from traffic but right next to our master bedroom windows. 

We are incapable of doing this job ourselves. Though at least one friend has told us how easy laying a paver patio is, we have neither the time off work, the brute strength and/or tools to dig and level that much sod, nor the inclination to spend our vacation time digging. We are definitely hiring this out.

Last night, we took our first baby step towards figuring this mess out: we had a concrete contractor come for an estimate. They do stamped and stained concrete work, which is a slightly less expensive alternative to pavers. We also like the look of pavers, but a poured concrete patio with a brick-or-stone look is a definite option, especially if it leaves room in the budget for more of the trees and possibly some drainage work, or a few new pieces of patio furniture. And it would take less time—only about two days rather than a week or more.

I was disappointed that the contractor expected us to know exactly where and how big and what shape we wanted—I wanted more design guidance and he wanted to measure.  I had no quarrel with the price that he quoted: the price-per-square foot was within what I had seen online, and though he quoted a much larger area than I had anticipated using, the price was reasonable.  Oddly, he was busy talking us away from more expensive options.  One of my biggest pet peeves among salespeople is ones who attempt to down-sell us.  Frankly, I want someone to let us dream big, and show us where we can maximize value (or where we can split a big job into pieces that can be spread across a couple of years so we aren’t financing everything).

Next up: calling an actual landscape designer or two. We probably should have started there.

Digging Out

One year ago, our family had barely hidden most of our moving boxes. We were paying two mortgages and enjoying a short breather in the mad rush of keeping our former home sufficiently kept up for showing. We had painted out the last of the bold colors that had garnered snarky remarks from house shoppers (a butter-yellow dining room and bubblegum pink laundry room were the final victims of the neutral paint).  There was, for a month or two, no need to mow grass. We had not yet been invaded by birds or attacked by a massive hail storm.

The Christmas decorations had been put away, leaving corners and walls looking a little sad. School was in session. There were hints of drought, but only in the form of an unseasonably warm winter.

We were getting by. I guess that’s not too bad, in the grand scheme of things.

We were buried under too much credit card debt (too much for our own personal preferences, anyway, though it was a number that seems lower than many “average” credit card debt figures I see online). We were paying too much for a school where both of our children were struggling (despite both being well above average in intellect). Though were certainly paying our bills on time, we had almost nothing leftover for unexpected expenses, let alone niceties. We were frugal with extras for the kids, slow in signing them up for school activities, cringed every time they got a birthday party invitation. We shopped every grocery sale, cutting back on nicer items like steaks and alcohol, focusing on sandwiches and other low-cost foods.

I was stressed out and frustrated everywhere I turned. The house needed a few things (like a patio, and bedroom furniture, and some area rugs), but I had no money to make any of that happen. Lots of ideas, no way to implement them.  I had finally achieved one of my lifetime goals—to publish a novel.  But instead of basking in the fun of promoting a new book, I had no money to spend on a few basic items for giveaways or inexpensive advertisements. And I was published through a small press and digital-first, and really tired of other writers either rolling their eyes at the situation (after all, I hadn’t received an advance and wasn’t with a well-known press, didn’t have a print run, etc). I was tired of explaining to non-writers that I had an e-book and there were no print copies available. And really tired of folks asking me if that was a picture of me on the cover, or if the story was about me and my husband (its Fiction!  Fiction means make-believe! Really! My real-life love story would put a reader to sleep because it is so wonderfully normal and boring).

I had too many people wanting too many things from me, and no one ever seemed happy with anything I did.  My book wasn’t good enough, wasn’t legitimate enough, wasn’t promoted enough. The day job was full of conflicts. The new house felt unfinished. No one wanted the old house. My youngest was acting out in school and not listening (we were just learning that he couldn’t pass a hearing test, so “listening” was not his problem—“hearing” was), my oldest thought she was no good at math because she had bad handwriting and a messy desk (!). And all of our spare time was spent cleaning, painting, sprucing the old house, or else working extra hours to pay for its mortgage. There was no money in the budget for hiring a babysitter so my husband and I could have some much-needed adult time (nor was there money for a dinner out even if we had a babysitter).

I should have been feeling great about myself. New house, fancy school, beautiful kids, two blossoming careers of my own, a scout leader.

Instead I just wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.

If you are wondering what that kind of stress does to a person, well, if the person in question is a writer, it stops her from writing. I barely wrote a handful of pages for nearly a year. I mostly quit blogging (here, at my writing blog, or at my cooking blog). For the family, it made us yell. A lot. (I’m sure that didn’t help with our kids’ self-esteem or behavioral issues).

In some ways, it was good for us. We ate at home together. We got in the habit of having family movie nights (pulling from our collection of DVD’s or a free on-demand movie on TV). We found low-cost ways to play together (and I scrounged a lot of coupons for things like trips to the movie theater). We didn’t shop so much, and we all worked on fiscal responsibility. We appreciated how lucky we were (we weren’t “poor”—poor people don’t own two houses and attend private schools!). My husband and I grew closer, if you can believe it. Sometimes I think stress can drive a couple apart because of hurt and blame. But we both realized that we weren’t blaming each other, and that the way out of the stress was to work together and not against each other. We had to re-assure each other of that frequently.

After way too much time and effort and stress, we finally sold the house in November. No, the house was not the sole source of our stress. But it was the most visible sign of it. Getting it off our minds (and off our budget) brought a huge sense of relief, though it wasn’t really the first change that happened.  First, We moved our kids from a more expensive private school to a more local parish school to save money, driving time, and sanity. While the youngest still struggles with sitting still and listening to directions, he has come a long way. My oldest was recently disappointed at her lowest grade—a 94%.  My husband’s job situation both improved and stabilized. Then came the sale.

We have regained money, and time, and sanity. My day job has now shifted a little to one that allows me to occasionally work from home (helpful for managing the frequent school breaks and for squeezing in enough hours around the family schedule). I have actually been writing! (finishing one short work and most of another novel-length one, plus looking at my options for getting more of my work published)  We started going out to eat again. We are starting to finish some of the unfinished work on the new house—buying some furniture, thinking about landscape plans, putting up decorations (like we intend to stay in the house for a while). We are even  evaluating hiring out lawn care and house cleaning so that we can spend our after-work time on things like homework, soccer practice, and actual relaxation.

This year I hope for peace. I hope for a return to normalcy, whatever the new normal is for us. I hope to laugh more and smile more. I hope to help my children laugh more and smile more.  I hope to be able to really enjoy my new job, really enjoy the writing and publishing process. And I hope I don’t need to move again for a long, long time.

A House With Character

Subtitle: Defending New Suburban Construction

When we first began toying with the idea of moving last year, there were three main possibilities:

1) find a home near to our existing neighborhood with the features we were looking for (a bigger, flatter lot, nicer kitchen or good "bones" in which to add a nicer kitchen, and a bigger garage and/or more storage for stuff like lawn mowers and bikes)

2) Look for a house roughly equivalent to what we already had (which was not really too small and did have plenty of good points) but in a much upgraded school district (for the STL-area readers, I mean something like Clayton or Ladue schools)

or

3) Get a nicer house, nicer yard and a school district upgrade by moving to St. Charles County.

When we decided on option 3, we got a few raised eyebrows from our college friends. We tend to run with a fairly progressive crowd, by far and large more Democrat than Republican, more liberal than conservative, more urban re-development than suburban settlement. And my husband and I tend to agree with most of those principles as well.

So why did we contribute to suburban sprawl?

1. Lot size. In the St. Louis inner-suburban areas that we would have considered, in general you get tiny houses on tiny lots. Or you spend a cool million or more on something more. Comfortable as our salaries are, we are nowhere near that "cool million" level. There are not-as-inner suburbs where a middle-class family can afford more than three blades of grass, and the ones that appealed most to us were in St. Charles County.

2. Patchwork houses.  Lovers of old houses call this "character". I looked at pictures of aqua carpet, green countertops, pink tile, and other assorted "character" as work to be done.

We had a very brief flirtation with a massive fixer-upper house near the border of U City and Clayton. Good square footage, all brick, double lot, "charm" and "character", a great asking price, a kitchen out of the 80's, bathrooms whose grout was well beyond cleanable, and a basement full of asbestos.

We looked at another one near our neighborhood that had the lot size and square footage we were looking for, plus the price was reasonable. And every room in the place had a different style/color/species of flooring and a different color of paint. The former owners had added on here, tacked on there, re-worked this into that.  The result? Franken-house.

A brand-new house is a blank slate. Walls do not need wallpaper stripped or multiple layers of primer to cover strange paint colors. Floors are level, free of stains and wear. Cabinetry has not been damaged. Basements have never been flooded. Walls do not have a million nail holes or patch marks. Maybe those things add character. But I like that I don't have to remove unwanted character prior to adding my own.

3. Funny smells.  Maybe I'm too picky.  Or maybe I have a thing with smells. But other people's houses smell funny. They smell like people, like pets, like sewer gasses, like cooking spices. Like sweaty feet. You can walk into a house and tell right away if a dog lives there, or if the occupants ever smoked in the house (it seeps into the paint and the ceilings and the ductwork and the dust.) You can tell if they eat a lot of curry, wear a lot of perfume, think fresh cut flowers liven up a place (cut flowers make me sad, and also make my nose run and my chest constrict).

 I'm sure my house smells funny too. But it smells like us. And a newly-built house is wonderfully strange-smell-free.

4. The "cookie cutter" myth. Why do anti-suburbanites claim that in the suburbs, all houses look alike? I've driven through streets in south St. Louis, Creve Coeur, Clayton, U.City, the Central West End, etc where every house looks alike. Not identical--there are variations in siding and landscaping, and over time the subtle differences get amplified with additions, outbuildings, screen porches, new window styles, etc. But anytime there is a neighborhood where houses were built at a similar time, by a similar group of builders, then the houses tend to resemble each other.  In some neighborhoods, you can guess by the outside what the inside layout looks like.

The same is true in planned subdivisions in the suburbs. I don't think its a bad thing. It is merely a predictable thing. Houses are single story, multiple stories, different colors, different yards. I don't actually want my house to stand out from the crowd.

5. Maturity of landscapes. Unless we move (again), my kids will never have a treehouse. We have no trees that large. Even in the 12-year-old house we moved out of, the largest tree on our lot would barely have supported any climbing. The new house has (half-dead) grass, and a few dozen seedling trees. Hopefully in the next year or two we will add some larger trees to that list. I do not consider our lack of mature landscaping to be a downside. In fact, it gives us a blank slate. If we want to keep the middle of our backyard free of obstacles for playing volleyball, we can.

There is a certain appeal to being the caretaker of towering trees. It also brings the risks of strong winds, messy cleanup, and extra expense for changing a home's outdoor spaces.  And we have hopes of at some point adding some solar power to our home. Had we bought a house shaded by mature trees, that would be an impossibility. This way, we can be smart about our planting.

6. Communities planned for the way we live. I have no desire to walk to a grocery store. I'd be limited to bringing home only what I could carry, and have to shop several times a week to keep the fridge stocked for the family. I do not have that kind of time.


And I do not care to live near where I work. If I had a community-focused career (something like a doctor or a teacher), then the idea would be great. But I have a career that supports working for large corporations. Large corporations do not make good neighbors, and I have no desire to move next door to an industrial park. I want to live in a nice residential area.


Maybe someday in the future, hubby and I will revisit the idea of a fixer-upper, or a down-sized house with lots of charm in a older, established neighborhood. But for our lives now, I'm pretty happy with our choice: a blank slate in the suburbs where we can add our own charm, plan our own landscape, make our own memories (and strange smells, lol). We got a good school district, a reasonable house payment, a nice community, and room to grow. 

Let there be lights

In general I love the color choices that were made by the builder in our new house. Dark wood floors, wrought iron, darker glazed cabinetry, warm-colored walls. Overall it was a refreshing change from the plain white walls, white carpets, and medium-toned maple of many of the newer houses that we looked at. 

There is room for improvement, though.  The day we first saw the house, I cringed a few light fixtures. There were three lights with yellow glass in one hallway, a matching fan in the master bedroom, and I swear the dining room chandelier is supposed to hang in the breakfast room.  We have been slow to make changes because we are still paying on the other house (yes still), so replacing brand new light fixtures with different brand new light fixtures is kinda low on the priority list.

When we were spiffing up the old house last year, we replaced a few lights and re-finished a couple more to change out some of the shiny brass that we put in when the house was originally built.(*) So recently we were at the other house for some errand (probably related to the baseball sized hail, or else the various bird attacks, not sure which), and I had a revelation.

We had, in that garage, three small round ceiling lights, completely unused. They're what I call "boob lights", because of the shape. Fairly normal lights, nice white frosted glass.  Despite their shiny brass, I actually like the lights. Hey, I did pick them out. And not only did we have three, but one was still brand-new-in-box. We managed to miscount when the house was being built and the builder had nowhere to install it.

Three lights. Whose glass and shape I like. I have three lights in my new house whose shape is OK but whose glass is a gawd-awful mottled yellow that makes the light look dim (my eyes and yellow light do NOT get along). And we know how to refinish light fixtures.

One $7 can of Rustoleum paint-plus-primer spray in Venetian Bronze, and we went from:

To:

Beautiful, if I do say so myself.  Which I shouldn't as my husband actually did all the hard work both painting them and installing them.  (My apologies if they are a bit hard to really see on the dark countertop--sorry. Photographing them installed on the ceiling is even harder--too much light with them turned on, too little with them off).
 


(*) When we were building our last house, I wanted antique brass light fixtures. I was very very sure that I wanted antique brass fixtures throughout the house. The builder's "lighting allowance" was all of $300 for 3300 square feet of house--4 ceiling fans, 5 bathroom vanity lights, kitchen island, kitchen sink, hallways, dining room chandelier, breakfast room fan, entry way, etc. That silly lighting allowance would not have afforded a single ceiling fan at the overpriced store they sent us to, let alone enough lights for the whole house. And asking for antique brass involved special order. As in, minimum $100 each for a basic "boob light".

Don't get me started on how they gouged us on light bulbs (seriously? $6 each? For a 50cent incandescent? Did I mention that the builder told us that we had no choice in the matter? I know better now...).

After the sticker shock wore off, I decided I could live with cutting our bill down to about a quarter of the original estimate by choosing shiny brass over the antique look (and by buying and installing our own ceiling fans after we moved in).  I never was happy with that color, and by the time we moved out, there were few original light fixtures left in the place. (I never got to changing out shiny brass door knobs, though I'd priced out new ones several times...)

Funny how that worked out so well for the new house.

A bird in the hand is worth...

Every time my husband goes out of town, there is a minor family disaster. Last time, it involved back-to-back fevers by my kids that took me out of work for most of a week, using up more vacation and sick time than I could afford.

This time, instead of Mother Kristi, it was Mother Nature. Hail. Baseball sized hail fell on our old neighborhood last Saturday night. By "old neighborhood", I mean "location of our previous residence, which we still own and desperately wish to sell". Yeah, thinking that the holes in the roof, siding, deck, landscape lighting, and trees are not going to be highlights of the home tour.

Yes, we have insurance. No, we don't have contractors working yet. Yes, the insurance companies are massively overbooked with the damage. Yes, I could start setting up appointments before an adjuster gets a chance to total it up. No, I don't have time.

I do have a job. And two kids. And running drop-off and pickup singlehandedly all week, plus morning and evening routines, packing all the lunches, etc takes a lot of time when there aren't any extra credit assignments to complete. (Single parents, please stop throwing tomatoes. Yes, I'm whining. But most of you don't have to deal with a dead bird).

Yes, I said dead bird. Inside the house. Inside the hail-damaged house-for-sale. Dead. Inside. (All together now: eeewwwww!)

At least the thing had the presence of mind to keel over on the laminate floor instead of the carpet. Never fear, though, he did nail the carpet pretty good. And the bathroom. His method of entry: bathroom vent. I know this because the bathroom was by far the smelliest place in the house, because the vent cover was hanging down from the ceiling, and because we've had trouble with birds attempting to make nests in that vent before.

So Thursday I spend a precious "vacation" day (of which I have like 2 left, no exaggeration) to drive all over town, meeting with my son's speech pathologist about transitioning to Kindergarten, going to the eye doctor for new glasses, and doing a little yard cleanup at the old house. That's when I found the bird. If I had to guess, he got freaked by the storm and flew into the nice, safe-looking hidey-hole of the vent, found his way into the house, and wasn't smart enough to reverse course after the sirens stopped. And then died of some combination of starvation, dehydration, and banging his head desperately on the window in an attempt at escaping.

I have scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom (most of a bottle of disinfectant), cleaned every window sill in the house (I think he checked them all), cleaned the kitchen (just in case), mopped the entire family/kitchen/breakfast room laminate floor, and steam cleaned the rest of the carpet in that house. I still need to go back and vacuum up the chunks of fuzz that the steam cleaner left behind (why does it always do that?)

I have also rigged up a bird-proofing system on the external vent cover that involved window screening and a staple gun. The hardware stores sell nice-looking plastic vent covers specifically for this purpose. Alas, the vent in question is in a tight spot under the deck and the pre-fabricated ones don't work without leaving a gap wide enough to keep out, say, a bird-who's-scared-sh*tless-by-killer-hail. (Engineering friends will not be impressed with my handiwork as I neglected to include duct tape in the final solution).

My husband is now home. My house-with-furniture is a mess. My tummy is full of a yummy steak dinner. And we have two yards to mow and a million errands to run. Plus the likelihood of arranging for new roof, gutters, siding, window screens, and deck railings and post caps.

I guess the minor family disaster is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled chaos.

Frustration

Every time I complain about moving and the housing market here on my blog, I hope that it will be my last time. The only other thing in my life that has been so utterly frustrating is selling a manuscript to a publisher, and for much the same reason: there is absolutely nothing I can do to control the process.

I wish there were straightforward steps I could take to make a difference in selling the house. I can't stage it (its empty, and I can't afford a second house full of furniture). I can't remodel more than I have (no $ left after paying the mortgage every month, and certainly no hope of recovering the $ at sale). We have already done paint, new carpet, new appliances, some light fixture updates, new patio doors. Short of winning the lottery and making a gift of an expensive remodel to the next owner, we're out of things to do on this house. I can't change the slope of the yard, or the width of the lot (thus, the size of the garage). I can't change its placement in the neighborhood (sorry we don't have a flat corner lot or a cul-de-sac spot). We have an agent, MLS listing, open houses, craigslist ads. We could place an ad in the ever-shrinking-newspapaer, but to what end? What other options are there? Goodyear blimp?

We could drop the price. But we've already dropped the price. And dropped the price some more. And the only official offer we've had was way, way under our dropped price. Way under. Way under what some of the smaller houses in our neighborhood cost to build. There is a range, below our current low asking price, where we would definitely entertain offers just to get rid of the darned thing (and its accompanying mortgage payment). But no one is offering.

Yes, we may have to accept the fact that things beyond our control (i.e. the elevation of the yard, the number of houses nearby also on the market, the number of buyers, the economy) have driven the price way down.  And things beyond our control are preventing potential buyers from offering, or possibly even looking.I just wish there were some things within our control.

The Cost of Custom Window Treatments

My husband and I had our first home "custom" built. By "custom", I mean that we chose the lot from a dozen or so available options in the neighborhood, chose the basic floor plan from a dozen or so available from the builder, and then paid through the nose for anything other than the cheapest-possible-finishes-and-fixtures.

Everything cost extra.

I think I lived through two or three months of constant sticker shock. I remember one moment in particular that nearly made me faint in horror. The helpful salesperson offered to set us up with an appointment with a local custom drapery shop. Any draperies we ordered through the custom shop could be added to the cost of the home, and paid for by the mortgage instead of out-of-pocket. I probably looked at him funny about the financing, because he patiently explained to me that it can cost $1000 or more per window for window treatments.

One thousand dollars to decorate a window.

Now, I'm not an idiot, and I'd been shopping before. Basic mini-blinds at the time cost about $25 a piece, maybe $100 for fancy wood-look ones. What the heck costs a grand? (I was also mentally calculating the number of windows in the house...19 altogether if memory serves...meaning curtains would cost more than my car).

Clearly, we declined to talk to the custom drapery service.

Now, more than a decade later, I am beginning to understand why custom drapes might require their own mortgage, or at least the surrender of a firstborn child. Not, mind you, that I've ever paid anywhere near ten Benjamins for some cloth and a couple of poles.

We only ever bought two sets of mini-blinds for that first house, one for a closet and one for the basement storage room. Everything else got fabric. The house had relatively common-sized windows, and I sew. Over the years I did and re-did several rooms, spending between $10 and $200 per window. Some windows, like the 48"x48" bathroom window, got a $5 café rod and about $5 of crushed voile yardage (plus about 20 minutes of sewing time, and butterfly-themed shower curtain holders that were a wedding gift). Truly custom drapes for $10, installed.

Some, like the old kitchen sliding door, got a more expensive setup with a ~$100 decorative traverse rod plus a ~$100 premade pinch-pleat patio-panel (the $100 was with a sale and a coupon). We later replaced that slider with a French door and ditched the drapes altogether, and were happier for the trade.

Our newer house is a bit more complex. Our window sizes vary widely, and we have some fancier ones. Half-rounds, bays, extra-tall windows in the 2-story family room (with a second pair of arch-topped ones above the first set). And we are spending a tad more upfront on the window hardware because changing that part later on can be very frustrating and generally bad for the integrity of drywall (holes can only take so much spackle). And some windows are just more of a challenge. The bay window rod "system" for the master bedroom alone was around $300 (after a series of coupons and a sale).

We have been able to re-use many of our non-neutral drapes from the old house (Purple! Red!), so I haven't needed to buy a lot of new fabric (kudos to my re-decorating-and-packrat habits). Still, I'm all about the sales, the coupons, the comparison shopping. And the DIY factor.

Ironically, we have recently installed a new decorative traverse rod over our new kitchen sliding door. Onto it, I hung our old premade pinch-pleat patio-panel. (I really want to change the new door for a French door too, but that would cost me a grand. Or more.). I have yet to make a new custom curtain for the new, 48"x48" window in our new master bathroom, but we have made do for the moment with a concoction that involves two shower curtain rods and a pair of sheer curtains tucked and excess fabric rolled around the rods (it looks better than it sounds).

Lucky for my husband, I decided to only coverthe two lower windows in the 2-story family room. Lucky because the 108" tall windows were more than enough of a challenge. They look lovely with (sale-priced) off-the-shelf sheers and the red fringed window scarves we removed from our previous living/dining room. Adding fabric to odd-shaped upper windows sixteen feet off the ground is not high on our priority list at the moment.

Including installation, with all of the trickiness of window sizes and heights, I can actually understand a $1000 price tag for complicated hardware, lots of fabrics, custom design and sewing, and the risk of installation mishaps. But armed with a ladder, a drill, a level, a sewing machine, and bargain hunting instincts, I didn't have to donate a limb in order to cover my windows.

Updates

After 5 months in the new house, I hereby announce that our decorating style is no longer "Neo-Cardboard with Touches of Dust and Bare Windows". Instead we are back to our "Neo-Traditional with Touches of Barbie and Zhu Zhu Pets".

It seriously took us until Christmas to unpack all the moving boxes (or carry them down to the basement and out of living areas). After Christmas, there was a secondary wave of box invaders from gift shipping and packaging (and the inevitable un-packing and re-packing in order to decorate). Cardboard is like an infection. It spreads if not treated aggressively.

Most of our windows now have window coverings. We were able to move a lot of drapes from our old house because red and deep purple are not considered to be "neutral" tones. I have a fondness for fabric window treatments, coupled with bargain-hunting instincts and sewing skills. What that means is that I left the old house properly-draped in neutral tones (primarily in sheers to allow for maximum light), and I also own at least two large storage tubs of drapes that did not find rods in the new house. The few windows that aren't yet dressed are odd-sizes (like the 2-story windows flanking the fireplace in the living room—those are gonna need a lot of fabric). I don't do blinds, except in very limited circumstances (namely, inside closets or other areas where I don't have to look at them).

The kids' rooms look properly kid-like. Charlotte is already lobbying to paint her room, but she has shelves and pictures hung, plus fuchsia curtains to brighten the place. Trystan's room got a brand-new bunk bed set that gives us a little extra sleeping space for guests. Since out-growing his crib, he had been sleeping on a queen-sized bed that I had dubbed the Once and Future Guest Bed. I could have let him keep it, but it's really hard to find kids bedding in queen size, and the bunks are a lot more fun to climb. The queen bed has resumed duty in the guest room. (We have a guest room!)

We haven't done a lot else to the new house. We have grand plans. And a second house payment. The old house is still on the market, and is annoying the crap out of me. We have had several offers to rent the place, but we really don't want to be landlords. We don't have the time, and I don't have the heart to see what kinds of horrors a renter could potentially inflict upon my former home.

The old house is looking pretty nice. We painted our dining room white (it had been a conversation- and appetite-stimulating golden color). We painted our laundry room white (it had been bubble-gum pink). We have removed additional nails and patched and painted the walls. The landscape is in its winter-dormant state, though some of the spring bulbs are starting to come up due to the warm weather. The price is about as good as it gets (less than what we paid for it, and we are throwing in a free deck, flooring upgrades, and appliance upgrades with purchase). We are just waiting on a buyer.

I hate the words "bad economy".

But I have a wealth of ideas for gardening, decorating, and basement finishing. As we frequently say, "When the house sells."

Are you done moving yet?

I think that when we look back on 2011 from a safe distance of, say, fifteen years, that my husband and I will believe we made the right choice. I think that we will pat ourselves on the back for buying at the low point of the market, thereby gaining our family a much nicer home than we would have achieved otherwise. I hope.
So, we have owned the new house for three and a half months, and occupied it for two and a half. Surely we're done moving. Right?

Um...um...sure.

The old house still holds one thing of value to us: a really long stepladder that is a pain to transport (and I have no idea why the movers didn't put it on their really long trucks to transport...). There is a pile of junk that I need to give to some charity (junk meaning outgrown clothes, coats, extra dishes and knick knacks that we haven't had a place for in years and didn't feel like lugging along to the new basement). Obviously, the old house is still on the market. (And the price is going down folks...did I mention how this was a good time to buy? Like, you're getting a ton of house for the money...).

The new house is slightly organized. There are a few rooms that don't have cardboard boxes in them anymore. There are a few rooms that do have curtains on the windows (namely the bedrooms and master bath). I don't think we have hung anything on a wall yet (except those few curtain rods). We haven't done any landscaping yet. Our patio furniture lives temporarily in our garage, awaiting a patio to call its own. But as of this past Saturday, we can finally park two cars in our new three-car garage. We haven't yet convinced our in-car automatic garage door openers to talk to the new garage doors. We have installed cat-doors to allow the fur dudes access to the basement litter boxes.

It's a work in progress.

So, we are getting to the part of the year where people don't like to buy houses (I guess they don't fit under the tree very well), so our old house may get offered for rent if it doesn't find a buyer soon. I'd rather sell than mess with a renter, but I'd rather rent than continue paying for a vacant house. We have holiday time coming up and don't (so far) have any major travel planned, so there is hope that we can get a few more things out of boxes and hung onto walls and generally spruced up.

I am still clinging to hope that in a few years we will fondly look back on our move and be so glad we put ourselves through the trouble. The thought keeps us going through payments and raised-then-dashed-hopes of buyer interest, through phone calls to old neighbors to help with trash cans and lawn companies to mow before open houses, through the hauling of boxes up and down stairs and the filling of trashcans with stuff we probably shouldn't have packed in the first place.

It will be worth it. It will be worth it. It will be worth it. (I hope).

This End Up

I've been griping about packing and moving lately, so now it's time to gripe about unpacking.

I feel like my brain is on overload trying to sort out the order in which order to tackle the unpacking. I want my bedroom put together, but many of our clothes are in drawers that belong in dressers that will now be located in other bedrooms. There is a pile of clothes in my son's room that belongs in one of those sets of drawers. The frame is in his room, but the drawers themselves are down on our floor. There is a stack of book boxes along one wall that belong in my office. There is a bookshelf blocking part of the door to the office that belongs in the kids' office/study room. I found boxes in Charlotte's room that belong down in my office. My dining room table is littered with knick-knacks that go in the china cabinet, which is full of pieces that belong in the buffet, which is still in the possession of the moving company pending a leg repair. Somewhere is the box with the table pad that will protect the table from being scratched by all those knick-knacks.

The whole unpacking problem is like one huge tangle of yarn, except I can't find an end to tug on. Every time I try, I end up jogging between six different rooms, then come back later to find that I've left bits and pieces out in each one of them, making the house look even messier. And every third box or so I find a whole bunch of stuff that I really want packed back up and moved to a far-back corner of the basement.

*sigh*

Moving Lessons

The Great Move of 2011 is Not Yet Complete.

Alas, I had hoped to claim victory by last night. But, as we have learned the hard way, our family has a lot of stuff. Much of it is junk that I am not sure we need or want. Much of it is Important. And Precious. And Labor Intensive.

We began moving shortly after we closed on our new house at the end of July. Our old garage is still quite full of garage-y things. Our basement is still brimming with basement-y things. And our old kitchen cupboards hold a variety of very hard to pack knick-knack-y-things.  In the new house, we have boxes everywhere. Our bedroom floor is littered with drawers of clothes (The actual dressers to which the drawers belong are in a different room. By design. Sort of).

Most of my shoes are in a large bag whose location I may or may not be able to guess. And the sideboard to my dining room set is somewhere in the metro area awaiting repair from moving damage (hint: Neither drag nor tork the legs on a sideboard-with-ball-and-claw-legs, even if you are a Big Burly Moving Man. Or perhaps, especially if you are  Big Burly Moving Man).

Everyone in the family has a bed. We have managed at least three successful meals that were actually prepared in our new kitchen (technically, the main dish of one of them was prepared outside by the front door in the smoker). We know the whereabouts of our safe (which holds nothing of value to anyone other than us and the IRS), the antique silverware (which has seen hard use, was never overly valuable, and is custom-engraved with the family's last initial), and the most beloved teddy bears (named Inky-Dinky and Polka Dot).

We are exhausted.

But, we are all adjusting well to our new home. Including Their Majesties the Royal Furballs. Ravenkall, pictured above, especially loves all of the high perches and balconies in the house. The first time he attempted the perch in the photo, he required a ladder-assisted escort back to the groun. The second time, he jumped (and all bones appear to have survived).

It is much easier to get oneself into trouble than out of it, but I suppose we shall all land on our feet eventually.

Opening Houses

There is such a thing as too much HGTV, people.

We had an open house last weekend, and one of the only negative comments that our realtor passed along to us was that our front porch was not as welcoming as it should be, because we have flower pots with some half-dead flowers in them.

To that comment, I roll my eyes.

The flower pots aren't for sale, dead or alive. Besides, we're talking max $50 of pots, dirt, and dead petunias (my 2nd or 3rd batch for the year...even watering them daily hasn't quite been enough in this heat). If that's a deal breaker, well, I don't really know what to say about that. It's like complaining that the comforter on my daughter's bed is too girly (The comforter is not for sale either!)

Now, the grass in the front of our house has taken a serious beating this summer, and that is something that a prospective buyer might keep an eye on. A month of 100-degree heat, no rain, and a professional lawn service (who cut the grass way, way, way too short) have sent it way into the "dormant" end of the spectrum. At the same time, our neighbors on both sides are in the same boat. And the ones across the street who have a sprinkler system timed to go off every morning aren't doing much better(!). That is, unfortunately, something we are unhappy with but can't do much about in a hurry. We are watering it. A lot. There is only so much you can do when it is 100 degrees (or even 90's and sunny) and you have a western exposure. Grass will neither be reasoned with nor bribed. My husband and I have joked about spray paint. (If only that were an option)

The grass may be unhappy, but my mums, sedum, and rose bushes that also adorn the front are doing nicely. Personally, I'd take pretty flowers over a maintenance-greedy water-sucking thatch of plain ol' grass any day. But, it's not up to me, it's up to some buyer who may have some ideal image of thick green turf on their "gotta-have-it" list.

*sigh* Selling a house is a pain in the petunias.

Moving and Packing

If someone were to break into our new house today, they would be really amused (or confused). It is our Christmas House. The front closet is stocked with heavy coats and boots. The bedrooms have sweaters, turtlenecks, and long pants. And the basement is full of Christmas decorations. And that's all that is there.

Our official move date to the new house is September 1st, the Thursday before Labor Day. That is the date when the moving company arrives with four men and two big trucks to load up our furniture. It's a bit of a contrast to our move into the house eleven years ago:  It is a toss-up whether we spent more money on the Uhaul or the pizza and beer that we served to the friend who helped us move. Nope, not doing that this time. We love our friends too much to ask them to haul our (rather heavy) collection of junk across town again.

We have begun moving the things that were already packed and/or that we could easily live without until September. Yes, we could just box everything and have the nice strong men move it all for us, but they charge by the hour, so we are trying to focus our money on the heavy-lifting.

Packing is a pain. It feels like so much work to carefully tuck items into bubble wrap and neatly array them into boxes, just to drive them twenty minutes away and tear off all that wrapping. But if I just tucked a few things into a shopping bag and drove them in the car, it would take us months to move. So, we have boxes and boxes and boxes.

We could choose to pay the moving company (by the hour) to box all of our things for us. That is so tempting--have them arrive on Wednesday and box up the world, then drive it over on Thursday. Except I'm too cheap and feeling too poor...we still have two mortgages to pay until we find a buyer for the old house.
It is also an interesting challenge to decide what we can live without. Now that we are within two weeks of M-day, the decisions are getting easier. Saturday I packed and moved a bunch of bathroom items. Tonight I think I'll tackle most of the dishes and possibly some kitchen appliances. I could probably just load most of those into the trunk of my car and skip the boxes, since I can unpack them straight to the new cabinets. We may eat off paper plates for a few days right before the moving day. We can further whittle our closets down to just a few days worth of clothes. We have delayed moving most of the kids' things because we didn't want to freak them out, but we can transport those now too.

And we have begun buying some of the necessities for the new place: curtain rods for bedroom and bathroom windows. A zippered clothes wardrobe-thing for the basement for some of our "archive" clothing (junk like our high school letter jackets that we want to keep, but have no intention of wearing). Believe it or not, the new master bedroom has a smaller closet than the old one. But our old one was insanely huge (6x16) so we got really lazy about purging old clothing and never needed basement-ready storage before.

Every time I think we've made major progress on the move, I look around and realize just how much is left. I am getting antsy to just be done with the process. Anyone have a magic wand handy?

Open House

We had our first open house last weekend and the turnout was...less than spectacular. We had one person come besides our realtor. One.

Granted, the one person was also a realtor, who had a client who was looking for a house in our neighborhood. All we need is one buyer. But still, after all our work lately to make sure the house was as good as it could be, it was disappointing.

I am not a market analyst, though I do have a few theories as to why we had such a low turnout:

1. School starts this week. Most families who want to move either did it last month, or else are waiting until they get in the groove of fall. And our house is most likely to appeal to a family.
2. Debt ceiling and stock market. The various and sundry news outlets have foretold the end of the world as we know it, therefore no one wants to buy a house. Best to wait until after the apocalypse to see which areas of the world are glowing with an eerie green and which are still habitable.
3. We are overpriced. I don't actually believe this one as we are darned close to actually taking a loss on the house at our current price. By "taking a loss" I mean that should our house be destroyed by a tornado today, it would cost more to build another one exactly like it on the same lot than we are asking a buyer to pay for it. But, logic and math have never played a part in the real estate market, and I don't expect it to start now.
4. We are flesh-eating monsters and there is Dark Mark permanently hanging over our roof, a la Voldemort. This is actually my favorite theory lately, as it explains many things (including our issues with flooring contractors). This theory would also conveniently explain why we recently sealed our garage floor (had to cover the fresh patch where we hid all the bodies...), that we own two black cats, and the assortment of dragon decorations...
5. The house has been listed for all of two weeks, and there aren't a lot of people in a position to buy a house, especially one that is probably a move-up house compared to many nearby neighborhoods (and many of those people are probably wringing their hands wondering why no one is coming to their open houses either).
6. Its too soon to tell.

Floored

Looking for a house? I've got one for sale. Ok, so that's not exactly a surprise to anyone who's read my last few blog posts. No, I'm not posting the MLS link or the photos here. Go dig around realtor.com or coldwellbankergundaker.com and see what you can find. If it's nice, make an offer. Maybe it will be mine :)

Getting the house ready to list has been a huge chore. I never want to talk to another flooring contractor again, and I'm thrilled that our new house is brand-new with brand-new carpet that should last us many good years (at least long enough to forget the trauma). I have some advice for contractor-types:

Communicate with your potential customers. Frequently and honestly. It's not much to ask, I swear.

Two different contractor lost our business for communication problems. The first was an independent company recommended by our realtor. I'm not naming their name because I did get an apology phone call after the fact. But basically, the sales rep showed (an hour late) with two small squares of carpet (his "samples"), took measurements. And then we waited a week and heard nothing from him. This was in early July and we were aiming to get our house photographed and listed by the 21st of July (and he knew this).

When the president of the company called later to apologize (sort-of), he said that the rep had sent us email (he read off the email address...was typo-d so it never got to us...our email has our last name in the domain name and he spelled it wrong), and that the rep had called (he hadn't). Knowing that we were in a bit of a time crunch, you'd think that he might have followed up at least once (possibly more) to make sure that we got his estimate, or sent it by snail mail in addition to email, just in case. Whatever.

Next we went to our friendly neighborhood home improvement warehouse store, where they had nice-looking in-stock beige carpet (nothing fancy, but about the same color/quality as what we were replacing) and a big ol' sign advertising "72 hour install" on in-stock carpet. Perfect, right? Not so much. They hired a sub-contractor. The sub took 4 days (of their promised 2) to CALL us to set up the appointment to measure for the carpet (scheduled for 2 days later than that), then 3 more days to turn the numbers back to the store, then waited over a week (of their promised 2-day waiting period) to call and schedule the install (which they wanted to set for 2-3 weeks later, not 72 hours).

In the mean time, we'd gone back to the home-improvement warehouse store and complained. The store was very helpful and scrounged up a crew to get it done before the 28th of July (see how we'd already had to push the listing date back?). The crew was literally in our house until 10pm one Friday night finishing up.

Hooray for the store, and big hooray for that crew.

To the other sub: I hope that the store re-thinks how they work contracts with them. True, we were buying inexpensive carpet, but the install costs aren't tied to the cost of the carpet. And those time-frames are set by the store (with whom we'd signed the contracts and paid the money), and should have been respected. If they couldn't handle the job they should have called on day 1, not day 7. I would have forgiven them for saying that they couldn't do it. I can't forgive them for wasting my time.

All is well. We have all-new carpet in most of our house (we didn't do the bedrooms--there was no where to move all the furniture). Our house looks really nice. Thankfully. Now we just need a buyer.