Saturday, February 28, 2015

Getting closer

I have been working my ass off getting the house ready for going on the market.
Very seldom does a day go by when I don't work on some project. The two biggest projects were the deck and rhe wiring. Both are done now. I just finished lag bolting the railing posts today.
We had a real estate agent over on Friday to get down to the business of marketing the house. We needed to take an impartial look at how much we can get for the house, with the intent of buying something in Sequim for cash, I want to walk in owning the new place outright, no mortgage. So far everything looks like it is working out.
We are going to move most of our belongings into storage, leaving just enough stuff to live with. A guy is coming over on Tuesday to give us an estimate on how much to move and store our stuff, and then deliver it to our new house.
Part of the reason for moving the stuff out, is that we have a big spare room in the basement that is currently stuffed with our packed possessions. The room is partly finished. I have built up a sub floor with the intention of installing carpet or pergo. But first we have to get the room empty. Then I can finish levelling the sub floor and laying flooring. I am getting an estimate from a contractor for putting up the ceiling. This would put the total living space of the house just over 2,000 sq ft, and push the price over the $300,000 range.
There is a pretty hot market in my area, and not a lot available, so it looks to be a pretty good sellers market.
If everything goes according to plan, we could be moving in less than a month.
I'm starting to get excited.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Deck Renovation

We are pretty well done with the deck renovation. All new structure and underpinning, but the decking handrails and balusters are the same ones that were on before.
I still need to secure the bottoms of the balusters, and there is a five foot section of handrail that needs to be replaced and the balusters attached.
When I finish up with the deck, we need to get the house ready to sell. We have been packing everything up in totes and stashing the totes in the basement. I know that the real estate agent would like us to pretty much empty the place out for showing, but I really don't want to rent storage and move everything a couple of more times.
Oh well, we'll do what we need to do.
One of these days I'll be able to devote more time to doing the things I WANT to do. So far, retirement is more work that I anticipated.
We are still looking to move to somewhere in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. Sequim, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, La Conner. We have seen several things we like, but until we know what we can get for our house. Realistically I hope to get $275,000 for our place, and we have seen several places that meet our needs in the $250,000 to $260,000 range. We just hope they are still there when we are ready.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Delapidated

We are going to put our house up for sale, and there are some things we need to do to help with that.
The major undertaking is the deck. 420 sq.ft. of deck. I put it in about 10 years ago, and it has deteriorated some, so I am having it rebuilt. I spent the last three days tearing the old stuff loose.
My body is telling me that I am not used to doing that much physical labor.
This retirement stuff is a lot more work than I anticipated.
If things go right, the house should go on the market in a couple of weeks.
Then the crazy begins for real.