Category: memoir

A to Z: Selling Our House (Letter E)

Shirleyjdietz3 Comments
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Today’s letter E sign was encouraging.

More excitement (another E word!) today, if you want to call it that. The plumber came! He cleaned drains, replaced corroded valves, and fixed the shower that always gave us cold water when we turned it to hot, and hot water when we turned it to cold. All these things and a few more were called out in the home inspection (more about that when we get to letter I). And if that wasn’t enough fun, the termite inspector came too. South of the Mason-Dixon line, every frame house has dry wood termites about every 12 years and needs to be tented. I got a tutorial on the critters as we went through every room of the two houses, including attics. The good news – we don’t have any.

E is for Escrow

It’s a little boring, so I’ll be quick. Escrow just means that some third party has come in and is helping two others complete a transaction by keeping money or a deed in their possession until all parts of the contract have been fulfilled. When we get our buyer, escrow will be handled by a title company. When everything stipulated in the contract is complete, we will go to the title company, sign all the appropriate papers, pay all our fees, and the money for the sale will be released. It has been held in escrow until this time.

Another escrow moment, which I understand more and appreciate, is the quasi “savings account” collected by the bank to pay the taxes and insurance on property. Those yearly costs never bother us anymore because they are collected a little at a time, added to the mortgage payment. The bank is the third party helping us and the insurance company, or the tax collector, complete our transactions on time. It’s a good thing.

E is also for Escape, because I have found that selling the house feels a little like I’m RUNNING AWAY from something. I’m tired of being a landlord and dealing with the problems that tenants present. I’m weary of raking leaves and picking up branches, trying to keep an acre of lawn looking good and maintaining a large, older building. I’m tired of so much traffic and being in the city. Most of all, I’m tired of being so far away from so many people that I want to be with. I don’t expect the next place to be perfect and trouble free but I’m ready for some new problems, in a new place.

With all the challenges that this sale and move present, the whole experience is a lot like the Great Escape. That is what I shall call it.

My apology to all my family and good friends locally. I’m not trying to run away from you and will miss you terribly!

A to Z: Selling Our House (Letter D)

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20180403_1401265598703050559873283.jpgToday I could have danced! (Another D word) Three men and a large truck from a thrift shop pulled into the drive and took most of the renter’s furniture away. It is gone, and I don’t have to get rid of it. That is an answer to our prayers of the last week. They had so much stuff!

Designer starts with D.

I have a designer! How special is that?!! Lindsey is a young professional, a student at Ringling School of Art & Design. She is part of the package with my realtor, who I will introduce when we get to R. She is also a young mother and wife, so scheduling with her took a little persistence, but we finally did a walk through at my house. This is all for the purpose of staging, which I’ll say more about when we get to S. The A to Z doesn’t actually care if I present the sale of the house in a logical, chronological order.

Lindsey walked from room to room with me, writing on her notepad and pointing out areas she thought were of most concern. I anticipated much of what she said. Most of her comments were the working out of a couple basic principles:

Less is best. The less stuff you have in the way, the bigger your room will appear. This includes taking things off the floor, and removing unnecessary furniture. The furniture that is left should be somewhat generic and of a size compatible with the room size. That gives the prospective buyer an idea of the room size and the kind of furniture that will fit in it. Makes sense. An example is my living room. I sold my big couch with recliners on both ends and the matching love seat, so I will probably rent an average size couch for the room, something that most everyone agrees should be standard living room furniture. I also tend to put lots of things on the floor – file boxes, rugs, decorative items. I will pack these things away.

Impersonal is best. The prospective buyers are trying to imagine their personal things in my spaces, so it helps if my personal things are not distracting them. This includes my collections, family pictures, and projects the husband and I are working on. This one is a little hard because, well, we ARE working on things and need to keep working on things. The husband’s music paraphernalia is an example of this. Music stands, instrument cases, folders – all over the lanai.

Lindsey was also helpful in suggesting paint upgrades. She called out specific colors for spaces she thought would be improved with a fresh coat and you will read more about that when we get to P.

Lastly, she has offered to come back again before the inside pictures are taken and see if there is anything additional that I should change. After our appointment, I got “the list” by email and have been working on it ever since. I love a list, just sayin’…

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And I love, love, love when I can stand and watch while men move all the big, heavy stuff!
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Such an appropriate sign…

A to Z: Selling Our House (Letter C)

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Today as I finally got to start cleaning one room in the rental part of our property, I ran across another C word, Closet. The person who designed closet doors like these had to be someone who had never had to clean or paint them. What were they thinking?!

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Louvered doors – the ideal way to collect dust and dirt and protect it from being washed away.

C is for Contracts and Closings

There are all kinds of contracts I have learned about while getting ready to sell our house. There was the contract with the pest control company before they tented our two houses. Yes, there are tents that big in the south where termites are constantly looking for wood and water – houses are perfect for both.

Then there was the contract with the company that put new windows in our rental house. Windows are a special item in hurricane country. One small one in the laundry room cost over $700. It seems that all really expensive things require contracts, probably because there is a lot to put in writing about the guarantees, warranties, and disclaimers designed to protect everyone involved.

But the contract that we really care about is the one that comes at the end of the sale – that sweet agreement between buyer and seller that seals the deal. There is always a tentative sigh of relief when the house is “under contract”. I say tentative because until the final papers are signed at closing, the deal can fall apart and the process has to start all over again with the next prospective buyer. This last year we sold another property that was under contract twice before we found a buyer who could meet the financial stipulations of the contract.

The closing is always a mysterious thing to me. The husband and I sit at a table with the title company lawyer with our pens in hand. He hands us one paper at a time to initial or sign, and it goes on forever until the tall stack of papers is finished. I could not begin to tell you what all those papers are about, even though they are quickly explained to us as they go whisking by. I kind of glaze over, all the time pretending to be an astute seller, nodding and putting on my “knowing” look.  I’m not recommending this method, just saying it happens.

Okay, I need to be silly (it’s a mental health tactic). I started noticing signs this winter and collecting pictures of them thinking that “Signs of the Times” would be an interesting theme for the A to Z. So as  not to waste them, even though my theme has changed, I’m putting them in when I have them. They’re fun. 

 

 

 

A-to-Z: Selling Our House (Letter B)

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Our adjoining house, which has been rented out for four years, is finally being vacated. I am watching as they load possessions into a pick-up truck. This is an important step for us in selling. We can finally get in there, clean, paint and fix. I’m glad and yet aware of the huge amount of work that will now be on the schedule…

B is for Boxes

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Some very fine boxes. I want them.

 Boxes have become a coveted part of my life. I seem to notice them like never before, wherever I go. I pay attention to their construction, how sturdy they are, and whether there is room to write on them.  (I get the best boxes from Thrive Market, and I can’t adequately tell you how wonderful they are, thick, sturdy, full of useful packing). Because we’re selling, and moving, all our earthly goods need to be safely in a box until an undetermined time when they can be placed in the next home. Who knows when that will be?

I have an aversion to paying for boxes to do my packing. It is silly when so many boxes are put in the trash,  crushed and bundled together with strapping and hauled off to be re-used in some way, or maybe not used at all. So I beg and borrow boxes from friends who have businesses, (and from Thrive Market). I am grateful for my box friends. I get deliveries like this one.

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Presents, at my door.

There is a box the right size for almost anything I want to pack. I have learned to keep my boxes down to a weight I can lift, since it may be necessary for me to lift them way more times than I would like. I like little boxes for heavy things like books, and large boxes for lighter things like pillows. The only boxes I might consider buying are ones for large, framed pictures and for dishes. Even then, I could make boxes for them out of other boxes. For all of these boxes, I have the feeling that labeling is going to be very important.

For now, my boxed possessions are piling up in a small breezeway between my house and the rental house, but they will have to be moved when it’s time to photograph the house. They will have to go into a storage facility. I’m not looking forward to that. I’ve seen the program “Storage Wars” and since we’ve had a storage room mistakenly auctioned off in the past, I have some bad flashbacks about storage.

Should we use storage locally? Should we rent a container from PODS or Pack Rat and have them move us? We have options that are not yet sorted out completely, and we are open to advice.

 

This is a series of posts for the April A to Z Blogging Challenge. Check out my A post here A to Z: Selling Our House (Letter A)

 

 

 

A to Z: Selling Our House (Letter A)

Shirleyjdietz10 Comments

 

We are wanting to sell our property, our oneacrewoods, the two conjoined houses that we, my parents, my children, and numerous friends and family have lived in for the last 24 years.  It’s seen some very good years of our lives and we have “feelings” for it. It is lovely, it is home, and it’s going on the market. 

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And why would we be leaving this lovely place when the whole world seems to be moving to Florida?

A is for Asking price (as distinct from “getting” price.)

I have just read that most homeowners ask too much for their house when they set out to sell. It’s out of love, of course. We don’t want to do that because we would LOVE a quick sale. We know that the prospective buye may or may not love our house and is certainly not interested in paying as much as possible to live in it. So, we have the matter of determining an asking price. It should be one that is reasonable for the market, taking into consideration the age of the house, the neighborhood and numerous other factors. And it should probably be one that we are willing to lower. I don’t like that selling a house is kind of like bargaining at a flea market.

We had a realtor look at our house. He wanted to help us find a good asking price. The place most realtors start is to look for what they call “comparables” – houses as much like yours as possible in the same area. Since most residential properties are not two full houses on one parcel of land, there really aren’t any comparables in our neighborhood. Our way of thinking is to take the price of one nearby sale and double it, right? I guess that’s not the way it works though. We had a hard time accepting the price this realtor suggested.

After waiting, downcast, for several months, we met another realtor who was a little more encouraging. We have what is becoming more common these days, a multi-generational property. I didn’t realize it, but more and more people are living with a couple generations together in the same house or an attached apartment of some kind. Our houses are much more than a mother-in-law room over the garage, and the acre of yard full of huge live oaks in the quiet, central part of a block is something everyone admires. Everyone who comes to our house wants to live here.

Our realtor is with Better Homes and Gardens Realty. I’m thinking that if BH&G thinks they can sell our house for what we’d like to sell it for, we’re going to let them try. I’ve seen their magazine and they seem to know a lot about houses, just sayin’ …

I am in the April A to Z Blogging Challenge. If you found this by clicking the link in the A list, then you know I made a mistake in my link. Here is the correct one to my site. So sorry!  https://shirleyjdietz.com/2018/04/01/a-to-z-selling-our-house/

Story

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Why is it so difficult to write? Life right now is not a single thing that can be described in a post or series of posts. It is made of rabbit trails and randomness going off in many directions and not making much sense. It won’t stand still and be examined and written about.

I know if I could view it from way outside I could probably guess where it’s all headed and see some patterns, some sense that escapes me in the moment I’m living. It takes all my concentration to keep focused on the enjoyment of the moment – because I know being present won’t last forever. And there is always something to enjoy, because God is good and I see evidence of it in so many ways. But I do hope that the inspiration to write comes soon. I want to write. I want to tell my story to myself, if to no one else.

Pink Cloud and the Man Who Lives in the Woods

Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

20180209_182854630926522.jpgFrom where did this one pink cloud come? So singular and alone it was floating in the path of light coming sideways in the evening.  Is it the evening because it divides the night from the day evenly? That’s what I was thinking about. I had to stop and take a picture of the cloud.

Darkness was approaching, and so was a man on a bicycle. He was a friendly man and called out to me, also on a bicycle, and to the husband who was walking. He asked about the electric bike I was on and came over to show us a picture on his cellphone of another electric bike he had just been looking at. He talked fast and easily about bikes, having put about $4000 into his ride, with special rims on the wheels and a rear approach sensor. He was a serious rider. In fact, he only rode bikes, because he had lost his license a while back.

He was riding home, well not exactly home. He was riding to his tent in the woods. Yes, homeless for the time being but making the best of it. Clean (had just showered at a shelter today), well groomed and nourished, and looking more like a yuppie fitness freak than a vagrant, he gave us several stories of life in the woods. He was a loner by choice and kept his camp clean and decked out – 2 tents, because he had lots of stuff. Oh, and he was a veteran of the Gulf War.

He was employed at Goodwill Corporate for three years now. He had another valuable bike which he kept locked up at work. It had always been a problem to keep it safe while he was away from camp. What was he to do, chain it to a tree?

He wanted to get housing but he just didn’t make enough where he was, and there weren’t any better jobs that he knew of.  He told us where his last three camps had been, and I knew every one of them, had driven/walked by and thought “now if I were homeless I might try to hide in there”.  The place he had been just before Hurrican Irma had been by a creek. That night he came home from work and everything he owned had floated off in the flooded field. He said it was a real pain every time he was made to move. When you have a big camp, it takes quite a few trips to relocate it all. Sometimes they don’t give him much time to do it. He has to leave stuff behind.

The husband was getting antsy, tired of standing and listening and it must have been obvious. The man’s  name was Jody. He apologized for talking so much. It was just that he didn’t get to talk very often, especially to strangers who didn’t know anything about him and asked questions that didn’t sound threatening. He rode off on his really cool bike. I’m not going to say that I didn’t think about offering him a meal next time he rode by, or a shower, or maybe a yard to camp in next time he got chased out. I did think of those things, but he sounded like he was handling life pretty well so I said nothing.

Battling Winter, post #3

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A Walk in the Woods

When you can’t ski, you walk. There are trails for every kind of travel in the snow including snowmobile and fat tire bikes. It’s the biking that I don’t get. Riding a two wheel bike fast on a narrow trail through a forest of trees, rocks and other natural hazards? Why not just relax by walking blind folded through a mine field – same difference. But winter hiking is good.

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The straight rows of pine provide an easy trail for Mary Pat, Dennis and Scruffy. I’m last in line, taking pictures and catching up.

There are trails very close to the family farm and my brother and his wife go hiking there a lot. After a day of work, when they need some exercise, they dress up, take Scruffy their dog, and walk the loop by Hospital Lake. Part of the trail goes through a planted pine forest, along the edge of the lake and returns to the parking lot. It’s just the right length so Scruffy doesn’t freeze his feet. (Isn’t it weird how some animals can stand on snow and ice and not get frostbite?)

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An eye catching little ornament on a tree that seriously needs something.

There are a lot of outdoorsy people in this area so the trail is well traveled. In a bow to the season, someone (or maybe more than one person) has begun decorating trees along the way. It’s fun to find the variety of ornaments, although I felt really sorry about the Teddy Bear. It looked more like he was being tortured.

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After a walk, I might have cold feet, cold fingers, nose and cheeks but there is a core warmth that is sustaining. Breathing all that cold air makes me feel … healthy, I guess.  As I climb back in the car and the heat kicks in, there is such a feeling of calm and peace and “put me to sleep right now”.

Because it gets dark so early, these walks often coincide with the most beautiful sunsets. Really, I could not stop taking pictures because it was changing every minute or so and I wanted to capture it.

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Am I a Habitual Rescuer?

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Been thinking a lot of how God is in the business of eventually making all things new – restoration. And strangely, over the last 24 hours I’ve thought maybe I should be more like him and restore the piano. Three hundred dollars isn’t all that much. Maybe it can be fixed. It will feel good to try, even if it’s a bit crazy.

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Losing My Voice

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I am saddened. Today I decided to consult with a piano repairman about my faithful, long-standing instrument and its recent problem.  It will cost more to repair than it is worth, about $300. I would have thought it was worth more than that – it certainly was in its youth.

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Faithful friend

We acquired this Everett piano in 1974 or 75, I’m not certain of the date. The husband and I were newlyweds and in college. We had mentors, both of them teachers at the college, who were going to spend some time abroad and were selling a lot of their possessions that would be hard to store. We bought their piano and their car.

I’ve had access to a piano my whole life, except for a few years living in college dorms. Now I had my own, in my apartment, to play any time I wanted to. We moved from Texas to California and the piano came with us and survived the distance. We moved from California to Wisconsin and again the piano held up well. We moved from Wisconsin to Florida, with the piano in the trailer. Through all this it never had significant tuning problems, just a nick or two on its wooden surface and a stripped screw that held the music stand.

I practiced my lessons on this piano, as well as wedding music, funeral music, fun music for my kids, and special accompaniments for friends who sang. As my children learned to play their instruments, I learned to accompany them. There were years when I taught my own piano students – many small hands had their first introduction to music on the keys of my Everett. There was the year when I once again took lessons from a college professor, doing difficult music and learning intricacies that stretched my ability. Learning hymns and worship music for churches I worked for was always going on in the background. My piano was a workhorse.

But it was more than that. They say that music is a path to the soul, and I have experienced that connection. The instrument making the music became a voice for my soul. My piano taught me that beautiful sound is more than just pushing the right notes, it is putting emotion into those musical phrases, touching them in a particular way, a familiar way.

My piano has calmed me as I cried, has distracted me in distress, has satisfied my need to create. Although made of wood and metals, felt and ivory, it has become almost like a person to me. A treasured friend and encourager.

We are looking forward to one more move, and I have been paring down in anticipation of having to store whatever we decide to take with us. The piano is heavy. It will not store well, and it is broken. I think it is time to let go, but it is hard, and sad. Yes, it’s a sad day, and there are a few tears… just sayin’.