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)

Shirleyjdietz11 Comments

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/

A to Z in April

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I’m committing to this blogging challenge because I have finally found a purpose for it. A purpose that will make it easier to survive April. It will be my angst release valve. Let me explain.

The husband and I have been talking about selling our house and moving for, well… ages, but we are now to the point of having a realtor as our new best friend. It’s my new job (in addition to paring down) to make the house go on the market in the next month. I’ve started a new level of preparation in the last few weeks and it’s made me so busy and preoccupied that writing about anything has gone to the bottom of my to-do list. I didn’t see how I could possibly write for the challenge with all that’s going on.

Then I started thinking of all that I’ve learned, all the interesting new people who’ve come along, all the snags and complications. It would be easy to write about this experience, emotionally beneficial and more socially acceptable than sitting in the driveway screaming/crying/pulling out my hair. It took my family all of 15 minutes to think of a topic for every letter of the alphabet. Yes!

The things making up my days are now going to make it into writing in the month of April. If you’ve ever thought of buying or selling a house, you might learn something useful. If you’ve done it before and know all about it, you might like to compare your experience with mine. Either way, follow along. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

Internet Bondage

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One small bar and that little shield with the exclamation point… sigh.

It’s hard to explain this title. Let me start by saying that I’m in an “internet challenged” environment for the past three days and am feeling more affected by that than I thought possible. If I had purposely gone into the wilderness and left all my devices behind, intending to drop out of communication, it would be entirely different. Reality is, I have my smart phone, my tablet, and my laptop 2-in-1 with me and had thought this time away would be a chance to write and pay attention to my blog and keep up with what’s happening at home as well. Not happening.

Frustration was birthed on the first day when I wanted to make arrangements for my trip home – an overnight motel in Minneapolis and a car from Tampa to my home in Bradenton. This took hours of re-establishing connection and watching the little spooling dots go round and round. Some pages took so long to load, I thought my computer had frozen, so I rebooted, several times.

Multiple pop-ups warned me to get off the unprotected network here at the assisted living apartment where I’m staying with Mom. I had already considered the risk of all the senior hackers that might be nearby, but there was no way to console my frantic security program.  I suppose it was because I was in a different location that all my usual web venues decided to ask for passwords that I did not have with me. Add to that the apps that ask for information leading down a 10-minute-long rabbit trail, only to tell me something at the end that was totally undecipherable. At that point there were no more drop down menus, no back buttons, no boxes for input, no hidden arrows or xs, no hope… Ah, well.

You would think that I would not want to spread this misery around, but I do like to share. I decided to get my mom a smart phone. You see,  I have an “80 something” year old mom who goes on Facebook, GroupMe, does email and daily solitaire challenges.  In spite of what she can do, she has resisted moving on from her old flip phone, claiming that she is afraid of touching the wrong button, accidentally signing up for something she doesn’t want or getting her identity stolen. These may be valid concerns but, more importantly, we want to send her pictures and texts, 24/7, whether she’s on her computer or not. She needs a smart phone.

I mentioned that I was in a somewhat remote area, remote enough that even the Walmart here does not have things other Walmarts have. There were no simple Jitterbug phones for seniors. There was however, a Verizon store in an old remodeled house. Once inside, it looked less like a bed and breakfast and more familiar, right down to the four geek people, nonchalantly waiting to sell and up-sell. An hour and a half later I left with an entry level Samsung phone and a clear promise that it could be returned within 14 days if it didn’t work out (and an Otter Box, a PureGear screen protector, an offer to join Hum which I resisted, an offer to upgrade my husband’s phone which I rejected, a suggestion that my daughter upgrade her plan which I will leave up to her,  a promise that mom could come back to the store anytime with questions, and a request for a favorable response to the survey about my “experience”). Whew!

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We will keep this prehistoric device around for a couple more days, just in case.

A day later, we are enjoying (I think) our smart phone tutorials. I was able to get all my travel reservations accomplished. I am getting used to the limitations of connectivity here. I am resigned to the things that cannot be.

In retrospect, maybe I should have used the opportunity to distance myself from the frustrating world of the web. Yeah, probably, but I didn’t. It’s becoming harder and harder to do that, even though it is, at times, a frustrating place to hang out.  I have to wrap this up now – it’s been an hour since I checked my phone.

What has the world come to? Are you ever plagued with a dependency on your “devices”? Are you able to take a break from them and tell the internet to get lost? 

 

 

 

 

Story

Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

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

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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.

What I Read for Encouragement

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pexels-photo-247195.jpegI’d like to encourage people today, although I don’t know exactly who or in what way. Does your head hurt? Did you sleep poorly last night? Have you gotten bad news lately? Are you feeling stale? Numb? Anxious? Maybe I want to encourage you.

Go read Psalm 103. You don’t have to be someone who has a religion – it’s literature, a book that’s been around a long time and is easily accessible. Just read it.

What if there is a God and that is an accurate picture of him? What if there is some “pit” he wants to pull you out of? What if he does want to satisfy the desires you have to be loved and valued? You could jump on that train of thought, just for a few minutes and see how it feels. I’ve memorized this chapter because I so often need to hear what it says.

I’m getting pretty aware of the things that are wrong with me.  When I hear a writer describing a distance “as far as the east is from the west”, and he’s telling me that’s how far away all my wrongness is going…  I get the impression that someone has a plan to deal with bad stuff, mine and everyone else’s. Thinking along those lines gives me hope. Hope is important.

Here is the most hopeful part of the reading for me – the part where “he knows how we are made, that we are dust, earthly”. I do kind of add my own translations as I think more and more about it. To me, it says “I know how I made you – different from anyone else. I know exactly what you are capable of and I don’t expect any more from you than that.”  That’s the way I want to be known. It encourages me to think that God and I might be on the same track in that regard.

The writer of this psalm felt that even when God knew him completely, he still loved him in a way described as “from everlasting to everlasting”. I’m a writer, and I can’t think of a way to top that. When I rehearse this psalm in my mind, I always think I want to be know that way and loved that way. It would make me happy, encouraged, hopeful. It’s a place to start.

Sure, there are some qualifiers in there, referring to those people who are known and loved. Again, as a writer, I’m paying attention to the verbs throughout the whole chapter. “Rescues”, “satisfies”, “works righteousness and justice”, “made known his ways” – all things that God does and is doing instead of things I have to do. I think the writer is saying that God is willing and able to work with people, to bring them to where they love him back, want to keep his covenant and remember to obey him.

It encourages me because it’s a good deal. It’s better than finding an honest used car salesman, or whatever analogy you want to use.  There’s more in that chapter and maybe there are other parts that will seem important to you, if you read it. Try it on.  See what it makes you feel and want. And consider that it is meant to encourage you.

 

 

 

 

 

“Back in the Day”

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Back in the day…

Something about those words makes me cringe with premonitions of stories about how high the snow banks were or how many miles it was to walk to school. Now I am guilty of using it all too frequently as I write. Guess what – EVERYTHING has a back story. EVERYBODY has a back story. That’s what we call it today, if we are kind.  I think the back story is often crucial to understanding things about the present story.

A long time ago, in a land far away (Bradenton, Fl) the husband decided to buy a man toy called an E-Bike. He has always found gadgets intriguing, especially if they were energy saving and had some practical use. This bike was an early exploration into transporting oneself using electricity, much like electric cars are today. It was only available through car dealerships and was the social experiment of the day. It was pretty, shiny blue, feeling of quality and fully decked out with lights, various indicators on the handlebars, locking mechanism, gears, horn, and all kinds of gear bags made to fit. Sweet.

The plan was to ride it the seven miles to work, along a busy highway. I guess there was a bike lane in some places but it was often hazardous with broken glass and other tire-puncturing trash. The traffic went by, close and fast. It was often raining, or hot. The plan didn’t last long. But being the oddity that it was, the bike was pulled out pretty often and demonstrated to curious friends and family. It rarely left the driveway.

My own most vivid memory of using it was when I visited frequently with an elderly lady who lived five or six miles away, mostly through residential areas. I got some exercise, because I could pedal it like a normal bike. But, its real advantage was in the take off moment at intersections. Instead of having to go from my resting/waiting pose to that awkward effort of quickly powering through the crosswalk with dozens of eyes watching, I could just touch the little lever and smoothly zoom away with no effort at all.

The real reason I remember this time had nothing to do with the bike however. It marked the first time I lost a cell phone out of my back pocket and spent hours retracing the the route looking for it.

Years later, the husband gave the bike another chance. The office had moved and was not even two miles away so once again he was riding it to work. One day, there might have been a light rain making things slippery, he rode across a railroad track which crossed the road at an angle. The front tire got caught and he crashed and tumbled. It was a trauma for the husband and for the bike. Neither has ever been the same, although the husband has recovered acceptably.

For the past year or so, I have enjoyed biking frequently for fun and exercise. I would be doing so now except I have lent my $60 pawn shop bike to a friend who had no transportation. Not knowing when I would ever see my bike again, I turned my attention to the E-Bike, sitting forlorn and flat-tired in storage. With the heavy battery removed, and the broken parts held in place with a bungee, it actually rides pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised this week on my first outing with it. The seat had shock absorbers, the handlebars straightened up nicely, it went quietly, and unlike my pawn shop bike, the brakes worked. It’s a go.

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It’s still a pretty color due to hardly ever leaving the garage for years.
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A few covers missing, a couple bungees holding the empty battery compartment shut. It works.
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Some of the clip on instruments are missing but it still has a strangely “techy” look, I think. Looks are so important.

There is a satisfaction in bringing an unused thing back into use.  I also appreciate the back story of the E-Bike and the chance to think about other back stories, and the whole concept of histories and how they might inform the present. Just sayin’, “back in the day” might become a frequent theme.