Opinions

Inspirational song: Money for Nothing (Dire Straits)

At least two prospective buyers have toured our condo. Neither is likely to place an offer, unfortunately. We received feedback emails from both of them today. One said that the place is lovely, but the monthly HOA payments are too high. Honestly, that is true, but now that we know that we have to pay off the special assessment on closing (who thought up that rule??), I had our realtor correct the listing to reflect the lower regular dues. The other person to deliver feedback apparently was way off the mark looking at our place. They complained that we were too far off the beaten track for the college, and that the neighborhood was too quiet. Seriously? Too quiet? Yeah, keep walking, folks.

I don't know whether we are going to get any feedback from people who may ultimately end up making an offer. I suspect the feedback function is more for negative comments, or for backhanded compliments. It's not ideal for my purposes. I'm already feeling emotionally vulnerable by having this place on the market. When I'm needy like this, I want to hear things like, "Looks great! It's going on our short list!" It's much harder to hear, "Thanks, but no, thanks." I know we have only been live for two days, but this is a stressful process. My heart pounds a little faster when I think about hitting that deadline for offers, and not having any. We need this to work.

We need to switch our focus into wrapping things up at this house, in order to put it on the market as well. The deck is down to one last row of boards, almost completed. We are prepared to empty the spare room, and put most of that stuff in storage. We should be able to stage, photograph, and empty one or two more rooms soon after. I just have to hope that we have a place to move to soon, so this all makes sense. If I have to give up this beautiful place, I need a new Park to make it all worthwhile.

Soggy and Limp

Inspirational song: I'm All Right (For the Shape I'm In) (BR5-49)

I didn't have a whole lot of time to rest over the last couple weeks, and that caught up to me today. I tried to hit the ground running, and we did get some very important things done this morning. But by the time we made it home with a trunk full of groceries at noon, I was used up. I fell asleep sitting up on the couch, and I'm pretty sure I was there for somewhere between two and three hours. There was a little white Rabbit holding me down, but there was no chance I was getting up without serious provocation. Now I'm a little behind the power curve for all that I have planned over the next few days. Coffee will have to be my friend tomorrow.

In my absence, I think the man has started building an ark. I can't believe how much rain has fallen in the last couple weeks. Half of my plants are so water logged that they are drowning and turning brown and slimy like long-forgotten cilantro in a plastic bag at the bottom of a refrigerator (which I also found upon my return). The sun is supposed to come back tomorrow. Maybe if I go prune off the bottom leaves of things that are touching the ground, my little plantlings can dry out and thrive. It looks like my roses are doing well, however. I know what I'll be decorating with for my Kentucky Derby dinner. I promise, this time, I won't be trying to wear a heavy, wet bouquet of them on my hat. I only needed to learn that lesson once.

Home for the Last Time

Inspirational song: Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)

I got a little nostalgic, flying back "home" for the last time. I very nearly teared up as I rested my forehead against the window on the plane, flying over the verdant, swampy ground, coming lower and lower, and wondering whether we would take the route that flies directly over my Park. I don't think I have ever seen it, but I know I've seen planes go over from the ground. I have loved living here more than anywhere else, with the possible exception of North Carolina, many years ago. I felt like I belonged, which is unusual for someone who moves as often as I do. In my whole life, the longest I ever lived in one house was six years, in one city ten years. So living in the Low Country for four years really ranks highly in places that felt like home. My time here is almost to an end, and that makes me miss it already, weeks before I have to drive away for the last time.

Our real estate listing is live now. When I checked Zillow just now, less than twelve hours into it, it had over forty viewings, although my husband and I probably account for four of those combined. The photos are beautiful, brightly lit, and from the best possible angles. I couldn't have asked for more. No, scratch that. I could have hoped that the contractors had gone in and snaked the drains where someone dumped sandy, gritty waste water and created a plug of mortar or grout and years' worth of drain buildup. But besides that, which we will guarantee is done before we close, the unit is beautiful. It will sell, and it will go quickly.

I had only a little time outside of cleaning and painting to visit with my daughter, but we managed to get some quality time together. It helped that I was staying in her office on the pull-out couch so I could see her more often. I was there long enough that her cats got used to having me there, and they had just begun to cuddle with me overnight when I had to pack up and leave. They wasted no time rolling all over my suitcase to claim it, so that when I got back home, I've had multiple cats re-establishing ownership of mommy and all of the mommy accoutrements. Now the big test is seeing how many are going to pile on top of me tonight. Just wait until I break it to them that when I make the next trip, they are all going with me. Three of them have never lived anywhere but here. My Carolina kitties are not going to enjoy leaving, any more than I will. But I will always have memories of this home, and I will revisit them often in my mind.

Tick Tock

Inspirational song: The Final Countdown (Europe)

My time is up. I have painted and cleaned and replaced everything that I can get to. The professional photographer came this afternoon to take pictures for the listing, and we go live with it tomorrow. The clock is ticking. I think our strategy is strong. We are going in the MLS and letting buyers walk through for five days. Then we will have an open house on Sunday, and all offers are due Monday night. Now that I have completed my quest, I feel amazing. Tired, brainless, but amazing. The condo looks beautiful. It's clean, mostly new, upgraded, and valuable. It has been universally approved by all the people who have offered opinions. There is even some guy who lives elsewhere in the building who has just randomly walked inside at least three times, without knocking, just to see what we've done in the place. Never introduced himself, but he likes the decor. So I guess that's good.

I can't pretend I did it all myself. The crew worked like crazy once I got here and became their mascot. They were super nice to me, and with one important exception, they've gotten all the tasks done. The utility closet drain and tub drain both still need to be snaked. Someone appears to have dumped out mortar or grout or something down the tub, and it is hopelessly clogged. I spent well over an hour scrubbing the shower tiles and tub, and when I left, the tub was still holding on to an inch or two of bleachy, sandy, gray water. But besides that little detail, they made it through everything we needed from them. I'll check on things in the morning before I leave, but I don't think I am going to make any more changes from here. Time to let go and trust.

We celebrated our completion by going to a biergarten and shopping at a European products specialty store. It would have been more fun wandering around Pearl Street if the weather hadn't been a typical Colorado spring, where the spring rains are cold, cold, cold. I'm ready to go home to my warm, humid Park. My work isn't over. I have to keep prepping the next place to sell. The sooner we get the Low Country house on the market, the better this summer will go. The clock is ticking. Tick tock.

Major Milestone

Inspirational song: Bitchin' in the Kitchen (Shock Treatment)

Oh, my. I am so proud of myself I can't stand it. Two days ago, I was tottering on the edge of despair. I worried that I wouldn't finish this project in time, or that my body would just give out before I had to fly home. This evening, I finished early enough (with considerable help from my daughter and her boyfriend re-hanging the cabinet doors) to clean the kitchen and admire it for long minutes as I took pictures of it. I am certain that I did the right thing now that it is done, or nearly done, just waiting for the jewelry to be put on it in the morning. This kitchen looks fantastic. As each door was rehung this evening, it reflected more and more light. Now it's bright and fresh and charming. And I truly believe it is money. How many times have I heard it on home shows? Kitchens sell houses. Time to put that to the test. The photographer comes tomorrow to get the shots for our listing. By the time I get home, we will be on the market. Come on, offers!

I brought my laptop with me today, to stay on kitten watch while I worked. I can't help it. I'm so addicted to this kitten cam live stream. There is a new pregnant mama cat going into labor right...now. She's absolutely beautiful, and it's hard to look away, even when I'm supposed to be focused on my renovation. I need to get to an early bed tonight, but I have a feeling I'm going to be checking the feed all night long. Ah, well. I can sleep on the plane in a couple days.

If I can get a super early start tomorrow (assuming I'm not watching the Palindrome Kittens being born all night), I can finish the painting and cleaning in the bathroom before the photographer gets to work. For the first time in a week, I am arrogantly confident that I will get it all done. More pictures will come tomorrow. Until then, go to Tiny Kittens (tinykittens.com) and check out the new babies.

Snug as a Bug

Inspirational song: Beautiful (Marillion)

It just keeps getting better and better. I started very early at the condo, reassembling the base cabinets that are now finished, and pulling apart the uppers. The carpet guys came early, and the stove was delivered at noon. It was a long, hard day of work, but I am making incredible progress. The stove filled the big gaping hole in the kitchen, and now even with the doors off of the upper cabinets, it feels like a complete room again. The change in the whole vibe of the condo since the carpet was installed is nothing short of miraculous. It's quiet and snug and safe feeling. Maybe the flood is finally behind us all. It does look good, too. I totally chose the right colors, even if the pale celadon I wanted turned out more of an aqua on the walls.

This condo has served us well when we needed it, and it has been a savings-draining curse when Mother Nature pulled a prank on us. But now, it's time to let it go and move on. I have chatted with an awful lot of contractors and delivery men over the last five days. They go inside people's houses every day for a living. They see every sort of decor, cleanliness, and level of maintenance imaginable. Almost to a man, they have voluntarily told me that our condo is one of the nicest places they've delivered to/worked in. This gives me great hope that we will be able to sell quickly and get the money we need for a down payment on a house. They and the realtor have told me that I have great taste in the finishes I chose. Sure, I take pleasure hearing that, but it means more practical things to me. It means my future. It means maybe my forever home is in reach.

I am worn out from a long day. I think I will let my pictures do the rest of the talking. I've been breathing in oil-based primer fumes and new carpet off-gassing. I'm feeling more than a little loopy from just working. Time to take a sleep break, so that I can keep going tomorrow.

Putt Putt

Inspirational song: Wake Me Up When September Ends (Green Day)

For the first time since the middle of September 2013, the condo we purchased first is starting to feel like a livable space. Three or four days after the floods came, the carpets were ripped out and hauled away from both units, along with all of the walls from the knees down in one, and similar sections of two walls in the other. When we eventually let our kids move back into the lesser affected unit, it was with the idea that it would only be a few months of them living on bare concrete masked by a couple cheap rugs and walls patched with OSB. It made me feel like a slum lord rather than a kindly landlady. The kids hated it too, living in a shell of their homes, crammed in too closely with too many bodies (human, feline, canine, piscine). It was like the trauma of the flood never ended for them, and the ongoing stress caused damage to the family structure that may never fully fade away. And the longer it went on, the harder it was for them physically and emotionally, and to some significant extent financially. (Bare concrete floors in a garden level apartment are expensive to heat during harsh Colorado winters.) I don't know how long it will be before they stop tensing up at the sound of thunder (like tonight) or what it will take for them to trust that their homes are safe shelters again. Some traumas like this take decades to beat. My own mother would unplug our televisions from the electrical outlets and the antenna-later-cable every time a thunderstorm rolled through for thirty years, following a lightning strike through a TV antenna that burned down our house when I was a baby and she was the age my children are now. I hope that my kids don't have to carry this with them for that long, but I suspect they could.

The carpet guys came in the middle of the afternoon, as the plumbers and tilers were winding down for the day. After we all emptied the rooms with concrete floors and swept up for them, they placed tack strips and the thick green pad. Once the pad was spread out and starting to be glued down, I noticed two things. First, it was the exact same color as putt-putt golf greens, and second, just that one change made the entire vibe of the condo different. Yes, the pad absorbed sound, so the radio playing loudly didn't echo as badly. But it was more than that. It stilled the air and made it feel warmer, safer. The color is too close to indoor-outdoor carpeting to give the full effect of upgraded modernity, but it brought us light years closer to the feeling of a clean, finished home. The carpet is due tomorrow morning first thing, and right after lunch the replacement stove arrives. I've already signed the listing papers with the realtor, and finally I think we are going to make our deadlines to getting it on the market. It's going to look fantastic, and it is going to sell. I believe it now.

I have been putting a lot of time and energy into my own project in that condo, most of which has centered on painting the cabinets. This has taken three times as long as it should have, because I wasn't using the proper tools or supplies. Six or seven trips to Home Depot in three days is really not as fun as it sounds. I've learned the hard way to start with the big guns, and go for the oil-based Kilz rather than waste time with the latex version, or worse, believe the claim on the label "paint and primer in one." I lost a day and a half of work to that nonsense. But now, the lower cabinets are almost complete. I've even rehung three of the doors, and put one of the drawers back in to stay. And the contractors who have been super nice to me already have volunteered to place the handles and pulls for me. One of the guys putting down carpet pad watched me doing another round of paint on the drawer fronts and said, "You're a hard-working woman, huh?" My initial reaction was, "Depends on who you ask," but I bit that back and said, "I have no choice. I need to sell this place so I can afford to buy a house." But I think there's a little more to it than that. I take pride in being able to do some of this myself, even knowing that the place would never be done in time without the hard labor of all these guys setting tile, nailing in tack strips, and running the plumbing. I can't do it all myself. I can't even do a tenth of it alone. But I can make a difference. I can have an impact. Just watch.

Channeling My Energies

Inspirational song: She's Got a Way (Billy Joel)

Back in my previous life as a librarian, I quickly got a reputation as "the nice one," and it stuck with me for years. I don't know whether I really was that good at customer service, or just came off like a pushover, but I felt like I wore a big sign that said, "will hold your hand through your entire library experience." Sometimes it was a curse to be the nice one, when I really didn't feel like living up to my motto "it's not my job to give someone else a bad day." Lately, I have found it handy to channel that customer service queen who knew well how to smile sweetly and ask for exactly what she needed. I could have shown up on this job site, and been a difficult and demanding homeowner. The contractors would have hated seeing me coming. It's just not in me to be that jerky guy. I'm having a lot more fun being easy-going and flexible. And it seems to be working in my favor. My project is rising on the priority charts. The subs are not only tolerating having me around in the middle of their worksite, one appears to have all but adopted me. I pulled all the lower cabinet doors off, and took them to a back bedroom to sand and paint, out of the way of the kitchen and bath sink installations. When it suddenly clouded over outside, and got really dark in that room (without an overhead light fixture), the plumbing contractor showed up with an industrial lamp to keep my project going. He also volunteered an orbital sander and just enough spackle to patch two gouges in the cabinets (saving me from having to buy a new tub of it when all I needed was a tablespoon's worth). I'm still working myself into oblivion, but I've now got the tools I need to make it go faster and easier, and I have a companion who is making it fun.

I skipped out of work a little early this afternoon for the one evening of play time that I had scheduled for this trip. My BFF out here invited me to go to a ladies night at a nearby shooting range, and naturally I said yes. It was an opportunity for stress relief and entertainment, and it was only the second time ever that I have gotten to fire a 9mm. I had been sticking with little girly .22s, and now I think I'm finally ready to level up, so to speak. The .22 jammed several times, and the range monitor suggested that it was probably an issue with the flimsy little ammo rather than the weapon. Now that I have a tiny bit more experience, I'm less intimidated by the more powerful weapon. But don't worry, mom, this is not to say that I'm ready to spend a whole bunch of money I don't have on buying one for myself. Renting and borrowing are still where it's at for me, and even that is a rare treat. (And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the person in the next lane over from me, who had some gigantic cannon of a gun. I don't know what it was, but it was BIG and it sent shock waves through the room as it fired. And we were all fascinated by it...from a distance.) As I drove back from my friend's house this evening, a radio station devoted to comedy was playing a bit from Eddie Izzard in which he discussed how emotionally satisfying it is to blow things up, either by shooting guns or even just watching explosions in film. He said you fundamentally change the energy of the thing you shoot/explode. Yeah. It was a lot like that. Completely changing my energy, and that of my surroundings. It felt good. But it felt better to know I was doing it in a controlled environment where it was all in good fun. Now I think I can go back and tackle the big project with fresh eyes and a good attitude. I just might get this done on time after all.