Furniture & simplifying

I just sold the beautiful Amish bench we had, but was really too big and too heavy for us to move. Fortunately, the woman who bought it is truly excited about it.

Even better, she was excited about my half-finished woodworking projects, two end-tables and a side table, which I sold all three to her for $20. I was trying to give them to her, but she insisted that I absolutely could not give them away. She was borderline horrified when I told her that I was probably just going to donate them to the Starvation Army.

And even better, she might buy the dinette set from the basement later today, and absolutely wants the buffet/side-table if the person coming to look at it at 1:30 today doesn't want it.

Like I told her, it was just nice to sell this stuff to someone who is genuinely excited about it, especially one who self-describes herself as a "furniture person."

Pack, move, unpack, paint, repeat

Now that we've decided to move again, the real work begins. I have a five page long list on a yellow legal pad that I'm walking around the house with, all the tasks and chores to get the house ready to sell.

It's a good excuse to drastically cut down on the amount of crap that we have. Our fantasy is that we could move everything in a cargo van and the Jeep, but that's probably unrealistic. We'll likely need a 10" uhaul or equivalent, but it's good to have goals.

Today, at a minimum, I'm going to paint, do some drywall, continue selling furniture, and try to knock out a series of small tasks throughout the house. They range from significant (clean entire garage; build closet in bedroom) to the silly little things that turn into huge timesucks (level the stove and fridge in the basement kitchenette, which took me about an hour and a half the other day. But it's done right.)

Also trying to sell one of the cars, the trailer, the other trailer, and most of our furniture. It's slow going with how obnoxiously flaky people are about craigslist and following through, but I suppose that's the game.

The views are stunning as we're officially into Spring and the sun is up for more than half of the day. Well, it's not officially Spring for another twenty minutes or so, but close enough.

Okay: enough screwing around. Time to do drywall and paint!

Back home

Back from a lovely week+ in Eugene, Portland, and Troutdale, Oregon, here is what today's to-do list looks like: flush hot water heater, break socket wrench trying to get anode nut off with a breaker bar, go to safeway to get hydrogen peroxide, laundry, snowblow, snowpush, caulk and fill nail holes in trim I installed in bathroom last week, library, do CLE affidavits from excellent conference, work closing shift at restaurant. Good times. It is nice to be home, right?

Right?

Actually I'm really looking forward to biking for the first time in over a week, so it *is* good to be home.