Move update

Sorry to have been AWOL for such a long time. Dan and I have been working feverishly to clean up and prepare the house for sale. It started out in decent condition, but there are a lot of things that we've both ignored for years or just never got around to fixing. We had our Realtor walk through and point out things that should be changed, and I made up a master list that's now hanging on the refrigerator of all the things we need to finish. So much work! Thankfully, a lot of it is painting which I really enjoy.

That is, aside from the evil popcorn ceiling seen on the right. We have a huge vaulted ceiling covered in the stuff that we planned on taking down, but just don't have the time or energy now. So we're painting it all white to match the walls. This is turning out to be much more difficult than either of us would have imagined. The accoustical coating soaks up paint like a sponge and comes off when you try to paint it, dropping down in a rain of tiny white dots everywhere. So far we've used four gallons of paint for that one ceiling alone! It takes a lot of muscle to coat the uneven surface, which is especially hard from a distance. Dan is doing the bulk of the higher up stuff while I do edging and the lower areas. Evil, evil stuff. I can't wait to be finished.

So far, we've re-painted our downstairs bathroom from a glorious apple green (see the dab of paint here) to a much more house shopper friendly cream (look left for the finished bathroom, tiny as it is). We've replaced the leaky kitchen faucet with a snazzy new one with a spray attachment that the boys love. We've washed down the kitchen cabinets and treated them with Old English scratch cover to fill in nicks and uneven spots. We've picked out vinyl tiles to cover the kitchen floor, since the old linoleum is in lousy shape. We've filled in holes in the walls and primered doors that need attention. We've cleared out whole car loads of stuff from the garage, enough that I'm driving to Goodwill every Sunday morning with another load (I now bring the workers something nice for breakfast once a week). We still need to install the floor in the kitchen and tear up the carpet in the upstairs bathroom and install tile there. Then touch up paint wherever it's needed and general clearing out of everything that isn't essential.

The original goal was to put the house on the market by the end of this month. I think it'll be a week or two into March, but that's still pretty close to what we'd planned. Then we wait and see how long it takes for the house to sell and start planning the move. Dan doesn't have a job in Oregon yet, despite a concerted effort to find one. At present our plan is to have him talk to his boss and see if his company will consider keeping him on as a consultant for a while, telecommuting once we move. He just started a very large project that will bring in a lot of money for the company, so they may well decide to keep him on to oversee things at the start. If he doesn't have a job in place we'll use the money from the sale of the house to live on while he searches in the Portland area. We will have enough to live on for a good year or so, and he plans on doing at least temp work while looking for something permanent there.

I go from being terrified of making such a big move to elated that we're finally moving to a place that feels right, that feels like home. Such a big step for all of us, but I think it's the right one all around. I can't wait!