And I’ve gotten complaints. Sorry about that! But this is what happened.
April went by sort of slowly while we waited for snow to melt, and talked about moving to the Olympic Peninsula, which I’d totally fallen in love with last year when we took a trip to the national park. Dan was ambivalent about it, and left it up to me to make up my mind. One day I’d want to move and the next day I didn’t want to go anywhere. Pretty much that’s what I did all month long.
Then, the early part of May we planned a long weekend at our favorite birding spot at Malheur, and we finally decided to put our house on the market, figuring that it would take a couple of years to find a buyer. We listed it with a realtor on Thursday, and Friday drove to Malheur, not thinking about our house being on the market. When we came home on Monday we had a phone message from the realtor asking us to give him a call to get some details ironed out on the listing agreement. We were tired so we didn’t call him back, and later that same day he called again.
Dan got the funniest look on his face. He covered up the phone and said, “We have an offer on the house, and the guy wants to know what is our best price.” I said we weren’t going to bid against ourselves, so we wanted full price since it was a very fair price. Dan passed along that message.
We didn’t sleep much that night because truly I hadn’t figured at all on what would happen next whenever we did get an offer, a couple of years down the road.
Tuesday afternoon the realtor called back and said we had an accepted offer at full price to review. Much stress ensued.
Now we had to find a place to live, someplace an eight hour drive from home, each way. And we were on the clock! This pretty much consumed our time for the next month.
We made several trips to the Olympic Peninsula, and made offers on several places, which fell through for one reason or another, before we finally got an accepted offer in early June, and then we had to do all the packing and getting rid of extra things as we were going to be in a house a third smaller than our Curlew house.
In the middle of July we packed the birds and cat into travel cages and cat carrier, stuffed the car with everything it could hold, and hit the highway. That was a very long eight hour drive. I had tried for a month to teach the parrots to say “Are we there yet?” Dan was not amused 🙂
And here we are. Remodeling again. Like Dan says, we’ve been remodeling houses for 20 years, why stop now!
First major project was to get a huge oak bar removed from the family room, which then meant replacing the tile floor underneath it with hardwood flooring to match the rest of the room. That flooring is still unfinished, and awaiting the rest of the flooring being stripped and refinished. Sheetrock was damaged and electrical work needed to be addressed.
Other minor projects were completed the first week or two we were here, including a thorough pest inspection and remediation, and replacing the old toilets and washer/dryer.
Next major chore was to replace the old smelly dark brown carpeting with hardwood flooring. That took about a month to accomplish, what with waiting for the flooring to arrive, and then moving everything out of the living room, and two downstairs bedrooms so the flooring guys had room to work. It took them two days, and it’s a vast improvement!! Once they were done we could move things back into the downstairs rooms and set up a spare bedroom.
Second major project was to replace the front door and french doors out onto to the deck. Another huge improvement.
Next and largest project was to replace the kitchen in its entirety. It took six weeks for the cabinets to arrive which they did on October 5th. That’s what we’ve been doing this last week.
The refrigerator is new, and everything else is what we were getting rid of, lock stock and barrel.
The family room with our two desks and the dining room table, and the pellet stove which we had installed to replace an old wood stove is in the corner. You can see the unfinished floor where the bar was located.
We moved everything out of the kitchen/family room and into the living room, except the hutch which is simply too large to move.
Removing everything from the cabinets, and putting it back into boxes, plus the bird cages, and the living room was stuffed to the gills. Fortunately this only lasted a couple of days before we could put the birds back into the family room.
Monday October 8th the kitchen was removed.
Me and the cat hid while this was going on. They made a hell of a noise. The whole room felt way smaller without the kitchen cabinets. An obstacle illusion as Dan likes to say.
A side benefit was we were able to locate and block ingress and egress holes used by mice. Yay!
The old cabinets are still sitting on our deck waiting for the Habitat for Humanity guys to come pick them up.
Friday the last nobs and pulls were installed on the cabinets, and a piece of plywood was laid on top of the cabinets so we have a work surface.
We had a piece of granite from the counter top we installed in our Bigfork, MT house, and we’re going to be have the same Blue Pearl granite here. We put this next to the electric range so I have a place to set hot pans.
The counter top guy was here on Thursday to make a template for the granite counter top, which will be installed in two weeks.
Without the overhead cabinets blocking the view, the kitchen is now open and feels much larger. We replaced dark oak cabinets with natural maple cabinets. That’s the new french door.
The parrots are in a corner, next to the pantry cabinets.
The kitchen feels much larger now. Another illusion 🙂
We installed three pantry cabinets to replace the pantry room we had at our last house. The holes under the cabinets are to provide airflow for the air return vent in the floor under the cabinets.
Lots of storage space.
This coming Monday the 15th the floor refinishing guys are coming to strip the old finish off the floor and refinish it. That will take two to three days, so once again we have to move everything out of the kitchen and family room and into the living room. Only this time the boxes from the kitchen are no longer cluttering up the living room because this weekend we put everything away in the new cabinets and drawers. Yay!! I can actually find things now. There are still a few boxes in the garage yet to come in but no point until the floor is finished.
We’re hoping that the following week of the 22nd that a painter will show up and paint the kitchen, and then there’s just light fixtures to replace (also in the garage), before the counter top is installed later in the week. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll end of painting it ourselves.
If all goes according to plan by the end of October that room will be finished.
Then it’s just repainting the rest of the house, and replacing light fixtures as we go.
Next year we’ll tackle the outside of the house.
There are two really cool parts about being here. Being next to the national park, and the creek behind our place which is a wild life corridor for all sorts of animals to use from the mountains of the park down to salt water, is really neat.
And having Anna’s Hummingbirds coming to our feeder multiple times each day, and they’ll be here all winter. That is amazing!!
We’ve seen this bobcat several times so far. This time he and Mish stared at each other for a little bit, both their tails twitching back and forth before the bobcat wandered off back towards the creek. We obviously are in the midst of his territory.
Roughly twice the size of Mishkin, and a lot darker fur than the bobcats we saw in Curlew. Those were winter cats, though, so that might be the reason for the darker fur.
Here he is leaving the yard, with one ear back and listening to the house.
Lots of deer go through the yard, and our neighbors tell us that coyotes have a den at the end of our road which they’ve used for many years. Black bears will put in an appearance at some point, but no Elk. They are all either further east, or further west depending on which herd they belong to.
Enough deer are here that a fence around the garden will be required. We’ll figure out a garden this winter.
And on top of all of this I got very sick right after we moved here, and have been spending a lot of time visiting doctors. So that is why I haven’t been writing lately.
OMG, I am SO jealous – at least until your first snowfall. That Bobcat is GORGEOUS. Your house is already gorgeous. THANK YOU for posting these pix, I’ve been having withdrawals b/c your posts are such fun!