Dregs and Painting

     Time marches inexorably on. 

     Over the last couple weeks, I’ve taken down all the shelving and cabinets.  Our walls are bleakly bare and full of holes.  All the imperfections of paint and dirt are plainly seen.

     As I cleared out the knick-knacky furniture, things like bookshelves and cute desks, I carted them over to Simpler Times.  It’s a little consignment store that my good friend, Tara Dreiling, owns in downtown Keenesburg.  A mutually beneficial agreement that helped me clear extra space!

     Our goal has been to get the house ready for the market by the end of April.  With one week left and my clock ticking down, I’m getting a little overwhelmed.  I’ve tried to take it slow and steady without getting stressed.  But with my DH working long hours and running errands in town, I’m alone most of the time in the work. 

     The majority of our belongings have been transferred over to the RV by now.  Except for what’s going in storage (now in the basement), it’s all been sold on Craigslist, given to friends, or donated to ARC.

      After the kids and I slept two nights in the RV, we moved back into the house for a night.  But we had such a good time that we decided to stay every night in the trailer.  This meant I needed to get organized for real…  I put all of our homeschooling supplies and books in the cupboards above the couch.  Fiction and non-fiction books are loaded in the small cupboard above the TV.  Below the TV, we have our XBOX 360.     
     A side note on the gaming system:  We purchased a Wii about five years ago.  Along with all the accoutrements, we had about eleven games we played regularly. 

     After much deliberation, we decided to trade the Wii in and keep the XBOX.  For our trailer, it fit better and made sense.  So I took a whole box of Wii stuff to Gamestop and they helped me get about $280 in store credit.  I picked up some kid friendly XBOX games and now we have a consolidated gaming system that the whole family enjoys…

     Below the XBOX are all our movies and games.  We still have some shelving open for Bill’s photography stuff.  We turned the cabinets above the dinette into our pantry.  It’s not pretty, but everything fits. 

I packaged up all our long-term food stuff, spices, extra cooking ware and things under the bed.  There is still lots of room for photography gear. 

     The kids and I turned the smaller bottom bunk into our dogs bed and space for their “dressers”.  I managed to create three separate plastic storage cabinets with several drawers for the kids’ clothes.  We are still working out some of the details. 

 I’m planning on putting the litter box and cat food under the other bottom bunk by cutting a hole into the storage under the trailer.  Keeps it safe from the dog, out of the shower and out of the way.      

While we move into the trailer, I’m fixing up the walls and prepping the downstairs for a solid day or two of painting this weekend.  Let’s see how far I get…

The plumbing works

     After a good night of sleep (and no traipsing across a cold, rainy driveway to use the bathroom), I knew I had to sanitize the tanks.

     I’m glad I waited for daylight.  I opened the drain underneath the tank, opened all the faucets and had one of the kids keep flushing the toilet while I turned on the water pump to drain the chlorinated water.  That filled the gray water tank to 2/3^rd full and the black water tank to a third.

     Since I still had to rinse the system, I decided to run only a small amount through the faucets (to make sure no chlorine remained in the pipes) and send the rest through the outside shower and drain.  I also made sure to drain the hot water tank (depressurizing it first) between each session.  The rinse cycle just drained onto the ground aided by the water pump.  Then I refilled the fresh water tank and installed our Pur water filter on the kitchen faucet. 

     All the kids celebrated by drinking a glass of purified water!

     Dewinterizing and sanitizing the system is a straightforward process and very easy for a new RV owner to do.  Though I’m glad I had videos and manuals to guide me.

Dewinterizing the fresh water tank.

      So my husband is preparing for his annual trek to Starfest.  A science fiction and fantasy genre convention geared toward Star Wars, Star Trek and other costuming geeks.  As his first official outing as a professional photographer (meaning small business expenses), we had to set aside the house preparations to get him ready.  I decided the kids would enjoy staying in the camper overnight while he was gone.  Up until then, they had treated the trailer like their personal play house. 

RV antifreeze for fresh water tanks

     However, I refused to stay in it until we could use the bathroom.  So dewinterizing the trailer became my priority.  Once Bill left in a chaotic flurry, we loaded up and headed to Walmart for a long potable water hose (to be used only for fresh water). 

     A stop at the Hudson library delayed us for a good hour because the LEGO man was there with all his cool Star Wars and other LEGO models.  We still had to get ready for the Homeschooling potluck meeting that night.  So I raced home in a fury (within the driving limit of course) and immediately started watching the videos we’d taken of the salesman explaining the process.  I dug out all the manuals and even looked up information online. I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing before I started. 

     As I glanced at the fresh water tank, I saw a big sticker that said I needed to sanitize the tank.  This added another step in the process.  Every time we put the RV in storage for a long time, bring it home for the first time or every three months, the fresh water tank should be sanitized.  A half cup of household bleach diluted in a gallon of water (never, ever pour it straight into the tank) went into the tank.  I made up two batches of the solution so as to hurry the process along.  It supposed to sit for at least four hours, but I wanted to shorten it. 

     I had my DS turn the water on and began filling the tank.  Then turned on the water pump.  But nothing was happening, so I ran to each valve and made sure it was turned on right (after studying the manual again).  Turns out I didn’t have the right valve opened on the water pump…  Go figure.   Getting the pink antifreeze out of the tanks went fast.  I added another gallon of chlorine solution for good measure and then we jumped in the truck and zoomed off to the meeting (an hour late…).

     We got home too late to empty the tanks, but at least I could flush the toilet! 

You are doing what?!?

We waited a good month before telling our family about the move.  I wanted to have the RV stabilized and be in the process of preparing the house before mentioning it.  Perhaps it was my way of putting off the inevitable emotional feedback and God kept telling me, “Sooner rather than later!” 

                My sister and I are very close, so she knew from the get-go what we were doing.  She is very supportive and bolstered my courage to tell my parents.  Although I knew they would be supportive no matter what –there would still be concern for our well-being.  I waded through the conversations and followed them up with a long email detailing our plans and ideas.  My brother and the rest of the extended family were very supportive as well (to my immense relief). 

                We weighed the consequences and impact this decision would have on the family long before we moved on it.  We prayed for a long time and sought the Lord’s guidance.  I think God was ready for us to go long before we were.  So this is a decision made in faith. 

                Then it was time to break the news to his family. They were resistant to the idea, but this is our decision to make.  And like my grandpa-in-law said, “My happiness doesn’t reside in someone else's head!”

                We are thrilled at the new adventure awaiting our family and the possibilities it can bring! 

Preparing the house for sale

                With Bill on his third week of sickness and the kids playing in the RV, I found myself pulling up reserves of energy and motivation.  The same week we bought the trailer, we brought a real estate agent over to the house.  She is our good neighbor that lives across the street and sold us the house. 

                Though surprised to hear we were ready to move again, she gave us an honest assessment of the house.  Remember that whole spring cleaning?  That was to impress her with our beautiful house…  In the end, we would have to take our new bookshelves down, move the washer and dryer back to the basement, paint the whole house (except for three bedrooms) and lay in hardwood floors downstairs.  Sigh.  Really?  OK.  And then she laid out the paperwork.  Selling in this soft market with lots of competition in a small town would be hard.  

                So what to do? Well, I can’t afford realtors fees and feel pretty good about marketing it myself.  So for the time being, we’ve decided to try and sell it ourselves. Bill is excited to take pictures using new lighting techniques he learned at a recent seminar and we can set up a free website. 

There are websites that we can use to help sell it on the MLS and supply paperwork for the contract. And since God knows our buyer, we’ll fix the house up for them… My goal is to make them walk through the door and immediately fall in love with it.  To think, “That’s exactly the way I would do it or the color I would choose!”

                After spending a week cleaning out the garage, I posted tools and such on craigslist.  Because we bought the trailer in March, it’s been tight.  So we decided that we would raise the money to buy supplies by selling off most of our unnecessary furniture and tools.  So far we raised $500.  Not bad for three days of work.

I toyed with the idea of having a yard sale, but to be honest… I hate them.  I don’t like shopping at yard sales or holding one.  I prefer thrift stores (I have my favorites on ½ off days…) and craigslist.  Now most of the things I’m selling are for $10 or up.  But I do have a few bags and boxes of clothing and odds and ends.  Those items I can take in one at a time to an ARC thrift store, where they will give me a receipt for my donation and a coupon for 50% off one regularly priced item.  Since I shop there for most of our clothes (the kids and I) and usually go on a weekday, these coupons are worth more to me than a yard sale.  I can buy something (like a skirt or pair of jeans) that would cost normally $6 and only pay $3.  That bag of clothes not only netted me a tax write off, but was worth $3.  And I didn’t have to sell it.  And if I buy something more expensive, it’s worth more.  Brilliant!  Thanks, God. (He gave me the idea).