Sold, Closed, Moved!

It has been an exhausting week, but a very good one.  We got the keys to our rental home one week ago.  The only thing I did not like about it was that the driveway was in very poor condition, full of potholes.  I found out that it will be repaved soon.  While we were at the house, we looked out the window and saw some of our new neighbors!  There were two little speckled fawns with their mama lurking behind them in the woods.

That weekend, both of our sons and their wives and children spent the weekend with us in Wake Forest one more time.  They took load after load of boxes and stuff from our old house to the new one.  The three older grands had a ball playing in the woods and along the edge of the pond.  And, they were the first ones to try out the hot tub!

We had a moving truck come on Wednesday to get the furniture.  Everything did not fit in the truck, so Charlie and I made two more trips on Thursday to get the last of it and clean out the old house.  We put the dog in the kennel during the move.  I just don't think she would understand that we were letting these men take all our belongings!  She is acting anxious and clingy, but I think she will enjoy it here once she gets used to it.

Since then we have been unpacking and trying to find things.  Today I finished the kitchen and pantry, but still have not found our silverware (the stainless variety) or our knife set.  We got the TV and Internet set up today, so we are starting to enjoy the comforts of home.  Not to mention soaking in the hot tub at the end of the day.  

At our closing, the new owners said that they would take good care of our home.  Well, it is their home now.

And we are getting familiar with this one, and I think we will enjoy the woodsy yard and pond and privacy.  This was the view out of the sliding glass doors in our bedroom this morning.  We feel very lucky.

Elizabeth Barton Quilts

Everything on our To-Do List has been completed, as far as our home inspection goes.  Great feeling!  Today we met the buyer of our house, an Englishman who is thrilled to be moving in with his family.  It is nice to know our beloved home is going to someone who loves it, too.

I have almost the whole house packed.  This weekend, all our kids and grandkids will be here to help us finish packing and get ready for the movers.  We will take the first pick-up load of stuff to our new home tomorrow!

Since I don't have any new projects to show you, perhaps I can share a link to some beautiful art quilts by Elizabeth Barton.  These are her cityscapes.  Such beautiful glowing colors!

http://ebarton.myweb.uga.edu/cityscapequilts.htm

Lots Going On

We have had the joy of babysitting for our 7-month old granddaughter since Friday night.  Her daddy picked up his baby and his dog this morning.  It's going to be kind of quiet around here.  One less dog and no baby.  :(

It was delightful having this sweet-natured grandbaby with us.  She is very flexible...I can see a future ballerina or gymnast!

She even does splits in her sleep!

She also still shows a lot of interest in quilts!  Here is one that I made thirteen years ago.  She likes the side with the cherries better than the back!

Actually, it has not been quieter around here today at all.  We had seventeen replacement windows installed today.  Lots of banging, things flying out the windows, men going in and out and upstairs and downstairs and making the dog a nervous wreck.  Yesterday it was the surveyors in the yard.  What next?

Don't you hate it when you put up with something you don't like about your house, and as soon as you get it perfect you have to move out?  I have always dislikes our wooden windows, which are hard to open, especially after they have been painted.  The wooden windowsills that were not protected by the front or back porches developed wood rot.  The new inhabitants will be very lucky to have these new windows that we ordered before we even sold the house.

Tomorrow a carpenter is coming to fix a few things on the inspection list.  Then, we start moving things into our new house on Friday!  We will have a week to make the move, although the movers are coming with the van on Wednesday next week.  Busy, busy!

New Digs

I was a little worried about selling our home and having an early closing without a new place to live lined up.  We were lucky to find a nice home for rent in northwest Raleigh that I think we will enjoy very much.

From the front, it looks like a ranch-style home.  Yes, that's concrete, no grass in the front to mow.  But it is surrounded by garden beds with hundreds of azaleas and an irrigation system.

The back of the house is what caught our interest.

Look at that lanai!  It is 54 feet long!  And it overlooks a hot tub and pond!

We are just renting this house for a year, so I am not too worried about all those steps in my old age. 

There is also a very nice kitchen, although I admit to not being much of a cook any more.

The kitchen, dining room, and living room all open to the lanai with sliding glass doors.

So, I now have good motivation for all the packing and preparations for the move.  

Now...which room will be my sewing room?  There is a room on the main floor with built-in shelves that will probably be the one.

But there is also a guest room downstairs that might fit the bill.

I think we will need to use the closets in the guest room in addition to the closets in the master bedroom, so that narrows down the choice.  All of the rooms are large enough for my twelve-foot longarm table, but I'm not sure we can get it in.  It might end up being in the garage.

Back to work...pack, pack, pack!  Oh, and baby Charlotte and her dog Roo will be with us until Tuesday while their parents are at a wedding in Colorado.  We pick her up tonight from her other grandma's house.  Hope she finds it amusing to watch us pack!

We've Been Invaded by the Pod People!

We have a pod!  Not the kind from Invasions of the Body Snatchers, a horror film from my childhood, but a storage pod.

This system is a rather ingenious solution to the storage of your "stuff" when you are moving.    They deliver the pod right to your home on a well-engineered truck, loaded with a hydraulic frame.  They lower the pod where you want it, then drive the truck away from the frame, then raise the frame up to clear the pod and re-attach it to the truck.

Charlie and I watched in fascination as they delivered our pod right outside our garage, across the driveway.  It is sixteen feet of empty box.

This will soon look very different.  We want to clear out some furniture  to make our rooms look larger, and get some of the stuff we've boxed up out of the way.

When you are ready, they will come back for your pod and either take it to a storage place, or deliver it to your new home.

Since we do not know how long it will take to build our mountain home, or where we will live in Raleigh when we sell the house. or how long it will take to sell our house, it is hard to know what to put in the pod.

Surely not all my neatly boxed-up sewing projects? 

I am using clear containers as much as possible, and labeling everything else in case we have to retrieve something.  But, I have found enough Un-Finished Objects (UFO's) to keep me busy for years, so I doubt I will need all these unfinished quilt projects to be readily available!

Anyway, if they go into the Pod, I will try to take pictures of them first.  Some of them are pretty nice quilt tops, not far from being finished.

Here is one I found that only lacks an outer border.  I won the blocks at Capital Quilters' Guild Block Party many years ago.  Look at all the piecing I did to set them.  I would think that a green print border would be just right.

Maybe I will leave that one out of the Pod!

The big question...what do I do with my twelve-foot longarm table and my Gammill machine?

Do I look for a rental house in Raleigh with a basement or big room?

Do I store it until the mountain house is finished?

Do I sell it, and buy a new one when we move?

Can't decide.  I am hoping for the first option.

Better get to work filling up boxes to put in the pod!