Apron Thrift Girl

the next adventure

This has been the strangest year of my life. In some way it has been good in other ways it has been not so good. For nearly 365 days we have been living life in limbo. A year ago Dave learned that we might move to LA. We had originally thought the move would be in October. But the impending move continued to be moved up and up and eventually canceled. At that point as you know we switched gears and decided to move on our own so that the children would be able to attend a larger, more established Waldorf School that would take them through to 12th grade.

I feel like I have such a strange relationship with our house now. I feel that in some ways that I have been tied to it in such a way that it is hard to release myself from it. I'm here all the time sorting and packing and kind of going crazy. I'm purging so many of the things I thought once were precious to me. That alone feels wonderful.

Then we throw in the real estate woes of the last six months or so.... even with reading every news story out there on real estate, it still didn't prepare me on how difficult it really is to sell a house. We've lived  in many areas and sold quite a few houses. Each house we moved to, we planned for it to be our last, the house we will settle in. But I get restless, I get an idea of a better place and a better school and before we know it we are moving again. We moved from England to Wales, from Wales back to England, from England to Virginia, from Virginia to Bainbridge Island and now from Bainbridge Island to Sonoma County California.  Our other houses all sold within a month or so. This one didn't.

We started out as a For Sale By Owner and after two months with only one complicated low-ball offer we moved to a Real Estate company. We thought that once we were on the market officially, people would come in droves to see our enchanting vintage home with views. But no one came. We didn't get any viewings except realtors and at open houses. Lots of people complained that our house needed too much work. They made complaints that the master bedroom didn't have a master bathroom. I guess the 1927 needs were different than the 2009 needs. They wanted their toilets closer. People didn't like our 1970's kitchen or our lack of stainless steel appliances. Finally Dave and I realized that the wrong people were coming to view our house.

We needed people to come with a vision of where they could take our house. People who were a little holistic that would like our organic garden, our low or non VOC paint and our countless fairy and gnome houses dotting the property. The very next week after we realized this, we had an open house that included a family moving to come to our Waldorf school, a doula and a homeschooling family. All of these people were in our "tribe". We nearly sold the house that weekend but a number of realtor errors were a factor.

Time started to be against us. Summer arrived and the house still wasn't getting enough viewings. We lowered the price, had a super low ball offer but it was tangled up with a realtor who wasn't very good at his job and instead made out the buyers to be investors wanting to flip our house and who were experts in the market. They weren't going to budge past their lowball price. This left us so deflated not to mention a little scared. We ended our contract with our realtor and were going to rent the house out to a family that showed a lot of interested in borrowing our home on a monthly basis. And then that fell through.Sigh.

We went back on the FSBO market as we actually felt we had better luck with selling the home ourselves. Our first lowball offer came back on the table and we started to work with them. They had an inspection done and asked for $40K off the already lowered price. This was one week ago and about 2 weeks before we were set to move to California. Our hearts completely sank when this deal fell through. We had offered to come down $25K but they wouldn't accept that and wanted more. And I don't know about you but it is so difficult to keep the ego out of negotiations. All we saw was greed. Maybe we should have seen fear instead but we felt negative about it and although it is a buyer's market it's not a victimizing one where you have to do every last thing for the potential buyer. Even as I was reading the last email ending the contract, I was on Craigslist placing ads for our house as a Rental, FSBO again and even down in Sonoma County as a permanent swap. I pushed this house out there as much as I could. I lowered the price, I went downtown and pinned up our fliers everywhere. This was our last chance to sell it for at least 6 months. Our FSBO sign went back on the fence as did a little "For Rent" sign. The first day we had 257 hits on our website. The lowered price brought in a lot of interest. 

We had an open house on Sunday. And a signed contract by Tuesday to a family who had made an offer on the house. The same ones who we thought were going to flip the house a month or so ago. After conversing with the family we realized that we were completely misled on many things during that negotiation meeting. They wanted a house that was filled with sunlight, that had an organic garden, that had potential for solar panels on the roof and where they could repair our artisan well so that they could use the water in the garden. This family is so like us that when we first met and we finished our house discussion we hugged. And it reminded me so much as to why I wanted to sell the house ourselves. I wanted that intimate conversation where you can really share about your home and learn why they want your home. It isn't going from us to our realtor to their realtor and back to them in a confused mess. It's person to person. I realize that realtors can be very useful and handy. For me though, I needed the face to face interaction of a for sale by owner. And after we had our signed contract in hand, it honestly felt like it was meant to be. These are the people we were waiting for. Sure I would have liked a little more money but at the end of the day, your home (any any thrifted item) is worth as much as someone will pay for it.

Between all this stress we also took a trip to California for 11 days. The children went to a Waldorf camp and Dave and I went in search of a rental. I had planned to blog about it but my computer's wireless thingie decided to stop working. Luckily I had my iphone to read email but I don't have the patience to blog from it yet. We arrived home from our quick trip though without a rental.

A week ago today our house sale fell through, we didn't have a rental to move to, Dave didn't have an office to work from and we never found a storage unit. And we were moving in 11 days. Hence why I haven't' blogged in ages. Thank you to all those that privately emailed me wondering if we were okay.

To be honest all of this has been draining. Luckily Seattle has had the best summer in years with many hot and sunny days which at least kept me content in this madness. And here we are a week later under contract for our house sale and we have found a rental that includes an office for Dave and a 2 car garage for storing our stuff while we search for a house to buy. Everything is falling into place as we had originally visualized. Once we are down to California and settled in our rental I will start blogging again on a regular basis. There are so many thrift stores down there, I can't imagine not having anything to blog about. Even in our short week down there I found two Bertoia Children's chairs for $20.00.

And speaking of Thrifting....to Celebrate National Garage Sale day (2nd Saturday in August), I'm going to be hosting a huge moving sale. In fact it's nearly an estate sale sale (except that I'm not dead) because the entire main floor of our house and apartment will be open. Having moved so many times in my life, I don't want to take anything with us (except the orange couch). We are even selling food from our pantry, cleaning products, half of my apron collection (around 30), my red dinette table, some mid century furniture, pottery, toys, a play structure, and more. Here's our Craigslist ad for anyone local. Please come by and introduce yourself. 

So it appears that this chapter of our life is closing which means our next adventure is just around the bend. During all of the stress I just kept focus on Cerys and Keiran's new school. It's been our anchor during the ups and down of all this mess. And yet we are still aware that many people are going through this same thing. Or worse...they are losing their homes. And we are grateful everyday for what we do have in our life.

 

Here is our school. This is the Office and grades 1-4.

An incredible oak tree in the play yard. It was lovely to have the children spend time at their new school even if it was just a short week at camp. It will make the move easier for them.They are still resisting.

We are planning to leave Bainbridge Island next week with mixed emotions. We are so looking forward to settling down and getting to know our new community in California. It will be very hard though to leave our friends and family up here. We've had such an amazing six years of our life up here in Washington. It will be a heartfelt goodbye.

houston we have a problem

Every second of my energy is being poured into my office at the moment. A couple years ago when I moved from my tiny office to this very large space I had planned for my chaotic days of my office to be a thing of the past. But as I imagine most of you thrifters know, the more space you have, the more you can fill it up with. Hence my big, honkin', messy problem of an office. I'll show you these photos and then go away and hide in embarrassment.

The thrifted piano and the thrifted shelves that hold my inventory. I've sold the shelves on Craigslist last weekend and the books are now in the basement. The office is in worse condition than normal because I'm clearing out the rest of the house and bringing things into this room. Plus the fact that I haven't probably worked a full day since the end of February.

My spiritual, self-help & waldorf book shelf, my packing area and misc boxes of things I'm keeping to sell at a future flea market. The packing table is actually a sewing table that is going to be in my yard sale as well as the funky and somewhat ugly dresser. The table was a gift, the dresser was a hand me down, the large book case was $20 at a yard sale and the small bookcase behind all the junk was $10.00. They are both coming with us.

Ug...what an awful photo. The ugly pink sheet was waiting for me to make a proper curtain. This is a weird room above our apartment. It is attached to another bedroom through an opening which makes it a little chilly in the winter hence the nasty, pink sheet hanging up unattractively. This is certainly no cute, Posy gets Cozy studio. Of course I always dreamed it would be that way......eventually. The clothes on the rack are to sell, boxes of books to go through etc...

The worst of the mess. Except for the bike (thrifted for $100...retail value $1800) nearly everything here is worth something and was supposed to go on eBay or in my bookshop. I have resisted getting back into ebay for at least the last 12 months. I just can't force myself to sit down and do all of that work. Bookselling is so less time consuming which is why I love it. Finally today, I sent 6 boxes away to a woman who is going to sell the items for me and give me 50% of the selling price. I've been working 5 days on this room and 75% of this stuff is gone now. Although I am now officially tired and ready to stop working on the house.

At least the desks are not too terribly bad. Well maybe kind of bad. The filing cabinet, the table and desk on the right are all thrifted or were free. The chair was new but on sale.

It's funny, now that this room is heading towards un-cluttered I feel that desire to work more. Why do we settle to live in such clutter? I know the answer but I guess out of frustration I have to ask it again.  So there you go....my office in it's true entirety.

I'm am so excited to share with you that my friend has organized 30 people from her church (including teens) to come over tomorrow for 2 hours to help on our house. We totally don't deserve the help and they want absolutely nothing in return which somehow feels wrong. They are even bringing their own food and tools. Needless to say I feel very humbled by this beautiful community that wants to reach out and  help us.

And yet this is how my ideal society would be. I have been wanting to start a barn-raising group at our waldorf school but somehow haven't felt the motivation to take it past the idea stage. It wouldn't be to actually build barns but it could. Or maybe a shed, or help to paint a house in a week instead of the three years it has taken us.

This is the beauty of a true community, to come together to help others. Especially at a time like this with our economy. I wish this would happen more. What if 10 friends came together to weed your garden to prepare it for spring. Or in the summer have a Weed & Wine group as my friend Melissa once organized. She supplied the wine and every one came over with gloves and weeding tools. What community building ideas do you have and what might you implement in your community of friends?

the hallway

I keep forgetting to take "before" photos. These are sort of half way through emptying the area.

I think the hallway may be the dullest room in the house. Because the door in the photo leads to our 1000 square foot basement, the hallway becomes this holding area for stuff to go down the stairs. We started painting the hallways last year but never gave the walls the 2nd coat. When we moved in, there was a stained and somewhat smelly carpet over some 70's linoleum, which was over roofing paper and finally the original fir flooring. We removed the carpet the first week we moved in. The tiles were removed next leaving this hard to remove roofing-like-paper. Dave painstakingly removed each bit on his knees with a scraper in hand. We finally removed the last bit in the fall and were able to sand and coat the floor with an eco-friendly oil. It's expensive but we'd rather have healthy indoor air to breath than going with the cheaper polyurethane.

Worn railings to be painted.

Holes to be filled, baby (puppy) gate to be removed.

I didn't take any upstairs photos of "before" but it needed cleaning, a wall painted and a window painted.
We have a basket drawer unit in the right hand corner which had junk on the top of it. On the left hand side we have a wooden wall unit for mail and keys but is usually overflowing. We planned to:

-declutter
-fill in holes
-2nd coat of wall paint
-touch up trim
-paint stair railing
-paint upstairs hall wall
-paint window and surround
-deep clean
-pull any nails or screws in walls
-deep clean

The sun is shining today so I should be able to get some "after" photos. We spent both Sat & Sun working on the hallways. We are now at 18 days until our open house. Time seems to be speeding up while our work seems to be traveling at a snails pace. I miss thrifting but it's kind of silly to bring more things in when we are trying to get rid of so much.

a tidy and somewhat empty kitchen

First of all thank you for all those warm and wonderful well wishes for my 300th post. I appreciated each and every comment. My replies and visits to your blogs this month are going to be a bit slim. I seem to wake up, get the kids off to school, write blog post, waste time on Facebook and then it's back to work on the house. I take breaks here and there but usually end the day at around 7pm.

It's the sorting out of junk that does my head in. For example, I have a two dollar bill from the 1963 with red ink. It's not worth more than face value because it was in circulation and has a tear (from someone superstitious). I've held on to it for at least a year and it just moves from room to room. Each time I find something like this I just look at it and ponder what in the hay dickens to do with it. And I must admit this annoys me. Or maybe I find it energy draining. I went to the kitchen last night and asked Dave what to do with it. He said to spend it and move on. I love his thinking or more like, I need his thinking. I still have boxes and boxes to sort through and don't have the time to contemplate every last item.

20 days to go....

Here are the delayed photos of the kitchen. The light is far too wintry than I would like which leaves a rather dark photo.

I removed the vintage pie safe, took down the aprons (sniff, sniff), removed the faux vintage ice-cream sign (tossed in yard sale box), took out the worn red diner chairs and left the intact brown chairs and vintage stool. The stool was originally at the tiny bit of wall facing the camera. I used to have a market basket there. I tried to remove anything that looked cluttered. I want people to feel the size of the room and not the amount of clutter. The brown lump near the door is Sydney my tortie. And for those considering coming to my yard sale later this spring, the red table and chairs will be included.  It's going to be a fantastic sale as I honestly want to take little with us on our journey to California.

Here's the previous hidden little open cabinet. My father who has built a couple houses in his past and kind of a jack of all trades, finished the shelf off with molding. We painted it and cleaned the shelves properly. I took out some of the jars and packed away my Everyday Food magazines.

We added a shelf in the dreaded corner unit after this photo but overall this is our light and empty kitchen. I stored away the vita-mixer, moved the toaster and we did the dishes. We use the rice cooker every week so this is something that can't easily be hidden away. I took out an old peach crate that housed Elffin's food. That is the gap next to the dishwasher which is meant for a garbage compactor. Our radiator is there for now but will be removed on March 28th.

The cabinets and drawers are mostly bare plywood. Some of it has old red check shelf paper but it is either quite worn or partially removed. I didn't want to replace it because I think the smell of that product is quite strong and my head couldn't put up with the off gassing. Instead I bought some blue grip product to cover the shelves. It still gives off a small smell, but it can be removed easily by the next owners if they are keen for a purely eco-friendly house.

Potential buyers tend to look everywhere. Not only that but they make comments too about any hidden mess. We used to watch a show in England called The House Doctor. The house doctor would go to homes that weren't selling and share her advice on how to get the house sold. They would put up hidden cameras and show the reactions of the buyers to the sellers. Boy were they brutal sometimes about the mess, the state of the house and the decor. Some of the things were silly. Why complain about an ugly table when you're not buying the contents. Buyers do tend to open drawers and doors so my decluttering doesn't stop on the outside of the cabinets. I cleaned out every drawer and cabinet in the room.

Of course being a thrifter, none of my silverware matches, nor my glasses or dishes. This used to be twice as full but was pared down for the house staging.

We only have 4 1/2 drawers in the kitchen. Two drawers hold the kitchen gadgets which means lots of clutter. Most of these are thrifted and used only a couple times a year. I moved the ones that I do intend to use a couple times a year to the basement. The ones I don't ever seem to use I either put in a yard sale box or a goodwill bag.

The blue lining was $9.99 at Costco and I was able to do all the drawers, the bottom part of the pantry cabinets, a few shelves in the upper cabinets and extra to do the base of the open corner cabinet. I thought it was an attractive and affordable fix to my problem.

We worked all weekend on the hallway, stairway and upper-real-strange-and-funky-hallway. Photos tomorrow.

starting with the kitchen

Whether I am organizing someone's home, cleaning my own or getting ready to move, I always start in the kitchen. Okay, well I did sneak in the bathroom on Thursday last week since we had a snow day but overall the kitchen is where it always begins. Especially in our kitchen which somehow became the front door. We have a proper front door that enters into the living room as most normal old houses have but the way the house is situated on the property, no one ever knocks on our front door. In fact most people don't even ring the doorbell at the kitchen door, they just walk in. I'm thinking the house must have some energy that people feel comfortable about coming in unannounced. We are used to it now and dress appropriately in case anyone literally "pops" into the kitchen. We figure that when we show the house that people will continue to come in through the kitchen. We wanted to start our focus there.

Now the photos I'm about to share with you are authentic. They haven't been staged to look messy. This is what our house looks like after a week of school, a snow day, Saturday lunch and a the beginning stages of emptying the kitchen to prepare it for our overhaul.

The paint on the walls is only the primer color and still needs a second coat. As you can see the kitchen is crowded and full of furniture, appliances and looks very cluttered.

This is the other side of the kitchen looking into the dining room. The china cabinet in the background was emptied earlier that morning and most things either packed away or priced for our upcoming yard sale. The key to staging a home for sale is emptying it of clutter. The table in the center of the kitchen is a yard sale find that kind of created a kitchen island in a relatively small kitchen. While a bit compact it made cooking much easier to have the added space.

The corner cabinet is a mess and yes, that is a gaping hole there where a cabinet door should be. It wasn't working one day and so I ripped it out. I tend to do that always figuring I'll live in the house for years. We plan on adding a shelf and hanging a curtain on the front. Notice the ipod player, music is always a huge part of working on the house for us. Betts, suggested some techno music when I asked for suggestions on facebook, but I can't think of a single techno music artist. Betts, I need more detail. In the end I started listening to The Pierces station on Pandora which worked.

When you clear out a room, everything has to be stored somewhere else in the house. In our case we moved nearly everything into the dining room. Be prepared to sort of camp out when you empty your kitchen. We did manage to make pancakes and eat them on the table that used to be the kitchen island on Sunday morning.

Here is our empty space ready to be painted. On our list was touching up the cabinets. Honestly they could either be ripped out and replaced or fully painted. The insides are still bare plywood. I think they were added in the late 70's. We are not planning to spend that much money at this time. While the kitchen is one of the most important rooms in the house to a buyer, in this economy it wouldn't pay for us to redo the entire kitchen. Therefore we are going to make it look as nice as we can. Dave tried to take a dime size chip of paint to the hardware store but they couldn't color match it. He brought home some color samples and by good luck we hit the exact color. Our tasks in the kitchen included:
-2nd coat of paint
-Paint Baseboard
-touch up cabinets
-deep clean every thing
-clean windows
-paint inside of wall shelves (where the shelves are to the left of this photo there used to be a large cabinet. I discovered the shelves one day and decided to take the cabinet out. The shelves still have flowery paper that is probably 40 years old.)
-bring back in 1/4 of the items that we took out

I hope to finish the kitchen today after a much needed run to costco for food.