New House Found!

Hola darlings!  I've been neglecting both of my blogs while engaged in an intense search for a new home. I will spare you the details :)  I am happy to report that, at last, I found a lovely home and may be moving by the end of June - more quickly than I'd anticipated.

I am frantically running around trying to get projects done around here.  The spirit is willing but the body is weak, as the biblical saying famously notes.  Now that the weather has finally improved here, I've been several weekends out in the yards doing winter clean up, and now the grass is growing leaps and bounds.  It takes several hours to cut the front and back lawns each weekend.  I love working outdoors, but it sure does cut into my weekends, which are the only time to get those projects around here finished!  I'm too tired at night when I get home from the office to do much of anything these days.  Retirement is 920 days away and counting down...

Yesterday I filled the staple holes and some gouges I made digging them out in the staircase.  The holes, and about a gajillion staples, were left behind when I removed the ratty old carpeting a year ago June!  That project sat for a long time, until I sold the house!  Today I sanded down the stairs to leave a (hopefully) smooth surface for refinishing.  I will be putting on a wood conditioner shortly, but right now I'm set up outside enjoying the warm weather.  A storm is coming, I can see it off to the northwest.  It's hot and muggy right now, and overcast.  I had planned on also finishing the stripping of the wallpaper in the family room over this Memorial Day three-day weekend, but that's going to have to wait. I've no intention of turning on the central air to coll down and dry out the house, so hard physical labor will have to wait for another day :)  Today is the warmest of the three -- I actually got quite a bit accomplished Saturday and yesterday (Sunday).

Here she is, so cute!  Just wait until I get a lovely new garden going in the front and add planter boxes
underneath the windows.  And a beautiful trellis between the two ranch-windows.  The architecture is
calling for some vertical accents and circles -- maybe a circular flag-stone area in the middle of the yard centered
on the picture window, with a bird bath in the middle.  A pergola stretching across the front stoop to the end of
the house nearest the driveway, to provide much needed shade in the living room with this western exposure!
Many more improvements planned.  Yes -- it's true!  I'm going to turn into one of those little old ladies
with fake red hair puttering around in her garden...but I will NEVAH wear a house dress, darlings.

So, the new house -- it is some 500 square feet smaller than my current home, which I had built in 1990.  It's a 60 year old one story ranch with beautiful hardwood floors and much smaller front and backyards.  Nearly everything is new in or on the house: new siding; new exterior doors; new concrete patio in the backyard; new steps leading down to said patio from new patio door installed in the dinette area of the kitchen with new laminate floors; new air conditioning unit; new high-efficiency furnace; new privacy fence/gate along the south lot line (borders the driveway.  I will have some painting to do on the inside, and the landscaping -- well, let's just say my gardener's fingers are already itching to get at it!  The kitchen was remodeled in about 2010 and has lovely new appliances.  I will be doing some remodelling of that space, though, to make it exactly as I want it.

A lot of my furniture is being left behind for the young couple who bought my house.  It's a small house!  There is a lower level (basement) rec room that will provide additional living space, but it needs some updating (okay, a lot of updating).  The furniture I am taking with me is too big for the little ranch house!  But I'll make it work.  After all, there is a nice bar in the rec room:

And what self-respecting gal born and raised in Beer City USA doesn't like her own personal bar...

So, I'm going to be consumed with projects and packing, all the logistics of moving to a new home, getting the financing in order and the closing done so I get the keys to the new place.  Oy!  I must be crazy.  Downsizing is a lot of work!  I'll be neglecting the blogs for awhile, alas, but a version of sanity will eventually return to my house and the blog will (eventually) resume it's former pace of posts.  Have patience with me, darlings!