Building/moving to a new home – day 46

We live in an alternate reality…

Living in a house that has been made ready for visitors 7 days a week is a life-changing experience. I am even beginning to break my long-standing habit of randomly storing paperwork on any flat surface!

Our comfortably cluttered living/working environment has been purged of all non-essential knickknacks. As a result we live in a house that resembles a stage setting or a model home in a new development. This austere living environment was achieved by renting large storage units and cramming a third of our possessions into them.

After the first few weeks, living neatly has almost become a habit for me. It has been a big change and hasn’t really damaged me much. I just pretend I am a visitor in a strange place. 🙂

Gretchen has always been orderly, so she takes this new lifestyle in stride.

Keeping the house ready to show has paid dividends. We have a constant stream of agents and prospective buyers and they all speak highly of what they see. We have had two offers on the house so far and we expect more, even though real estate sales are slower than usual for this time of year.

If you would like to see what the place looks like, you can take the virtual tour or see the still shots. Just remember, this bears no relationship to what the house looked like before we were showing it. All we did was to look at the house and apply a "Photoshop" type of clean-up technique. We "erased" (got rid of ) everything that would not help the house sell. Taking a visual approach to making a place presentable produces fast results.

Meanwhile, at the construction site…

At the Floyd end, we are making some real progress. The house foundation has been poured and the forms should be removed today. Once the sill plates are installed on top of the foundation walls, we will be ready for the delivery of the four house modules!

The modules themselves have been wrapped for delivery and should be scheduled to be shipped to the construction site some time in the next two weeks. The excitement is definitely building! Neighbors are already making plans to observe the placing of the modules. It will be a two day affair, so maybe I should break out the barbeque and we’ll have a party to celebrate.

The workshop roof is beginning to take shape and we are working to have a completed workshop by the time the house arrives. This is a vital step in managing the final stages of house construction.

There are so many things to install in order to make the house livable, that we will need to be in Floyd several days a week. We plan to use the workshop as our base of operations while the house roof is being put on and the utilities are being connected.

The workshop is fully insulated with paneled walls, skylights and a pellet stove shop heater. It also has a bathroom and shower. Setting up temporary living quarters in the workshop will give us low-priced accommodations if we are up to camping out at the construction site.

When roughing it begins to wear on us, we can always stay at our favorite bed and breakfast, Eagle’s Wings Estate, where we can catch up on the latest local news and enjoy Betty Lineberry’s hospitality.