Tag: moving

  • Up in the North Woods

    Up in the North Woods

    As we are temporarily without a home, we will be spending the next few weeks up in northern Wisconsin. One of Brandon’s sisters promised a new route up to the family lake house that would cut the travel time from six hours down to five, so we tried it. We drove past Milwaukee instead of Madison, and we managed to leave late enough in the afternoon to hit rush hour as we did so. Awesome! The trip took six and a half hours.

    This greeted us though, so it’s worth it.

    The Lake

    The kids held up all right, though Eleanor’s a bit gun-shy now about driving now. It’s a 20-minute drive (at least) to get into town, and she complains that it takes soooo loooooooonnng.

    Brandon’s whole family is up here. There are ten of us sleeping in the lake house, and five more family members in a cabin further down on the same lake. That’s eight adults and seven kids. Plus a total of four dogs between us all. My uncle and his two cousins are also, coincidentally, nearby. As are seven additional members of Brandon’s family (aunt, uncle, cousins). We don’t really come from large families, but everyone seems to be up here at once. The north woods are where it’s at!

    It’s been awhile, but I feel like I should watch this.

    North Woods Fishermen

    Eleanor and August are sharing a bedroom here, and they’ve been enjoying it. They’re read their bedtime stories together, and after Brandon and I say goodnight and shut the door, they talk to each other for a little while. Last night, Eleanor told me what she and her brother talk about before bed.

    “All the things we know about and do, and all the things we don’t know about. And we tell knock-knock jokes, and play games, and after we play our games we say good night and go to sleep.”

    Kids are the best. This is going to be a really special summer.

  • Moving Day

    Moving Day

    Eleanor and August

    Well, that was an unexpected week off from the blog. That’s what happens when you scramble to get all of your belongings into storage, get the house swept and cleaned, and the keep the kids happy. Not having an internet connection may have also contributed.

    Skeleton Keys

    The closing was scheduled for 3:00 yesterday. Brandon and I had almost finished moving everything out by the morning, but we still had a few things left on the storage shelves in the basement, plus the shelves themselves. We filled our car by 2:00, but had no room left for the shelves and uprights. The new owners were about to do their final walk-through, so we quickly left a note on a box saying that we would be back to pick it up while they were at the closing, and sorry.

    We got back to pick it up, and they wrote back:

    We love this place!! :)

    We’re glad! We loved it too.

  • A DIY Art Installation

    A DIY Art Installation

    I came across this fantastic tutorial recently for a DIY art installation, so I decided to try it out. It isn’t terribly difficult to do, but it does take some time.

    Moving Boxes

    We’re going to reassemble the installation in a storage unit exhibition for a few weeks before moving the work to its next display space. I’m looking forward to moving on to my next phase soon after, inspired by this Mark Jenkins sculpture.

    Mark Jenkins Sculpture

  • Setting the Stage

    Setting the Stage

    We didn’t have to do much to get our house ready to sell since we’d made a lot of improvements to the house already over the years, but we did do a few things to stage it. The biggest change we made was swapping out the Edison chandelier in the bedroom for a simple schoolhouse fixture. We loved the other fixture, but it was so taste-specific (you either love it or hate it). The new light is nice, ties in with the one in the nursery, and will appeal to a wider variety of people.

    Edison Chandelier to Schoolhouse Fixture Lighting Swap
    Bedroom

    The rugs came up in the living and dining rooms to show off the hardwood flooring (which is beautiful and in fantastic shape). The Eames rocker came out of the living room and the fern is now on the front porch. We removed a small console table from the dining room, and also removed the table leaf and two chairs. People tend to move through houses in groups, so we made more room for them to navigate their way around. I think the house looks a little weird, but it’s standard staging stuff, I suppose.

    Also weird but standard: real estate photos. All of the photos in this post, aside from the first side-by-side of the lighting, are from our listing. The photographer went super-wide with the angles to show more of the rooms’ structure, which sometimes makes for odd pictures. Also, why does my living room look even more pink in the photo than it is in real life? It isn’t really that pepto. (And obviously, no, I did not repaint the room in a neutral color.)

    Living Room Real Estate Photo
    Dining Room Real Estate Photo

    We upped the curb appeal a bit with new plants out front (which I actually did a week before we decided to sell, by coincidence), and weeding the garden. Brandon put a new coat of paint on both the front and back porches, making sure to work around my painted rug out front.

    Our House Exterior
    Front Porch
    Our House Exterior, from the Back

    We made sure the closets were decluttered (they already were, for the most part), and have been completely on top of cleaning up toys every day. We turn on every light in the house for showings, and also make sure the air conditioning is on if it’s even a little warm that day, and that’s it.

    I won’t feel comfortable sharing definitive news until we have signed paperwork and the sale is a done deal, but I will say that we’ve had a lot of interest and a lot of positive feedback. Sometimes the house is too big for a family and sometimes it’s too small, but everyone has said that it shows well. Pink living room and all.