Happy Blogoversary

One year ago today this blog was born.

Look back to that first post, and you'll see a couple of people with a dream. Of course, they had absolutely no how idea how it would all come to pass, but they had a dream to start traveling the country fulltime in their yet-to-be-purchased motorhome starting April 1, 2010.

Wow! It's really something to look back. In reading that first post and paging through those that follow our story really unfolds. From here, it reads like a very systematic story. It's as if we actually planned it all to happen this way. Funny how life can be!

As we sit here a year later, with our house readied for the market and our motorhome readied for life on the road, we are smiling. Why? Well, we're a heck of a lot happier now than we were then. And, with any luck at all it will be more like August 1, 2009 (she types with all fingers crossed) when we make our great escape. That'd make us eight months early!

What a pleasure it will be to be ahead of schedule.

Thanks so much for making the journey with us, dear readers. Something tells us the real fun is just beginning.

Cheers!

The Stage is Set

They say pictures speak louder than words.

I say "especially today."

The stagers are done doing their thing. Some of my chatting buddies requested pictures. This blog has been picture-free to date. But, today is one of those days when I need pictures to tell the story.

Our goal is for our house to look stunning and seduce a buyer. I assure you, it looked nothing like this when we actually lived here! I'd love to hear what you think.

Here we go.


When that lucky buyer turns the key and steps in, this is what they'll see. (Notice the khaki wall?)


Upstairs, they'll find the living room...


...and dining room (with another khaki wall!)


When they reach the top floor, they'll find our "very sexy" loft...


...with our million dollar view of the San Francisco Bay.

There's lots more to see, of course. But, those are the highlights. And, if that doesn't sell them, little details like this will surely seal the deal.


Here's a shot of our staged master bath. Looks lovely, doesn't it? (Of course, don't think about actually trying to do anything in this room, like brush your teeth or blow your nose. You have to dig for all that stuff in the cabinets underneath.) I must confess to a staging faux pas: I moved one of those towels out of the way of our cats with claws, so it's not hung correctly. (Gasp!)

Anyway, now look closer.

There are rows of buttons on those towels! Of course, we're not supposed to use them. Our towels are with our toothbrushes and kleenex...under the counter.

And, if buttons on the towels don't do the trick, I'm sure this will.


Yes, these are sitting just outside our shower...where the bath mat should be. And where is our bath mat? You guessed it. Under the counter!

Staging silliness aside, our house looks great. If it brings us a bigger or better offer sooner, then it's worth it. Time will tell.

Stay tuned!

(Now I remember why I haven't posted any pictures to this blog. It's a lot of work! Hope you enjoyed them.)

True Confession

This post doesn't have anything to do with getting ready to go fulltiming. No, this second post of the day has everything to do with covering my a**.

In my last post, I mentioned that we met with the Dean of our journalism school. And, as I reported, it was a lovely meeting. Lots of fun.

But, before heading to bed tonight in our home filled with furniture we do not own, I started thinking. 

You see, the Dean said she was going to bookmark our blog. (Not this blog, but the other one.)

And, what did this j-school grad who left that college campus 30 years ago do?

I went back and edited all of the entries on Bullwinkle's Travels! 

Geez!

Half Staged

Last night our house was a big empty. Tonight it's half staged.

Having strangers come into your empty house and put stuff in it is, to say the least, a little trippy. They're not quite done, so I guess we're in some kind of staging limbo. It'll all get wrapped up tomorrow. Then, there will be pictures for the website, followed by inspections. On Tuesday, the real show begins.

I have to admit, the place is looking pretty good! I did take "before" pictures of the empty rooms. It'll be very interesting to see the "after" shots. It feels like we're in the middle of a show on HGTV!

One minor but frustrating casualty of the day: the one and only piece of furniture we want to keep (and the stager wanted to use) got scratched moving it from our living room to our dining room. We're not happy. But, we'll work it out.

The better part of our day was about packing stuff up and, when that wasn't possible, shoving stuff into closets. Once the stagers are out of here and the photos are shot, we need to free up a bit of closet space.

We are SO thankful that we did all the work we did to prepare for this move when we did it. As a result, our closets had plenty of room to accommodate a few extra things!

A treat in our day was a visit to the city to meet with the Dean of the School of Journalism at our beloved alma mater. She was captivated by the story of our future fulltiming adventures. She encouraged us to start a blog and record our travels. Done! We gave her our card with the address to Bullwinkle's place. She looked these two long-ago J-school grads in the eye and said she'd bookmark the place. We were flattered! She also encouraged us to contact someone at our alumni association to discuss a very intriguing possibility for doing some kind of work on the road. It's just an idea, and a remote possibility at this point. But, who knows? After all, we were talking to the Dean!

Back at the ranch we sold more furniture and managed our Craigslist correspondence. It's been another long day. We look forward to experiencing what it's like to be fully staged tomorrow.

It feels a bit like we're two steps away from the peak of the mountain. In just a little while, we'll be coasting!

We can't wait.

A Big Empty

Our home, as we knew it anyway, is no longer. Right now, we're sitting in our living room on two little folding chairs with a patio table between us holding popcorn and two well-deserved cocktails. Our house is now a big empty.

It's been quite a day.

We started early, and it's been so long I don't remember what we did first. We had painters here transforming our rich accent walls into wide expanses of khaki. It looks like crap, in our humble opinion. But, if it sells our house, then fine. The stager came by to plan things out for the big job of making our house look like something from the pages of Metropolitan Home. We packed more boxes and took everything out of the drawers in our bedroom. Movers came to take essentially all of the furniture and stack it in the garage.

Throughout the day, we managed the responses from our 20 or so postings on Craigslist. That's a lot of work! One guy came over to pick up our $20 silk ficus plant. He got here and his "intuition told him" the plant wasn't meant to go home with him. (Geez! I can't wait to leave California!) Thankfully, we have a backup buyer who will be here tomorrow. Someone put a deposit down on our bedroom furniture. Our stager said she wants our vintage turntable. And, it looks like our La-Z-Boy recliner might find new life at an acupuncture clinic in Berkeley. (Yes, I love the stories!) A few other things are in the works. Whatever doesn't sell by the end of the weekend will be given to charity or trash. This stuff is outta here!

Oh yeah, sometime today I squeezed in a trip to the dentist. And got a pretty clean bill of health. Yeah!

We got a really nice note from realtor #2 today. Very gracious. She said she hopes she can bring us a buyer. Wouldn't that be something?

Today has been a hard day. We're very excited, of course. But, this is all a wee bit unsettling. (OK you good folks who are out there ahead of us, we could REALLY use an encouraging word right now!) We're very close to getting to exactly where we want to go. But, when you're sitting on patio furniture in your big empty house, it can be a challenge to keep your eyes on the prize.

I think it's time for us to put the computer away and take out the atlas. Perusing the maps for some initial and future routes might help us focus on what's important to us right now. Tomorrow will be another busy day.

And, so it is, one big day closer to realizing the dream.

More, More, More!

It's been another productive day around the sticks and bricks, filled with more purging, more packing and more craigslist.

We scheduled yet another charity pickup for today. With our "staging" scheduled for later in the week, these people hit the jackpot. We got up early and started filling the driveway. In the end, they made a nice haul. And, we were free of lots more stuff.

We've packed a few boxes in the last few weeks, but today we got serious. Boris made a very interesting and adventurous trip in the early a.m. to pick up more moving boxes, and we filled them up. The china and crystal and lots of other stuff we think we can't live without is packed up in more boxes than we thought we'd have. We have a feeling this is how the whole thing works!

We are ready to part with a significant amount of our furnishings this week, so we took pictures and measurements of everything and started putting it on craigslist. Yes, we still love craigslist. But, today, it feels like a whole lotta work! We'll work into the night to get everything posted. Hopefully a good chunk will be gone by the end of the weekend. Then, we'll leave the rest to yet another lucky charity.

Through it all, the process has been tiring, energizing and a wee bit emotional. We're parting with some stuff we've had for a very long time. It has served us well. And, after all, it is just "stuff".

More to come.

A (Very) Quick Breather

We're back from Cloverdale. And, what a day it's been!

After a wonderful night's sleep in a near-empty campground, we enjoyed our morning "routine" then hit the road. While we were breaking camp, we made special note of all the steps we won't have to do when we're fulltiming: packing bags, loading dirty laundry, emptying the refrigerator, etc. Oh, how we look forward to that.

We pointed the moose south on Highway 101 and stopped in Petaluma an hour or so down the road. Bullwinkle will be out of warranty later this month, so we made a date for him to get all of those things taken care of, plus a couple of regularly scheduled service activities. It was just a bit sad to leave him there in Petaluma!

Another hour or so later we were back to the sticks and bricks. We called the winning realtor and it was if someone fired a starting pistol. We were off! Within a couple of hours we had a painter and a stager in the place. And, we completed the paperwork to make the listing official. When she left the house just before 7 this evening, at least one of us was in somewhat desperate need of a cocktail! 

So, here we sit, a drink in hand. With very fresh memories of how it is to wake up in our motorhome parked in a very quiet campground, we're enjoying a very quick breather.

Ahhhhhhhh! 

Breathe in and out. For tomorrow, it starts. We have a ton of stuff to pack up. The painter will be here Wednesday. (Didn't we just have this place painted?) And, the stagers (oh-god-how-we-hate-this-but-we-have-to-do-it) will be here Friday and Monday.  The first open house will be Sunday, June 14th.

In the words of Jimmy Buffet: Breathe in, breathe out, move on! 

Here's to moving on really soon.