It took a week of heavy lifting, sorting, cleaning, selling, and donating. We are out of the old and into the new. I thought I'd reveal the house in stages, starting with the reason we bought it- the backyard. Our house sits on a lot and a half of roughly landscaped, wide open wild lawn that butts up to county acreage behind our back fence. We have a baseball field.
In case you are wondering, we did not relocate to Southern California, but, we are now the proud owners of 4 mature palm trees. This isn't something that exactly drew me to the house, but they are growing on me for some reason. We'll have to get a hammock to tie between the two that sit next to one another in the back of the yard. There is also a beautiful, full, branchy tree right in the center of the lot; the future home of a tree fort, and a little shed-turned-play house.
We'll be spending a lot of time out here this summer, as we get started on renovating top floor. We'll paint the old shed, put up a badminton net, camp under the stars. So many things about the house will change, but for now, this yard is perfect, and the Southern and Western facing views make you feel far away, even at the top of an unassuming cul-de-sac.
I feel like we just did this. A couple of days ago I crept up into the attic and dragged out the moving boxes. As just about everything is approved and signed off on, and we are set to close next week, I have to accept that we need to pack it up and move again. Believe me, I am overjoyed that we are finally going to be landowners, but packing up a home for the second time in less than two years isn't exactly a party, especially because we really moved into this place, filling every nook and cranny with our things. Extricating ourselves will be a big project. I'm starting with the front and moving my way back. It seems that I have acquired a few chairs since we moved here...
And a lot of brass and white ceramic vessels, and animals figurines? And ferns...and rattan... It's like the early 70's in this house. I just need to invest in a macrame wall hanging (don't think I don't want one). Fortunately the new place is of the era.
And I just made so much (big) stuff...I don't know what I'm going to do with all of it. Curses. No more gold spray paint! Coming soon, the before pictures of the new place. It's going to get quite the makeover. Until then... bubble wrap.
When we moved into our new home, we were overwhelmed by the amount of space we gained. Well, we are gaining even more. The master suite had been converted into a studio apartment at some point in the last few years and up until last week a very nice guy named Bradley had been making it his home. As sweet as we are, I'm sure the 6:30am bike riding sessions outside his front door helped him to take the plunge and move in with his girlfriend. The space hasn't been updated in several years, so over the next few weeks the kitchen will be dismantled, and the carpet pulled up and replaced. I will be stripping wallpaper for the first time, and taping (good grief) and painting around a lot of windows. It'll be worth it, for the extra bathroom alone. I can't decide if I'm more excited for the additional closet space and garden view or that the kids will have their own wing of the house to trash behind closed doors. Here's the before pictures...
When we moved to our Montclair house 4 years ago Jasper was 2 years old, and to help him understand where his new place would be we nicknamed it "The Bunny House", because of the tacky, now sentimental cement rabbit adornment on the front steps. We kept it in it's place for him and at some point it mysteriously gained a little bunny friend. If you've read this blog before, you know that lawn art is not really my taste, but when making the move from Oakland to Petaluma this past weekend, I put a little something in the backyard outside the guest cottage to remind us of home.
Sorry for such inconsistent posting last week. I'm knee deep in boxes and our moving sale was a real time sucker, but by all accounts a big success. I learned a thing or two about organizing a multi-family sale, including keeping the numbers straight. Here are my top 5 tips...
1. Location, Location, Location. I was the one who initiated the idea of the sale, and presumably had the most to sell, but I live on a hilly switch back road off the beaten path. My sister-in-law has a sprawling front lawn on a main thoroughfare. Just like any sales operation, foot traffic boosts sales. We were very busy throughout the day.
2. Advertise and promote. In addition to posting signs on the house and around town, I created a Craigslist ad which listed a lot of the items we'd be selling. I used images of nicer pieces as a teaser and created a photobucket album for the furniture and higher value pieces. I also cross promoted by creating individual ads for furniture pieces, listing the link to the moving sale in the ad. I used facebook to reach out to my friends (with the ad) and encouraged people to share the information. Oh, and since I have one, I posted on my blog. I was able to pre-sell several things before the day of the sale.
3. Organize the group. Weeks before the sale, I asked the participating families to make a list of their items and to take pictures of furniture/ antiques. I assigned each family a color to tag their items with. Having everything tagged in advance made set up and sales a lot easier. The day of the sale, I used a book with color-coded columns to jot down each sale. At the end of the day we were only $13 off (we had more money than reported sales), which was pretty amazing.
4. Rent a truck. We opted to rent a small moving truck for transport and storage of our items the day before the sale. This made set up a breeze in the pre-dawn, caffeine deprived morning, Early Birds breathing down our necks. We were able to deliver large pieces locally, which aided in sales, and at the end of the day we packed up all the unsold items and took them to Goodwill. Split across 5 families, it was well worth the small cost. U-haul has great deals.
5. Have a central bank. Per suggestion, I wore a bag all day that contained our change, held the book, and our bank. All money flowed through me, and therefore all sales were reported to me. If I had a particularly large, co-mingled order I had one person run the calculator and another record the sales by color, while I went through each piece. Our customers were so into it they started to help calling out "$5 on blue", "$2 on yellow".
For our bank I took out $270
$10 in quarters
$50 in ones
$100 in fives
$50 in tens
$60 in twenties (to break an early $100 bill)
With all that, there are so many other things to consider, like how to organize display, how to price things (to sell) and how many pizzas to order for lunch. I was able to snag a couple of painting of Paris and book about birds and a kettle smoker before they hit the sales floor and I made a dent in my moving costs, so I'd say the day was a real winner. Now excuse me while I fall asleep in my coffee.
Did you know that Apartment Therapy has a classifieds section within their Marketplace where you can find local hidden treasures like Eames chairs, Room & Board sofas and things that you didn't even know you wanted until now, like this Scandinavian planter?
San Francisco's offering isn't very robust, but New York and LA have a lot to offer, and other regional locations like Madison, Portland and Chicago do not disappoint. Check it out before weeding through the mislabeled hodgepodge on craigslist.
Moving is really overwhelming. I've got exactly one month until the truck arrives to take it all away and I'm taking the first steps to getting everything packed up. Here's my plan:
1. Get the extraneous stuff packed first. This includes decorative objects (I have a few), fancy glassware, entertaining pieces, china, specialty appliances, books and artwork. I will want to take extra care packaging these up, and as moving goes, you get sloppier as the move draws closer. I can use the small supply of boxes I've been saving for last few months.
2. Plan a garage sale. This is a big one. We are getting rid of some clutter which includes furniture, baby items, gadgets and electronics. I'm organizing a multifamily sale. This is planned for June 2nd on my sister-in-law's sprawling central Alameda lawn.
To prep for that we have to tackle the garage and make some hard choices.
3. Book a moving company. Past the era of leaning on family and friends, this is a must. YELP makes it a lot easier.
3. Get boxes. I'm ordering eco-moving boxes from ZippGo, which rents recycled plastic moving bins. These will make the move greener and easier for the movers, and will eliminate the need for box foraging and tape! Toys, dishes, small appliances, bathroom and bedroom; they drop off the bins and pick them up a few weeks later, forcing you to unpack.
4. Schedule moving day(s). We have kids, and kids do not help with moving. They're being shipped off to family for a few days. We're moving on a Friday, cleaning our current house on Saturday and doing our walk through on Sunday.
5. Mail, Bills, Accounts. This is my least favorite part of moving, but it can be done ahead of time. Switching utilities, scheduling cable installation, changing addresses on accounts. Remember magazine subscriptions! I don't want the new tenants reading my coveted Dwell.
We've decided to uproot ourselves from the eucalyptus grove in Oakland and head for greener pastures in Petaluma. This is one of those major life decisions that I would have made in about one minute ten years ago, like when we moved to Portland without jobs after traveling through Europe for a month. That is not my life anymore. Now we have to debate about leaving schools, friends and our old familiar haunts. We've been hemming and hawing about it for a while now. Despite the fact that it's a small city, and a bit off the beaten path, Petaluma has a robust, creative downtown and the outlying neighborhoods are within walking distance. On the outskirts of town there are lots of cows, past the cows there's beautiful coastline and fancy oysters. I like this a lot. I grew up in a small town, and I went to college in a small town, so this feels right. We move this Summer. I expect I'll be doing lots of Sunset Magazine style write ups on my new finds. Here's what I'm most excited about* so far in our new city:
Acre Coffee - it's important to me to have a coffee place to call my own. I'm really serious about my coffee, it has to be good. We stopped at Acre twice in one day during a recent visit. They do it right.
Cowgirl Creamery- made in Petaluma, enough said.
Central Market- A five star farm to table restaurant in downtown Petaluma. I cannot wait to eat here.
The Seed Bank- Petaluma has an excellent climate for home gardening and this is Baker Creek Heirloom Seed's west coast location. We poked our heads in and it looks amazing.
The Petaluma Farmer's Market- The markets run twice a week in different areas of the Theater District of downtown. I've read that Three Twins Ice Cream sometimes has a booth here.
Lagunitas Brewing Company- We stopped by on our way out of town so that my double IPA loving man could get a growler to take home. They put them in giant jam jars. The tasting room has an adjoining patio with picnic tables and live music. Oh, there was a Neko Case poster in the bathroom, so this place is obviously awesome.
*Yes, this is all food related.
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