Posts from — January 2010

A wise man once said, “when the Sill’s put their mind to it they can really get stuff done”

Well, that stuff done has been “prepping, selling and buying a house.” The past 2 weeks we’ve listed a house, sold a house, gone snowboarding for 2-days and bought another house. It feels like things are happening so fast that someone hit fast-forward on the cassette deck. (I used cassette deck because we found some great cassette’s while cleaning out the house… just a sample of the bands…. “house of pain”, “Beattles”, “Huewy Lewis and the news”, “yes”, “meat loaf”, “learn spanish”, etc…). Lindsay even found a palm reading that someone recorded onto a tape for her….

Anyway, to recap the last week… Friday the house was conditionally sold. Sunday we flew to Kamloops and had a wonderful few days with the whole Sill family on Sun Peaks at a ski-in and ski-out condo. The whole family was there including my parents and my brother his wife and their two kids (our niece and nephew (why isn’t it spelt nefew?)), Sage and Conrad. They’re at such a cute age right now and the weekend even included a fun scavenger hunt around the condo. Sage even managed to find $0.75 that wasn’t part of the scavenger hunt (imagine finding that much money when you’re 4!) It’s also so fun to watch what they learn over just 2 days… by the last day Conrad was pulling people downstairs to take him in to the hot-tub. When we finally figured out he wanted in the hot tub he ripped his pants off faster than a stripper (I kid you not). (I wonder if that’s an acceptable metaphor?)

From Sun Peaks we were off to Kelowna… We looked at houses for about 3 hours on Thursday night… then ALL day on Friday from 9:30 – 6pm. All-in-all I would estimate we saw 20-25 houses… by the end we’d walk in, look at the backyard, kitchen and say nope. next. But in the end we found a great place (some people add extra letters and call it a Palace but whatever). No pics as of yet because we’re still working on all the conditions of the sale but if all goes smoothly we’ll be moving in on the 17th of February.

Oh and count this as the first shout out for moving help. I filled out some online forms and after a Gazillion (yes, a Gazillion) estimates getting someone to move you is EXPENSIVE and bribing your friends with free pizza, beer and a sober chaufeur in Canada’s wine country is much MUCH cheaper…

Ok that’s all for now but once it’s finalized we’ll post pictures and open our guest booking calendar. It’s already booking fast for the Kelowna ulti tournament.

(fyi…that wise man was myself)

This has been a crazy week. We put our house up on MLS  and before we could even write a blog about it going on the market, it’s been sold!

It got listed on Wednesday at 11am and by noon we had 5 showings booked. I was off to Edmonton for work so Jeff stayed at work until 9pm since showings were going on and he couldn’t go home. We had 5 or 6 showings on Thursday, including 2 repeat visits. I arrived back from Edm at 7pm and all I wanted to do was go home, but couldn’t. Friday morning we got our first offer and countered. Five more showings on Friday. On Friday night we waited patiently while two competing offers were being submitted. That definitely worked to our advantage and we accepted one of the offers (slightly above the asking price) on Friday evening. Our house was officially conditionally sold today at 11:22am. Their possession date is February 15th so looks like things will be moving a bit faster than we originally thought. We even pushed back from their original possession date of Feb. 1st.

We made a bet after meeting our realtor for the first time that whoever could pick the date closest to the conditionally sold date. The winner gets dinner cooked for them in the new house. I picked January 21st and Jeff picked January 19th….Jeff, how do you like your steak?

Clearly we were both surprised when it sold this fast.

We are now off to Kamloops for a ski vacation at Sun Peaks and will be stopping in Kelowna to look at houses. At first we thought we would be just looking but I guess now we can actually buy something!

After working day in and day out over the holidays, we have now completely finished paint and we have finished the drywall in the basement. We had water in our basement a couple of times over the years whenever it rained a ton. Turns out it was due to the grade of our yard running towards the house. When we put our sprinklers in this spring we were able to change the grade and it stopped the leakage. Unfortunately this meant replacing some of the drywall downstairs. We got a quote for $700 and decided that we should try and do it ourselves and learn about drywall and save a few bucks. How hard could it be really?….turns out it was pretty fun but super dusty and tricky to get it perfect. Kudos to professional drywallers – it’s super tough to get it all smooth and not bubbly.

When we tore down the wall (I wanted to use a sledgehammer but Jeff suggested doing it the proper (boring) way using a utility knife), we luckily discovered that only the bottom of each drywall sheet was damaged by water and that the frame and insulation were dry and clean. Phewf. Framing and insulating would have been a bit more challenging. I’ll note that all of our know-how was coming from a very helpful chap named Jim from Home Depot and a Home Depot do it yourself book. We bought all the supplies they suggested and $6 worth of scrap drywall. I may have mis-measured a section and messed up some sheets and ran out of drywall. Jill and Mark happened to have the perfect sized replacement piece and saved us – thanks guys!

Jeff was a pro-star. He was super fast and was the foreman on the project and answered all my questions even though it was the blind leading the blind. I was VERY slow and meticulous. If I got paid by the job I might be in the poor house.

I was so proud of us. It looks awesome. Funny that we finished and had a look around at the rest of the basement and was able to notice major flaws in somebody else’s work that we never noticed before. All in all I think we made the right choice. It took us a few days to do and cost $150 in tools.

Jeff put the icing on the cake by laying anti-fatigue flooring to warm up the basement and make it look more cozy. I just wish we did this years ago.

Here are some pics:

Screwed up the dry wall and taped;)

Supervision was in full force as usual

Finished product

Check out the smooth wall