I downloaded a few photos from my camera. These were taken during my first trip to Elma for the closing on September 16.
More to follow when I get access to Pam’s photos from her phone. It may be a while!
Month: October 2019
Still no photos, but here is where we are at on the move and updates on other topics.
The Move
Pam is working hard to get the house set up. She has been painting and working on the pantry and updating the kitchen. Bad weather in the form of light snow pretty much suspended outdoor work for several days, but Pam and Becky managed to get quite a bit of outside work done, cleaning up some of the end-of-life flowers and trimming back overgrown bushes before Becky had to leave to go back to Rice Lake.
The furnace seems to be working fine! Pam reports the upstairs is cooler as it has no direct venting to the furnace, a situation we expected.
The weather has improved in the last few days and Pam will be putting in her Mary Lynn Memorial Garden plantings and doing some other outside work during this interlude.
The cats, both the outdoor ones and the house cats, seem to be settling in OK. The cat shed needs some additional work, including running some electrical power for lights and heated cat dishes and such. The only window faces north and lets in a lot of cold air so a cat door will need to be installed. Having no handle on the inside of the main door is a problem that I will have to address, not a major job but add it to the list!
The dogs had no trouble settling in but prefer being inside to running in the dog run. This is about the same as when in De Beque; JoJo tends to stay out more than Bru or Blondie but Pam makes sure all three get outside time.
Pam has made grocery runs and is getting familiar with the two major stores in the area, HyVee in Charles City and Fareway in Cresgo. Both towns are about 25 miles from Elma. HyVee is a bit more upscale but Fareway has all the essentials one needs so we will probably use both over time.
The Lot
Last Friday I headed up to The Lot with two main goals; winterize The Box and put tarps over the chipper and Ford 8N tractor.
Normally I winterize The Box earlier in the fall. This trip found some water lines had already frozen and there was no water available when I arrived. A night with the furnace running and the water system came back to life. I was able to drain the fresh water tank and water heater then use my waste water kit to drain the holding tanks. (The waste water gets hauled over to a dump station provided by the homeowner’s association.) After that I added antifreeze to all the water lines and sink traps.
Other winterizing chores included removing all food items. Thankfully it did not freeze hard enough to affect the canned food. Then all the sheets and linens were packed for transport to De Beque.
Last on the list: Remove the batteries from the chipper and tractor and get tarps in place to help protect them from the winter weather. I had purchased tarps, tent stakes, and cord and used all to cover the equipment.
This shuts down activity at The Lot for the year. I was relieved to be able to get this work done as we have been having record low temperatures. Left any longer I feared The Box would have suffered major freeze damage.
In De Beque
I am still packing the garage and am making progress. Both workbench areas are pretty well packed but I need to bring home a few smaller boxes to finish. Still a lot to do; I have not even begun cleaning out the garage attic of my old Macintosh computer gear, most of which will end up in an electronic recycle business.
I have found a home for my Gilson tractor and possibly for the left over Ford tractor parts I have sitting along the garage. One last mowing and trimming of the lawn and that will end lawn care, even though there will be leaves to rake as the trees here start to drop them.
I am getting used to a very quiet house. With most of the furniture and rugs gone the place echoes quite a bit. However, Pam left me quite a few cooking utensils and food supplies so I plan my meals and cook as needed. Not fancy, but I won’t starve. I just have to get used to taking care of the outside cats (food and water mostly) as part of my normal routine.
We have a couple that may be interested in the house. They are trying to arrange financing and are checking out several lenders. We are holding off listing the place until we find out if an offer will be coming through from this couple. We hope it happens; Pam has an arrangement with a realtor to act as a “facilitator” which would avoid most of the traditional realtor costs involved with selling a home. Stay tuned.
Next Steps
More packing, getting rid of stuff I don’t plan to move, and finding homes for some equipment are all tasks on the agenda. I plan to make a trip to Elma over Halloween weekend using the F-150 and my 12 foot trailer. Hopefully that will move all the garage stuff, except for a few basic tools, and include a few larger items such as my kerosene space heaters and my ATV. Most of this will go into the storage area we rented in Elma. If possible I would also like to get one of the motorcycles moved this trip so it will be quite an undertaking. In the event of bad weather I will rent an enclosed U-Haul trailer instead of using my open trailer.
It will be a few weeks yet before we have photos of all of this. Our internet service install was rescheduled and won’t be done until October 23. Rather than try to send all the photos via e-mail, and Pam has taken quite a few, photos will have to wait until we have internet e-mail or I can transfer them to a flash drive when I am in Elma at the end of the month. We did purchased a refurbished HP laptop for Pam to use once the internet service is established. Doing a lot of e-mail on a smart phone is a real pain, mostly because the Verizon service we use only gives us one or two “bars” and taxes one’s patience waiting for web sites and mail to load.
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!
This is gong to be a long post.
I’ll take this in more or less chronological order. When I last posted I was getting ready to head for Elma to close on the house. The F-150 was acting up, misfiring on one cylinder, and I did not have time to trouble-shoot it so I ended up taking the Honda. (A neighbor worked on the truck while I was gone.) While cheaper to run than the truck, I could not take as much “stuff” as I had planned which messed up some of the moving plan.
Anyway, the closing on September 16th went OK. No surprises and we locked in a mortgage rate of 3%, the lowest rate we have ever had.
After the closing I went to the house and started unpacking the Honda. There were several other chores to be done in the few days I would be at the house this trip so I had to get right at it.
These will seem normal to people who have moved before, but it had been many years since we had to get these tasks done.
- Notify Post Office that we were in town.
- Open local bank accounts.
- Open an account at the local agriculture store as that is where our propane will come from.
- Take delivery of new refrigerator and dryer.
- Meet with the guy who would build the “catio.”
- Find a grocery store, hardware store, and lumber yard.
- Build a temporary dog run.
- Set up a temporary kitchen and bedroom.
- Meet with the city manager and arrange garbage pickup.
- Get water running in the upstairs bathroom.
It was a very busy week, topped off with a return trip to Colorado. I arrived home on Sunday. Monday Pam and I picked up our 20 foot U-Haul rental truck. We loaded the truck, and my 12 foot open trailer, to be pulled with the truck, on Tuesday. Wednesday we headed for Elma.
We had problems with the truck overheating on the long grade up to Eisenhower Tunnel. This delayed us for a couple hours until Pam, who was driving our Toyota RAV4, could get me some anti-freeze.
Did I mention I had two dogs with me, and Pam had our 3rd dog and 5 of our house cats in her car? A real traveling menagerie!
That night we stayed in North Platte, Nebraska, a few hours west of where we wanted to be. This led us to get to Elma very late the next night and we did not get to bed until the wee hours of the morning.
The wind was blowing very strong and gusty. One gust blew the hood off my John Deere lawn tractor and crashed it into the median. (I was able to recover a few parts of it on the return trip, but it will still cost $330.00 to replace the main hood which broke into dozens of small fragments.) Other than that the trip went OK, just a lot of miles.
OK. So we arrived in Elma with the Toyota full of animals and the U-Haul and trailer full of other stuff. We managed to get Pam’s mattress set up and my air mattress was still there from the previous trip so we fed the animals and called it a night about 1:30 in the morning.
The next day we moved the cats into the house and started unpacking the truck. Pam had had a wonderful idea; she hired a local handyman, in advance, to come with a lift so items going up to the second floor could be moved in through a window. This worked slick. The handyman (Dennis) brought a couple helpers who moved larger furniture out of the truck and helped move boxes from the truck to the lift and into the house. Process took about an hour and a half. We had unloaded some of the truck before the help arrived and were really getting dragged out so it was great to have helpers do the rest of the heavy lifting.
The next morning we returned the truck to the nearest U-Haul location, Charles City, which is about 25 miles away. While going through town we found the HyVee grocery store, a well known chain in the Midwest, and stopped to pick up a few food items. We also located the veterinary service that will take care of our pets. It appears to be a very neat, well kept, and well run operation. They even have separate waiting rooms for cats and dogs.
Back to Elma to unpack which continued the rest of the day. Another night over and Pam’s sister, Becky, arrived from Rice Lake. Becky would watch the cats and dogs while Pam and I headed back to Colorado for load #3. Becky provided us with some great tasting food so we did not have to worry about cooking, a great help and much appreciated!
Load #3 was my F-150 pulling a 6×12 foot U-Haul trailer. Several of the garage cats were trapped and placed in Pam’s Toyota. I had the last two house cats, Antonio and Mr. Bibbs, in the back seat of the F-150. Most of the cats trapped pretty easily but one, Gwyneth, eluded the traps and is still in De Beque. If I can’t trap her she will become one more of the neighborhood cats.
Getting started a bit earlier, we made it up to I-90 in the western part of South Dakota the first night and into Elma by late afternoon the next day. Top of the priority list was getting the cats settled. The house cats went OK as they were in separate carrying cages, but the garage cats, we thought, would be a problem.
Turns out it was not so much of a problem. The cats sought to hide in one of the carry cases Pam had left in the back of the car, so Pam just closed the cage door, carried the cats to the cat shed, and let them out. Repeat a few times and all the garage cats were transferred without incident. What a relief!
Events started to blur into each other. We unpacked the washer and Pam started doing laundry. There was cleaning, unpacking, arranging, minor repairs such as putting in light bulbs and finding the water shut off valve for the outside faucets. I managed to get the lawn mowed as it was looking pretty shaggy after weeks of neglect.
The Dish Network installer showed up to install our TV service. That went OK but the dish had to be mounted on the detached garage to get a clear view of the southern sky. That meant the cable running between the garage and house had to be buried. One more job I had not expected to have to do!
Then, for me, back to Colorado and back to work on October 7th. I had been off for three weeks and managed a trip a week to Elma. Each trip, with a few side jaunts, ran about 2,500 miles.
So, where are we now? Pam is in Elma with all the cats and dogs, working on getting things settled. She is paining, cleaning, re-arranging, and working with Becky to set up the house. I am working my regular job in Colorado and trying to get the garage packed in the evenings. There is still a lot to do.
Two more trips for sure are in the works, and I may have to rent a local storage spot for some items, such as my motorcycles, to be moved later or even next spring. We will have to see how the rest of the move goes.
We have photos on several devices and it will be a while before I can get them assembled into a gallery, so stay tuned for photos in an upcoming post.