Home

Garage Flooring Part Two

The new house has a two-car garage compared to our old one-car back in Aiken. When we moved, I packed up the RaceDeck tiles and brought them with us. I had tossed a few of them out that I had to cut up to fit around the cabinets we had in Aiken.

Today we had a nice sunny mid-forties day, so this afternoon I backed the Mini out of the garage and installed the tiles that I brought with us for it to park on. The existing free flow tiles will help hide the water we are bringing in with us when we have been driving on the snowy roads. Because the Miata is just sitting for now, water is not a problem, yet.

Tomorrow we will order the flooring for the other half of the garage. The one side of the garage is deeper than the other because somewhere along the way a previous owner stole several feet to add a downstairs bathroom. The deeper side is even deeper than the RaceDeck flooring will go and that is where there is a workbench and shelving for tools and storage.


This is what it looks like now.

This is what it will look like finished.

Fixing Up Our Christmas Present

Neither of us had any presents under the Christmas tree (which we don’t have anyway) this year because all that kind of money is going into furnishing and resupplying the one big shared present, 1025 Pacific Terrace.

The last owners of our new home were only in it for 2 years. I’m mildly curious as to why, but whatever. In those two years I don’t think they ever really cleaned. They must have done some sort of quick clean before they left because the place was habitable when we moved in, but a deep clean, not so much. We are on our second box of Swiffer cloths removing dust and cobwebs from nooks and crannies in every room. We are also on our second container of Clorox wipes removing various stains and dirt spots from the walls and ceilings. In the Master Bathroom there were lots of black hairs stuck to the walls and ceiling from the previous owner blow drying her hair.

I have replaced between 15 and 20 light bulbs throughout the house. I don’t know what the reason, to conserve energy or just plain laziness. I betting it was mostly the later because there was a burnt out bulb in almost every 2-light fixture. The light on the front and back porches had bulbs, but the one on the pole in the front lawn for the stairs didn’t. The light in the bottom of the microwave that illuminates the stove top was out. The light on the garage door opener was burnt out and this was vexing because the garage is really dark when we get out of the car at night.

On Christmas Eve I decided to replace the bulb in the garage door opener. It worked fine using the wall switch, but when the garage door would go up and down the light would flicker like a strobe light. I opened up the light compartment again and noticed the the bulb socket was held in place by some tabs, thinking maybe it was loose wire I pressed the tabs and pulled the socket out from the opener body. FLASH! CRACK! It was a loose wire and when I pulled the socket out the two wires touched and shorted out. Now we have to manually open and close the door until I can find someone to install a new garage opener.

I don’t think the previous owners used the two car garage for cars. I have been sweeping out dust and cobwebs from all over in there too. There was a long bench along one side of the garage that I decided to take apart today to make room for the imminent arrival of the Miata (supposed to be sometime this week.) This thing is big, about 2 feet wide and 8 feet long. Sturdy too, it is made up of 2x4s and half 1/2 plywood screwed together with deck screws. There are about a a dozen nails in one end. I figure whoever made it started hammering it together and realizing that that would be an awful lot of work, then switch to screws. I was about 90% through disassembling it when I accidentally stepped on a nice long nail. OUCH! Went right through the sole of the sneaker, my sock and probably a 1/2″ into my foot. Direct pressure stopped the bleeding after about 5 minutes. Thought it might be a good idea to go to the Emergency Room , but then thought of the cost, so just cleaned it out with some alcohol and dressed with a band aid and some polysporin. I’ll try and get a doctor to give me a tetanus shot tomorrow even though the nail was clean and shiny having spent who knows how long inside that 2×4…

I think I need to reassess my handyman qualifications…

39,000 Planks of Plastic

We have had a hectic week, (and for the last couple months, they have all seemed hectic) we have moved all our stuff, which includes what we brought with us and what we shipped to us and what we have bought since being here, out of the AirBnB and into our new home. I must have taken a dozen 5 mile round trips. Two of which were ferrying one mountain bike at a time with the front wheel off and the Mini’s hatch bungeed partially closed. Somewhere on one of these trips the Ladybug crossed the 39,000 mile mark.

Tuesday we had the cable company come in and install two cable boxes and the modem for the internet. One in the bonus room downstairs and one in the living room. The living room is hooked up to our new 43″ Samsung UHD Smart TV (that just fit inside the Mini’s hatch) that will eventually get mounted above the fireplace. The downstairs hookup will be for our old 50″ Samsung Regular HD Smart TV, when it gets here.

Also on Tuesday we visited a local flooring place and picked out the new “hardwood flooring” to replace the carpet in the 3 bedrooms. Thursday they dropped off the materials to let them acclimate themselves to their new home and 2 nice young fellows spent the day ripping out the old carpet and padding. Today they were back to actually lay the new laminate planks in the three bedrooms. It is all finished except for the 1/4 round molding in one room that will be finished on Monday next.

This morning while those two guys were sawing and banging we ducked off to do the closing on the house. Here in Oregon it was done at a title company’s offices, not a lawyers office like in South Carolina. Maybe because of this it seemed very low key. No real estate agents, no seller, just us, a banker and some sort of clerk. We went home for lunch and then this afternoon went out to Walmart and bought a small folding table and two folding chairs because we were tired of eating, sitting on the floor. We were also tired of sleeping on an inflatable mattress, so on the way back from Wally World we stopped at a local bedroom store and bought a nice new queen sized Serta memory foam bed and a new bed frame. We knew we needed a mattress because we tossed the old one away before we left Aiken. We didn’t need a new bed frame because we did bring one, but Donna feel in love with one while mattress shopping (and I did really like it too.) It will be delivered tomorrow.

We have also had an estimate for a new roof sometime this week, which we knew the place needed it after the home inspection (we offered $8k on the house less than asking knowing this), and will get get done sometime in January. We have also arranged to have someone come over and measure for some nice new vertical blinds to replace the old wood slat ones in the living and dining rooms. And I have also not detailed the tens of trips to Home Depot, Walmart and Fred Meyers buying other odds and ends.

Bring A Trailer

The fodder for my Track, Daily, Crush posts come from a website called Bring A Trailer, well this past Monday the CTBNL got loaded onto a trailer to be brung to Oregon. It should be here either just before or right after Christmas.

Home Sweet Empty Home

Mid morning, after yesterday’s light dusting of snow had melted, we stuffed the back of the Mini with a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff we bought over the last week and drove over to our new home. These were things that we needed because we donated or left behind their predecessors back in Aiken (microwave, toaster and a Keurig.) There were also some things that we will need to occupy our empty home until our household shipment arrives after the first of the year in there too (towels, sheets, a blow up mattress, and some cheap silverware and plates.)

We brought over with us a take and bake pizza from Papa Murphy’s and ate lunch in our empty living room. When we came back “home” after to the AirBnB we ordered a new washer and dryer from Home Depot. Because we are a rural area they have none in stock, everything has to be ordered, so those won’t be here until after Christmas. Tomorrow we will go buy a 40″ TV to place over the fireplace because our existing 50″ one is too big. That one will stay downstairs in the “bonus” room with the futon for watching while washing clothes because the laundry room is on that level.

We’ll be probably go over for a couple hours each of the next three days farting around and will start sleeping there either Wednesday or Thursday night. We have to be out of the AirBnB by Friday morning at 11:00 AM.

Dirty Tricks?

I spent most of yesterday changing the utilities of our new house into our name. Water comes from the city and trash pickup is supplied by Waste Management (in Aiken both these came from the city.) Then there was electricity from Pacific Power and natural gas from Avista (in Aiken both these came from Dominion.) Today we signed up for cable.

What all these places had in common was that they never asked for proof that in fact I was moving into this particular house. This got me thinking of a really evil dirty trick to pull on somebody. It might cost a bit, so to reduce your investment pick one that does not require a deposit, and sign up for it in your name. Make sure to sign up for paperless billing and then when the first bill comes, pay it. Wait a week and set a date to shut off service. The current occupants probably wouldn’t notice the missing bill, but they sure would notice when the water stops flowing or the lights go off.

I am totally not recommending this. For one it would be pretty easy to figure out who did it because all these places ask for a drivers license or social security number for ID. Anyway, I just thought it was odd that no one asked for some sort of proof I lived there…

Here Comes Our Stuff

After being told, with the holidays and all, we would be lucky to get into our new Klamath Falls home by January 10th, we learned last night we can be in the place this coming Sunday. The closing isn’t actually until next Friday or at the latest Monday the 23rd, but we are paying 8 days of rent to the seller, to get into it on the 15th.

First thing this morning I notified both the Mayflower movers and the car shippers that it was time to send us our stuff. Dash Auto Logistics was first to respond and the Miata could be here the day after Christmas Day. Not long after that, the movers got back to us, our household goods won’t even be loaded onto the truck in Augusta until the day after Christmas. So we might end up with a convertible that won’t be usable for another 3 months and be waiting an extra week and a half for our pots and pans, couch, TV and bed.

That’s of course the worse case scenario. With the car pickup date and travel time ranges and the household goods travel time range they could actually get here only two days apart, December 30th and January 2nd respectively. It is winter and and we are in the Cascades, so weather might be a factor here as well.