Tripwander
Carol and I drove down to Phoenix as homeowners. We drove back as multiple home owners. As I've said far too often, the real work starts now.
Not that there wasn't any work involved in the events of the last three weeks. I took along my Paperwhite and the print edition of Nicholas Wade's book, A Troublesome Inheritance, expecting to finish Wade plus an SFF novel or two. Well, I got three chapters further on Wade, and no Paperwhite progress at all. Buying a house is a process with a lot of moving parts, as most of my readers will know from personal experience. Some goodly number of these moving parts had contingencies, so the order in which we did things was significant. We felt, at times, bent over the kitchen table of the small house we'd rented on VRBO, making lists and drawing diagrams, like we were waging a brushfire war or planning Thanksgiving dinner for the entire city of Dubuque.
The house needs work. Not a huge amount of work, but enough to involve interviewing and cutting deals with:
- Painters. The house is off-white (in the direction of gray) throughout. I like color.
- A color consultant to help us choose colors. This sounds extravagant but worked out very well, especially as the consultant was a very savvy artist lady who had paint color chips considerably larger than my thumbnails.
- Landscapers. The house is on something greater than half an acre, with fifteen or twenty trees and lots of miscellaneous shrubbery, all of which required some attention. The catsclaw was taking over, and had already devoured our gargoyles.
- Tree surgeons. Not all of the trees are healthy, as Carol suspected and the landscapers confirmed.
- Pool services. We now have a 42' X 20' diving pool plus a seats-six Jacuzzi spa, both of which will need weekly tending to avoid turning green.
- Local governments and utilities. We had to establish accounts with the City of Phoenix for water and trash pickup, with Southwest Gas, and APS for electricity. The paperwork, at times, was boggling: The state of Arizona requires a separate title transfer for our septic system, sheesh.
- Pest control. Where there are palm trees there will be palmetto bugs, and we do not intend to share the house with palmetto bugs.
- Alarm services. The house has an entry alarm but not a smoke/fire alarm, and we had to add that capability to the system.
- A general contractor. We hired the guy who remodeled Keith's house in Scottsdale, to do some drywall repair, put pulls on all the cabinet doors, and install an A/C unit in the small garage so I can use it as a workshop.
We also had to do some shopping, for:
- Pool furniture. Lounging by the pool by lying on the cooldeck is a nonstarter.
- Patio furniture. I like to have breakfast alfresco when possible. It's possible lots more often in Phoenix than in Colorado.
- A new dining room set. The one we have up here is too big for the space we have down there.
- Cabinet and drawer pulls. Cabinets without pulls were stylish when the house was remodeled. I realized I was scratching the wood finish with my fingernails trying to grip the doors at their edges. No thanks.
- A refrigerator. The one that came with the house doesn't fit the space where the refrigerator is supposed to go. Nor does it have a water/ice dispenser.
- A waterbed. We had a waterbed when we lived in Phoenix. For us, it's part of the Phoenix experience. After all, your waterbed won't freeze in Phoenix.
Etc. Etc. Etc. Ok, it wasn't all drudgery. Carol and I had two swimming pools to play in: one at the small house we rented as a base of operations, and the much larger pool at our new place. We actually tried the spa one night, when the temps got down to a chilly 78 degrees. The big problem with the house's water features is that it's extremely hard to get out of them once you get in, which has nothing to do with the ladders.
Now you may have some sense for why I haven't posted here in three weeks. We're still writing lists and the work is far from over, but with some luck (and a far better system than the crappy 2009-era laptop I'm using) you'll see me a little more often here in the near future.