We have packed away several items from the garage and rearranged the shelving units. Rick drove the car into the garage today just to make sure that it would fit with our new arrangement. Hopefully, if money holds out, we might be able to get rid of one or both of the shelving units as we put up elfa shelves from The Container Store. That is Rick's dream, but the only we we can do so is to wait for them to go on sale in January. Then we'll see how far our dollars stretch.
We are eating our the refrigerator, planning meals carefully to eat up what is left in the freezer and pantry. Rick did our final banking today for this season. We have spent the week making appointments at home, dealing with insurance on automobiles, stopping and staring mail in two states, making arrangements for garbage and water, and tying up other loose ends. Most arrangements are now in place.
One last task I wanted to do was to finish weaving the placemats that I had on the loom. I am doing a rose path twill pattern in aqua and white, and I finished the last part of the warp today. I did not want to leave the fabric under tension for the summer, so I am happy that I had time to finish and to wash them before we leave. Once they are completely dry, I will cut them apart and lightly press them. Perhaps we can use them on the patio or in the house this next year.
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| The five placemats, just cut from the loom, rest across my desk before I washed them. |
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| A close-up of the placemat shows the rose path twill pattern. |
After the storms on Wednesday, much cooler weather arrived yesterday. Today the temperature has dropped even more, so we are in the mid 70's with lots of bright sunshine. The day is so nice that Rick and I just came back from an hour-long walk.
During our walk, we looked at a few homes in our neighborhood that are for sale. The housing market is making a slow but steady rise. We experienced a slight dip right after the first of the year, but housing right now is going well. How do I know that?
Our neighbor, Ken, is a real estate agent, and he has been sending us daily e-mails with MLS listings of houses in our neighborhood. We saw that two houses on one street in the neighborhood were for sale, so those houses (and good exercise) were the objects of your walk. When we finally reached the houses, we found three of them for sale all in one block. The houses were not as nice as our neighborhood since they were smaller, older, and none of them had a garage, but they were still listed in the $175,000 - $200,000 price range. They also seemed to need a wee bit of tender loving care.
Of course, the real fixer-uppers (of which there are many in Florida) are the first ones to sell. Flippers are buying these wrecks for $95,000 - $120,000, preparing them for $40,000, and selling them in the low to mid-$200,000 range. I remember working all year for $50,000, and these folks are turing that kind of profit every two or three months.
Ken told us that our house, with all of our improvements, would easily sell above $200,000. We believe him. Since the original price was low and we have just matched the price in remodeling costs, if we were to sell today, we could make a nice little profit on this house. And Rick mentioned that the concrete work we just completed would probably help raise an asking price even more if we wanted to sell.
Other homes in our immediate neighborhood have been getting or exceeding their asking price. Just up the street from us, a corner house was listed for $214,900. They sold it for $220,000. Another house listed for $265,000 and sold for $285,800. We have no intention selling Gladys, but we are happy to know that if we (or our children) sell her someday, all of our hard work and improvements will not be in vain.
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