Bye-Bye to our Home of 33 Years

Note: 

The adventure continues...

It's hard to believe that it's been 7 years since our last blog post!

For a number of different reasons, several folks have encouraged me to restart,  so, please bear with me as I try to remember how to do this and learn all that has improved in blogging in the past 7 years.  

With the start of 2021 we say goodbye to our home of 33 years.  

Thanks to Lois Jacobson for making the sale process so quick and easy.  The weekend after we put the house on the market, here's the listing,  we had 2 offers and another buyer in the wings.   We don't close officially until next Friday, January 8th,  but that's pretty darn quick turnaround considering we didn't put the house on the market until Thanksgiving weekend.

What took a long time is deciding we were ready to sell. We started talking about getting rid of our 'sticks n bricks' back in 2007 as we became empty-nesters and started spending most of our time in our motorhome.  I would be surprised if in the last 10 years I've spent even a quarter of my nights sleeping at the house so it was increasingly feeling a waste of a nice home. 

But, for me, it was particularly hard to give up the house that Ken designed for me from scratch. .  Based on the homes we loved most in North Carolina, he designed it literally with pencil and graph paper.  (If interested you can see his design here in pencil, from May, 1988.)

We toyed with selling around 2014 but we really hadn't touched the house in years and the kitchen, in particular, was far too 1980's for the price range.  And, to be honest, Ken was ready to sell but my heart wasn't in it. 

Then, I can remember a day 5 years ago, after finishing the main floor remodel, that Ken said,  "I'm not moving, I'm here for good. As far as I'm concerned you'll have to bury me in the backyard".  That was after he put heart and soul in to designing and doing a good part of the work on a full main floor remodel.  PS.  We are NOT the folks to ever flip houses--we both get too caught up in making it just the way we want it which is not geared toward resale!

However, 3 years ago, after driving by the 'for sale' sign for a decade, Ken's dream property, 40 acres of untouched woods, at the Carlinville city limit,  suddenly dropped in to our price range. He was making an offer the next day. That was the start of Curve in the Creek.  But, that's for a different blog except to say that it started us down the path of finally committing to sell the Quincy house.

Ken told me that a car trailer would pay for itself simply be eliminating our need for a moving truck.  So this is how we moved, about 6 times between Quincy and Carlinville.  Ken was very good at playing jenga with the loading and our GMC Acadia with tow package handled the loads just fine. I did feel a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies though. 

Last Load Ready for 2 hour trip to Carlinville

We did about 80% of the move ourselves but thanks so much to our neighbor, John Edwards, who was always showing up to help with the heavy stuff.  Nephew John Gallaher and his son, Robert, also came over to help the last day of heavy lifting.  Kyle and Jenni helped throughout as well,  especially when it came to all the sorting and what to keep, what to give away.  Jenni hauled some big loads of non-furniture items to the Crossing Thrift Store. They also always met us with the trailer on the Carlinville side to unload it in to the barn. We knew we weren't planning to have another house this size and maybe not at all so lots of things went to the Crossing.  I'm thinking someone was able to furnish another whole house by the time we were finished!

Last Load Waiting Thrift Store Truck

Someone reminded me recently,  you may have to leave behind the house but the memories you take with you.  In our 60's, for Ken and me, that's true except for the part where our memories are increasingly unreliable.  For that reason, I've compiled a home tour here that we and the kids and grands can come back to  when there's a desire reminisce. 

That's a tour of the house but maybe,  more importantly,  are memories of some favorite family moments at the house, always filled with family and friends.   I've started that album here. Warning, it's a large album!)  It covers mostly activities since 2007 since we haven't digitized most of the earlier photos yet. (That's 4 tubs in the barn now!) 

Friday this house will start making memories for a new local family, with 3 little ones.  Our wish for them is that it is the place of ever growing family warmth and happy times that it was for us. 

This blog will be a place we can come back to when we want to remember. 

Ok, that major move's behind us now so stay tuned for where we are headed!

Hugs, 

C