So it’s been stormy, or at least dramatic, around here lately — lots of doings! We’ve weathered some serious decision-making, we’ve readied our house to list on the market, and then waited as potential buyers came through with their realtors. I didn’t tell you this, but we actually had a deal almost three weeks ago — so very soon after our first listing! — but that deal fell through, and this last weekend’s flurry of new viewings, inconveniently scheduled smack dab in the middle of a long-awaited family visit, came in the wake of that disappointment. So I didn’t say anything when Saturday’s disruption paid off in a new offer, afraid that it might not solidify. Instead, we cleaned up again, after the guests left, to have things ready for the Home Inspection, and we packed up yesterday and came over to Vancouver to wait out the news.
Whoa! If you ever want time to slow down? I know exactly how to do that, and it might involve waiting to see if your home has passed muster with the Home Inspector your buyers have hired to check it out. . .
But I will have mercy, and makes this long story short. We did it! It’s sold! We will be squeezed into a 500 square foot Vancouver apartment a bit too soon for comfort while we look for our next home.
I’m quite sure I will have more drama, more storms, to recount over the next months, but for now, we are feeling a bit lighter, a bit more relaxed, even as we scramble to arrange to sell furniture, pack treasures, move boxes of books, store grand pianos (okay, only one. . . )
A new day is dawning, if you’ll permit me a cliché to accompany these photos. . . Not quite a year from my retirement, and we’re really casting off. . . now to find a new harbour and meanwhile hope for some good sailing weather. . .
Congratulations! That was a pretty quick sale. So nice not to have it grind on for months. How quick do you have to be out? Busy times ahead! Exciting and aprehension competing for sure! Here's to shrinking and simplifying your home life!!! 😀 Cheers, Jenmifer
It was quick, although some of the tension involved felt gruelling. Can't imagine the poor souls who have to wait months and months for a sale.
Simplifying is the watchword, yes! Cheers back to you!
Congratulations on getting over this first, big, hurdle! Good luck with the simplification and hopefully not too many meltdowns, though I know they will happen (the voice of experience here).
Good to speak to one who's ridden a meltdown or two — mine tend to take the form of depression, which is horrid but so far temporary (although that seems impossible in the moment). We meltdowners just keep picking ourselves back up, right?
Congrats! Just think of how much less responsibility you'll have so soon! (Can you tell that I'm having a totally different kind of moment? :-))
This is exactly what keeps us going, K, and while I would have loved the results your reno is sure to have, when I was your age, I suspect we will happily adjust to smaller and less work. Good luck with your moment!
Yay – congratulations! I'm so happy for you that the selling part is over. I hope the negotiations weren't too taxing – last time our buyer's agent was very pushy and our agent hated dealing with him.
She was such a star!
They weren't bad at all, although I won't relax until Closing when the money's in the bank. We have a great agent here, and we have another very good one to help us buy in the city — it's so very important, right?
Congratulations Mater and Pater…
Now the fun of hunting for that fabulous home in Vancouver begins!
Thanks, L!
I hope some of it will be fun. . .
Congratulations! Metaphor ahoy! Metaphors are great in moments so big as this. xoxox.
This is truth! xo
Good news indeed.
Although it's many years since we've sold a house, I remember feeling unable to concentrate during the limbo period between listing and selling. We were lucky too, that it was only a few weeks. Once the sale was final, the "moving list" became manageable again.
Lilibet
It's funny, isn't it? That's exactly what we're feeling like, even though we have a mountain of work to do (island logistics complicate the process of moving) — this part isn't tense, just work, somehow.
I get shivers when I think back to nearly two years ago when we were in your position. Congratulations on the quick sale – remember the days when a 'quick sale' was 90 days? I wish you all the best in the busy days ahead. You know, we should all have been buying stock in storage companies!
Is it really only two years ago? You seem so settled in your new home now, and I find that wonderfully encouraging to think about! It's true that the whole market used to be so much more thoughtful and leisurely — and often involved some contact between old and new owners, the chance to pass along info. Yes, stock in storage companies and real estate agencies . . .
Congratulation! Great news! You did a very good job!!
I wish you now peaceful and sunny journey to beautiful,cosy and safe new harbour!
Beautiful photos!
Dottoressa
Thanks, D. We did do a pretty good job, didn't we? I like this idea of stopping to recognise the good work each step of the way.
Great news. Told you they'd be fools not to leap at the chance…
Check the post below — you two are synchronising! 😉
That's good news. Good luck with the hunt.
Ceri in London
See above — I love it!
Ha. This is getting spooky. Can we call in your friend, and our near namesake Ceci, to join us too? It's getting to be quite a gang
Oh my goodness that was quick. Now you can concentrate on the next step. I'm watching with interest as you deal with the downsizing. I look around this house, and for all the Kondo-ing I do, know that it is a drop in the ocean compared to what will be needed in future. So much big stuff and so much small stuff – equally difficult to dispose of.
I know what you mean! I've already done so much culling over the last several months, knowing this was coming. But as I begin to pack, I know there will be so much that won't (or at least shouldn't!) go into the boxes. And it's very true that the small stuff may prove as tough to dispose of as some of the big. . .
Phew. That was quick. Perhaps house selling goes swifter than in the UK. Or perhaps it was too good to miss such a house. Whatever, now you can start to dream. What larks, Pip!
The market's pretty nuts here, a spillover from a very overheated Vancouver market, but we were very lucky, really. We've had friends with waterfront on the island take several months, sometimes up to a year, to sell. Some have un-listed after six months, tried a year later for as long, and still not sold. We priced really well too, we think — our agent did a very good job assessing the market.
When you have a property such as this, in your location, there is bound to be intense interest, so I was pretty sure there would be immediate offers- just a question the right terms. Yay, you did it! From my own experience, that was bittersweet, but as you say, a relief and a big lift off to the next step. I can't wait to hear about the house-hunting part.
Bittersweet, yes, AND a huge relief. The sense of limbo or, even, paralysis has lifted, and once we get the moving itself organised, we'll start looking again. . .
I'm sure that whoever bought your home will enjoy it. The packing up will be difficult, I'm sure. I talked to my cousin last night who just sold a large home in White Rock. She could not find anything to buy …She had a local piano tuner over to see about storing her grand. He mentioned that he was moving and she bought his house for asking price!!! She got her small bungalow with a view before a developer tore it down. You never know how you will find your new home!
This is a wonderful story, Mme — I love it and could only cross my fingers and wait for such brilliant serendipity.
This is a wonderful story, Mme — I love it and could only cross my fingers and wait for such brilliant serendipity.
Very, very happy for you! I hope the champagne has flowed.
A bottle is chilling as we speak (well, virtually for the speaking. . . the bottle is the real, material thing! 😉
You did it! So quickly too. What a relief and no more horrid viewings! We had far too many, but I have a theory that things go through if it's right for you. For us, it wasn't, for you it is and that's really great news. So good you have somewhere to live, too, whilst you are searching for your next home.
Lots to do now. We all accumulate so much stuff over the years, big things, tiny things which all demanded to be acquired at the time. It's good to have a sort out. We are trying to treat our house as though we have just moved in and really getting moving on the sorting through and the snags. Lots of positive energy xx
It was quick, wasn't it, although I moaned and groaned about the tension, the waiting. . . I like your theory and hope it prevails as we search for our next address.
Yes to the accumulation and then the clearing away. Last time we moved, I was determined that we pretend a move every ten years or so just to get that clarity of what we really needed. Of course it didn't happen, given the stages of life we were at, but perhaps you'll do better. Good luck with it!
Fantastic, Frances! We also had our first deal fall through and then a flurry of viewings and offers. It is a roller-coaster ride. Brenda
And if this is Brenda S I'm writing to, you landed very happily, and feel very at home in your new place, and it didn't take long for that to happen. I'm hoping we'll follow your example.
Wonderful! Smooth sailing for this next segment of the journey
Thanks, A. And now I'll feel a bit more able to look at a calendar and schedule lunch!
Yes! In your own time. 🙂
Compelled to write after a long absence: Your photos–stormy, beautiful, wildly intense–seem an excellent reflection of the reality of leaving. Those of us who have been fortunate to have a home deeply rooted in the natural world understand that leaving the structure–filled with memories–is one layer, and that leaving the living depths of land and water is quite another. A painful transition, however much desired and needed….And then, deep breath, imprinted with this soulful island home, you'll find another place to nourish you and yours….
Elle, thanks for joining in! What you say is so true — living here has engaged me in the natural world in ways I haven't experienced before and suspect I won't again. Never have I thought as much about what I'll wear for the day as here, where the wind and the rain feel so much more immediate, where it's so much easier to imagine Lear's "unaccommodated man." On a more intimate scale, perhaps, the flowering of the arbutus tree, whose delicate perfume I'd never remarked before living so close to several, whose schedule I have come to know, the way it shifts calendar dates from year to year according to the vagaries of the climate and weather.
So yes, the deep breath, and trust that the imprint has taken, that I'll get to the next place changed enough to see differently..
That is good news. A great start to your new journey. Hope things continue to run smoothly for you. Mary
Thanks, Mary. It is good news!
So glad that part of the process is over for you. Am experiencing the stress of selling albeit vicariously through my sister, who has been trying to unload their very large home (built to accommodate her in-laws who have both since passed away) off and on for over a year. And now just when her husband is recovering from heart surgery they have to make a decision on an unexpected offer. Akkk. Lots of sisterly phone calls over that situation.
Lovely symbolic photos, Frances. What a "moving" year for you, eh? Moving house and retirement, two very stressful and stormy times in anyone's life…. no wonder you are having the occasional melt-down!
That's so tough for your sister! I'll admit that having had three friends lose their husbands quite suddenly in the last few years (two of them on this small island), I'll be glad to be in a place whose everyday logistics depend so much on good health and, honestly, on another helping pair of hands. Is your sister back in your home province? Or nearer to you than that?
Congratulations! Best wishes on your packing: that's always a daunting task!
Thanks Murphy — yep! it's a bit daunting alright, but I have a stack of boxes I'm going to start filling today. . .
Congratulations on the sale, Frances. I well know that on-tenterhooks feeling of waiting for the final inspection and other details. I'm glad it's been rather quick for you as waiting and waiting can become stressful, too. You are really sailing off in a new direction! Melt-downs are to be expected. Lovely photos of the skies up island.
Thanks! I remember when you were doing the same thing, Lorrie, with your up-ialsnd home. . .
Congratulations! May your search for your next home open doors for new adventures!
Charlene H.
Thank you, Charlene! What a nice wish!
I'm sure there are happy and exciting times on the horizon! 🙂 I'm so pleased that you've found a buyer so quickly …that shows how appealing your home is. I hope the process continues smoothly for you…
Beautiful pictures! Have a good weekend. We started with torrential rain this morning. Followed by sleet then snow! It's bright and sunny now …such is April!
Rosie
Yikes! Rain, sleet, snow, sunshine! We can do that in April as well — if you don't like the weather, just wait and hour, right?