News

Sorry for my absence. I’ve been in that world of limbo, waiting for Wednesday February 13th to arrive.

You see that was the day Greg met with the CEO of his company to discuss our transferring to Seattle. As in this is actually happening. It’s not just talk, it’s not just wishing, hoping and blindly planning for the future. It recently became a reality with more details to come in summer.

It’s not Oregon like we hoped but it’s close, Kent, Washington (near Seattle) and we’ve been very open to “transplanting” ourselves west for years. We will have put in 6 years in Minnesota when the house goes on the market in spring of 2014 and while some of it has been, well, it’s been something, we’re ready to move on.

I couldn’t do much of anything the past few weeks without getting that meeting out of my head and I will be in a fog until we receive more info in the summer. It went a little something like this “hey, Annie, why don’t you write a post” and I’d be like “no, silly, I’m just gonna sit and contemplate how this meeting will go and accomplish next to nothing for a few weeks.”

We had to wait 3 weeks from when Greg asked to be transferred to schedule this meeting. He sent an email to the CEO after he came back from his last Kent visit and the CEO said “I would think that would be very possible. We’ll need to talk about the timing and mechanics and may need you to spend some time out there in the interim, but I see no reason why it can’t be worked out.” I know! We were jumping for joy with that message.

Just so happens the company’s facility near Seattle needs an engineer (and Greg is a very good one) and last time he was out he there he brought up the topic and then things just flowed. I kept thinking someone is going to take the rug out from under us. Again. But things continue to get better and more focused on the move. We’ve got A LOT to do beforehand.

We have a year to be in this house to avoid capital gains tax and to get months worth of work done (oy). When I mentioned the whole get the house done in a year thing before, we had no real timeline or knowledge of how we could legitimately achieve moving. It was more a “take the reigns and try to make it happen but you haven’t got a clue how” situation. Now we have support from his company.

It’s no secret that we love the Pacific Northwest and have been trying to get there for years, pretty much since 2007. Before we moved to Minnesota we were supposed to move to Eugene, Oregon where I found Greg a job utilizing his newly acquired degree. But that fell through after 8 months of preparing for the transition from our Indiana home. After selling, storing, packing our belongings and telling everyone we knew and saying some goodbyes. It was heartbreaking and induced the biggest panic attack I think we’ve ever had since the large sum of student loan payments were about to come calling and we didn’t have $500 to our names. We had to start the job search all over again after thinking we had job security for 8 months.

I had left my position a few months before in my field and moved back home with Greg so he could work for his dad’s construction business/find a job in his field somewhere in the U.S. that could potentially make 3x what I had been in social work then I could start a new job in my field. That was the idea. There was a job offer in Charlotte and a week after we came back home from there, an offer in Minnesota. Minnesota paid more (or so we thought) and away we went still reeling and upset about Oregon.

These two can’t wait to move across the country. I swear.

Somehow the struggle has transformed into the idea that maybe we were meant to go this route. Greg loves his job, we adore this house, we found our darling pups here, I look forward to writing on this blog and my DIY blog…that I started to deal with the fact that I couldn’t find a job-any job-and was quite lonely which was where I found out how much I enjoy writing (and being a foodie) and thus began the second blog following another passion. I felt/feel fulfilled salvaging furniture with my husband and sharing recipes, stories and our home renovations. We will move on as if that were how it would pan out all along.

Indeed it was here that we both discovered how much we enjoy refinishing furniture and where we discovered talents neither of us knew we had or thought were special enough to make a living. Sure it could have been anywhere but it has been here that we’ve found a bit of support and now we hope to find more when we move on.

Greg and I know that eventually we’d like this furniture salvaging to support us and a growing family. (Newsflash: Yeah, we’d like to get settled and have a family. I’m only 30…)

We bought this great house that we work on constantly and will hand over to someone we hope takes just as much care of it and possibly renovates the portions we couldn’t. It deserves that. We think it’s been wise financially. We’d like to improve another house but with a much longer stay, perhaps raise a family and definitely put more of our taste in there.

I’m looking forward to finding another house. Believe me, I wish we could pick this place up and take it with us. This first house feels like family. This has been a struggle-filled era but I will just look back and appreciate the challenges because it has made us even more resourceful. We’ve relied on the kindness of strangers for help, welcomed craiglisters into our home and lives, and did most projects without a vehicle larger than a Subaru Forester (uh hello moving a few couches with the hatch up, mattress on the roof, interior doors taking up most of the car so that I had to ride squeezed in behind Greg for an hour, etc.) in a place we didn’t know anyone for much assistance (except moving, some friends helped out there-thank you). We got creative, more efficient, focused, wiser.

I’d like to find an older house next. There are things I want to avoid and things I will look for. I know that it may not be avoidable but I’d like to never rent again. Ever. I’ve been checking out rentals in the Seattle area along with houses and I just can’t get on board with renting again after 13 leases in 9 or so years before our house came along.

This process will be stressful, time-consuming, nerve-racking and we have a lot to do to get this house to a point we’d be pleased to put it up for sale. Update both bathrooms, finish the basement better, update the kitchen and a bunch of other projects over a year’s worth of weekends, evenings, and vacation time. Any advice on how to handle this?