Wednesday Q & A: Where The Hell Have I Been

It really hasn't been too much of question in the real world, but for people who are readers of The Kayview Gallery it got some attention.  The gallery is featured on Alltop.com under the Photoshop section.  One of the things that happens there is that you sort of slide down the pecking order unless you post frequently.  After a couple weeks you tend to drop off the bottom of the page.  When I recently posted the shot of a Santa Claus looking guy (my brother-in-law), the gallery was back to being included on Alltop.  That's where a couple of notes came from asking what had happened.  What happened was that we moved.  Now, that shouldn't explain a four month sabbatical, but that was it.  Our explanation of why we were selling was that we had an eight room house and we used three.  The kitchen, the bedroom and the playroom/den/tv room, whatever.  The boys are gone, the excess rooms were either dust or junk collectors, we aren't (never have been) into liking yardwork or snow shoveling, so what was the point of staying.  Today's image is a cell phone shot of the front of our nice new (to us) condo.  Now instead of eight rooms and using three, we have four rooms and use three.  The condo actually has more room than the house had before the addition.  The master bedroom suite is smaller than we had at the house (but then again most master bedroom suites [in "normal" houses] are less than 650 sq. ft.).  The living room/dining room is larger, the kitchen is about a wash and the second bedroom now (for the moment) collects dust and junk (er, useful items used for photography).  To find out why it's taken almost four months to get back to some resemblance of order, hit the "Read More".

The house was "bought" in June.  The closing was scheduled for late July.  We went to work paring down forty years of "stuff" (George Carlin was right).  One of the things to be packed up was the computers.  We figured we could survive with smart phones and iPads for a short time.  The late July closing became closer to a middle of August closing.  Moving to the condo was interesting.  We got there and no one had a key to get in.  Not the realtor, nothing in the lockbox, nothing at the condo offices, nothing.  A night in a hotel.  The first day of the move was sort of like having a dump trunk pull up and unload its contents into the condo.  Get things in.  It almost didn't matter where. 

The condo we bought is a fixer upper.  We knew that going in.  The same style unit is listed for about $150,000.00 more than we paid.  We know we can match that one for far less than the difference in price.  What we didn't know was that all the plumbing needed to be replaced.  I guess it didn't occur to the designers/builders back in the 70's that you shouldn't put copper tubing directly in the dirt with no protection.  It tends to corrode over time and this was the time.  Luckily the condo association knew about the issue and took on the burden of replacing everything at no cost to us.  The parquet floors on the other hand were "an upgrade" and only a credit for the cost of putting in original quality wall to wall carpeting would be covered.  We'd been in the condo for all of a week at this point.  It was suggested we put in a claim with our insurance company.  Okay, we'd paid "home owner's" insurance for forty years, but had had the "condo owner's" insurance for a week.  We figured "fat chance".   Allstate Insurance came through and said it didn't matter if we had coverage for forty years or forty minutes.  If we had the insurance we could put in a claim.  So, add all new engineered hardwood floors to the timeline.

The plumbing work was a "three week" job.  Jack hammering through the slab and redoing the work (properly) this time.  We're into week six and the painter is finishing up today.  For four weeks we were out of the house.  One week at Santa Claus' place, one week on a vacation, one week in a hotel, another week at Santa's and finally one bathroom was serviceable.  So, we've been living in a slight work zone rather than a major work zone for ten days. 

Due to the dust created by the jack hammering, the desktop computers and most of the external hard drives are still wrapped in plastic wrap.  I finally went out and bought a brand new laptop.  Latest Intel processor and all. 

Slowly things will get back to "normal".  At least we can laugh about it.  We aren't the type who go crazy over the little sh**.  (And it's all little sh**.)  The Kayview Gallery blog will go on and return to its three times a week postings shortly.  There's a little matter of some upcoming surgery that may interrupt things for a bit.  But that's a story for another day.