Wrapping things up

The home we just sold has two beautiful maple trees, but this part will not be missed.

We had three garage sales and cleared around $700.00! A perfect little stash to fund the ferry travel and moving expences. Our dining room set did not sell so it will stay with us a while longer. Maybe we'll try to sell it on the Island, there may be more interest here in country style furniture.

I love my Toro blower/vac. It mulches too.

We had rented a container from a company located in Scarborough, Ontario called Cube-It. The cube measures 8x8x16 ft. It is supposed to be able to contain the furnishings of a typical one bedroom appartment. Now our house has three bedrooms, but we had wittled the contents down to just one bedroom, so I figured the size of this container would be fine... When the contaier was delivered it did look rather small, but once inside it felt quite a bit bigger, we were up for a challenge. The full three dimensions would have to be put to good use. And we packed this thing, with the help of our good friend Stuart and number two son Chris, all the way to the rafters. Everything minus some garden decorations made it into the box, the garden decor was happily taken by our neighbours who promisced to distribute them with other interested parties.

On the Cubi-It website they list the load limit of the container at 7500 lbs. and we were trying to figure out just what exactly resembles 7500lbs. Neither of us really had a clue, but 7500 lbs. is a lot of weight, about 3.5 metric tonnes. So we packed it up without a problem. We stuffed the last 10% of the cube with bits and bobs. I will have to open the doors very slowly in two weeks because anything may come flying out of there. Hard hats may be required!

Quite a tight load!

This Friday morning the truck retuned to pick up the container. He positioned the truck expertly and had the forks in place five minutes later. Shelagh went off to vacuum something while I watched to see if the thing had become too heavy. The box lifted up as if it was empty! Seriously, I carried most of the boxes, all very heavy, into that thing. It blew me away that it seemed to be no effort at all for this rig. Talking to the driver, after he had his load secured, I asked him about the 7500 lb. limit and he smiled, "Actually the limit is 10000 lbs. but we want people to be careful when loading these things". The pick up was done in less than ten minutes, and now our focus was on the car...

There are some items that we did not want in the container, original paintings, some stereo equipment, our flat sceen television sets and rented electronics from our internet service provider. Also copious amounts of wine, clothing and personal treasures. Our car is small, a KIA Soul, but it has inner bigness, it is tall and boxy, some people call it ugly but I see a neatly designed car, very cool. With the back seats dropped down the interior becomes cavernous, and even Shelagh was amazed that everything made its way into the space behind our seats. I must admit that Shelagh's feet were slightly elevated by some items but that actually ended up adding to her comfort once properly distributed.

Our car fully stuffed, container picked up, final deep cleaning completed. We recieved a call from our notary, with the news that the money of the sale of our home had cleared, and that we could come over anytime to pick up the residue of funds that make up the difference between the sale of our old house and the purchase of our new house. (How's that for a sentence?) We locked up the house for the last time after one more walk through. We have lived here for 20 years, but we were both ready to move on, this house had served us well, and we hope the new owners will be very happy there.

From this...

To this... (Notice also the difference between a professional camera and a point and shoot!)

The paperwork went on for quite a while, lots of signatures were required, all to do with the new home purchase. Finally all that was done and we headed to the bank to deposit our cheque. Straight into the new investment account where our financial guru will do his magic, minus some $$$ for making the new house a home. Now we were totally free, and homeless. We headed for the Tsawwassen ferry terminal for our 15:15 sailing to Nanaimo. We had a two hour wait for our ship, so we went to the little mall in the parking lot and ate a lovely Mexican lunch from one of the stalls in the food court. This mall is worth a visit! Cool shops full of touristy things and great food too. After lunch we went back to the car and hooked up Shelagh's iPad to the car's sound system and watched a rather bizarre movie called "the Circle" starring Tom Hanks. Time goes by quickly like that and soon we had to pause the movie and get boarded. Once comfy in our seats we finished the movie sharing earbuds.

Just boarded and ready for the two hour crossing.

The crossing was blustery in places with plenty of rain and wind but we arrived at Duke Point without any problems. Then the 45 minute drive to the air B&B in driving rain on a very puddly highway was a bit treacherous, but going a little slower made it better. The air B&B is cozy and comfy. We caught up on e-mails and messages and enjoyed a glass of wine with lasagna delivered to our door. Sleep came easy...