World's Fastest One Handed Movers

Three weeks after meeting with an agent, two weeks after listing, and less than a month after even *considering* moving, we have not only purchased a house but also managed to sell the one we're in now. This has to be some sort of record at a time when most houses are selling in six months. We figure it's a combination of location, fair price, and excellent condition. Several viewers commented on the fact that the place looked like a show home and couldn't believe anyone was actually *living* there. For those of you know have visited my house when Mel is not on vacation, this won't come as any huge surprise!

If you're interested in seeing pictures of the house, the RMLS listing number is 7089411.

Right now our timeline is as follows:

Sept 30 - By this time the inspection should be done on our old place and all that's left is waiting to close.

Oct 1 - Close on new house, begin work on getting the ceilings scraped and the whole place painted.

Oct 2-14 - Start boxing the easy stuff (games, books, media), start purging stuff we don't want to keep.

Oct 15 - Movers come to box everything else up.

Oct 17 - Movers come to put boxes somewhere else, preferably our new place.

Oct 19 - We go back to having one mortgage.

That's less than two months from anyone even suggesting we move to Wilsonville to actually being there. No point in screwing around, I guess.

I was stressing mightily over whether or not our current house would sell, given the chaos that is the lending and housing industries this particular month. I was very worried that not only would I have to carry two mortgages, but also that my source of funding for the down on the new place (my family's business) would start getting a bit cranky if we got into, oh, 2009 with no sale in sight. Don't know that I'll do it this way again, but this was a bit of a special case. Turns out we were making the right decisions all the way along (other than to lock in our rates last week before the half point drop - grumble grumble), as our buying agent told us that someone had come back to buy the house we bought and were shocked that someone else had taken it.

The best part of the new place will be, of course, the game room. I'm planning several things for this room:

o flat storage for wargames in progress (I use poster frames) and those poor maps that I foolishly had laminated back in the 90's when it seemed like a good idea. The storage, usually used for blueprints or art, will sit on top of a set of bookcases to maximize gaming space.

o Awesome sound system. OK, it's really just a very nice set of near-field monitors that I can plug the laptop into to access the iTunes library (now Airtunes and accessible from anywhere in the house). The room will double as a music studio if I feel like doing some computer music projects. The speakers are made by a Dutch company, Blue Sky, and feature two satellites with a sub for the lows. I think my neighbors are already getting worried.

o Walk-in closet for the Euros, bookcases for the wargames. I should be able to fit about half to three-quarters in the closet, the rest in bookcases in the room itself. Finally, I can see just how freakin' insane I am without having to leave the room.

o Multiple game tables. IKEA has these ultra-cheap VIKA tables ($39.99) that will hold a standard poster frame, although without a lot of extra room. At that price, however, you can just put two or three of them together for bigger games! I plan to start with four, putting the others either against the wall when not in use, or even taking the legs off (they unscrew) if we need the floor space for some reason. I'm looking forward to being able to leave a couple of games set up for long periods of time, as mentioned in an earlier entry - at last I can play a game over several weeks without having to resort to VASSAL or Cyberboard. while nice, there is nothing like having the actual game set up. Good thing I don't have cats...

Best of all is that there will be a Fridge. I may never leave this room...

BTW, the title of this entry is a reference to the name a group of my friends from work called themselves back when we were all cheap and young enough to move ourselves. Since we all kept an open beer bottle in one hand, we called ourselves the One-Handed Movers. Doing the whole buy/sell/move thing in seven weeks, I think we can graduate to World's Fastest.

If I was smart, I'd invest in Jesse's Hobbytown in Wilsonville, so at least when I bought games I could be paying myself...