Despite the current frenetic house move-related activity, I managed to make time today to begin listing sale items on the website.
I have a sizeable quantity of artisan-quality miniatures from my own private collection, as well as books, magazines, building components and related items, which will gradually be added to all categories over the coming weeks.
I'm beginning to enjoy this downsizing mallarkey........!
After a brief blaze of Indian summer last week, autumn has returned with a vengeance. Yesterday and today it's rained continuously and the forecast is for high winds and torrential rain for the next few days. I'm going to unearth my SAD lamp and sit in front of it for a few hours later while I'm working to try to get a head start on the winter blues.
We worked hard all weekend, giving the smallest bedroom a makeover, which it badly needed.
It was pink.
Not a pleasing, pretty, pale, pastel periwinkle pink.
No by no nonny no.
It was a vibrant, In-Your-Face, deep Barbie pink, which was completely overpowering. Quite why we haven't re-decorated it before is a mystery, shrouded in the mists of time. It was originally PP's daughter's bedroom and she didn't seem to mind it. Then over time it became a repository for bits of spare furniture and general stuff, and we couldn't have repainted it even if we wanted to.
Which we didn't.
However, empty of all the extraneous stuff, a makeover was clearly called for. The transformation is startling and was worth the effort. Shame we were only galvanised into action by a desire to sell the house.
No matter.
The house is now gleaming and immaculate. I'm scared to even walk into several of the rooms. Like Pig-Pen from Peanuts, I seem to have an uncanny knack for creating a mess in my wake wherever I go and having worked our butts off to get it this clean and tidy, the challenge for the duration is to keep it that way.
Not only is the house now pristine and practically minimalist *cough*, I no longer know where to find a single thing and have to spend many minutes, eyes closed and immobile, playing a game of mental pelmanism to try to track down whatever I'm looking for. This is both time consuming and exhausting. I needed a pair of tweezers from the workroom earlier and had to hunt through just about every cupboard and drawer before I found them.
However, we are now ready to GO. Wish us luck.......
So.
It is done.
I feel like I'm living in the set of a spoof Ingmar Bergman film
Everything feels so alien.
So strange.
Where is all the stuff?
It is gone.
Like the wind.
Small Dog looks at us beseechingly.
To no avail.
It is gone.
As we all will be.............in time.
PS.... it IS a vin kväll. God natt mina lovelies.
PPS.... * Är det bara jag eller är Sigfried verkligen passar *
* hint.... use Google translate.
Ostensibly, the raison d'etre for this blog is to disseminate information about that thing I haven't been doing much of recently..... work. That is the method by which we earn a living and keep the ever ravening wolf from the door.
(Although as Small Dog pointedly pointed out, she is charged with that task as she apparently intercepts them at the top of the garden and bites their heads off.)
But I digress.
In response to a recent rash of pre-Christmas commissions, I'm sorry to report that my order book is now closed and will re-open in the New Year. Customers currently on my waiting list for commission orders will very likely might experience some delay in receiving theirs. I am contacting everyone individually with updates.
Fortunately, preparations began in July for our Christmas offerings this year, so hopefully, when the house prep dust settles early next week (not that there should be even the slightest speck of dust) we will be able to get back in the saddle.
Also, from Monday, I will begin listing a phantasmagoria of miniature treasures for sale on the website. Most are from my own collection and were made by long-retired artisans, plus all manner of interesting and unusual items.
So watch this space............
Both working hard again till 10pm this evening and we're so nearly there. First estate agent coming after lunch tomorrow so just enough time to put all the finishing touches in place in the morning.
It's been a marathon week in every sense of the word and I won't be wanting to do that again anytime soon, but we've literally moved mountains since last weekend and although completely exhausted, I'm pleased with what we've been able to achieve in such a short time, given the scale of the task which confronted us.
Every single scrap of assorted offspring's stuff has been removed from the house and we've reclaimed so much space we don't know what to do with it.
Small Dog has gone from being disturbed to downright neurotic. She spent ages today sitting up the top of the garden, staring down at the house as if trying to work out what had happened to it. She's also taken to following us around, as if making sure we don't disappear, like so much of the stuff.
Poor wee soul.
Hope I have enough energy to drag myself upstairs. Another early start tomorrow but come hell or high water I'm having a lie-in on Sunday...... or else!
We have been going 'over the top' in every sense, waging a war of attrition on the legions of stuff which had gradually infiltrated our lives, most of which wasn't even ours! However, I think we may have turned the corner and the battle is being won, albeit slowly.
Today is going to be another epic feat of endurance, as is tomorrow. But by Friday I'm determined that EVERYTHING that needs to be done will have been achieved..... even if it kills me, which at times over the past few days has felt like a distinct possibility.
I have aches and pains in places I didn't even know existed, and even full 10 hour sleeps are doing little to mitigate the complete and utter exhaustion.
However, progress is undoubtedly being made which is A Good Thing.
Small Dog has been wandering wonderingly through rooms which were hitherto all but inaccessible and we are down to the last few piles of assorted offsprings' belongings so yaayyy.
Right.... better go and get on with it then.
......to be continued.........
With our house-hunting dilemma looming large, I've been trying to think outside the box to find ways of achieving the potentially unachievable. This is proving to be a frustrating, not to say infuriating process.
I'll give you a for instance.
Take a hypothetical middle-aged couple who may or may not have a Small Dog. They own their house outright, have modest savings, owe not a penny to any living soul (or any dead soul come to that).... absolutely no outstanding loans or debts, excellent credit history, honest, hard-working, upstanding members of society.
However, one of them has an incurable neurological condition, and the other is just a few years off retirement, so raising a mortgage is not feasible. Not that they need one.
Say, for the sake of argument, they want to move house, and in order to quickly secure a perfect property need to raise an unspecified but not insurmountable amount of cash to do so. The value of their home will way more than cover the amount required. Seems like a no-brainer..... borrow on a short-term basis using the house as security, pending the sale. On completion pay back the loan quick smart. Job done.
A bit of Googling reveals that yes indeed..... this is possible, and according to the interweb, lenders are apparently queueing up to offer all manner of home equity loan packages. Obviously there are risks and drawbacks, but on paper at least, it appears to present one apparently workable solution.
But no.
No by no nonny no.
Apparently you can only do this if you already have a mortgage on your property. It probably also helps if you are servicing a loan or two, and maybe paying off your credit card while you're at it.
I'm not quite sure how that works, but despite the whole sub-prime fiasco and subsequent world banking crash banks still seem to prefer to lend to people who already have debt, and limited assets.
Is it any wonder that bankers have a likeability/trusworthiness index lower even than estate agents and used car salesmen?
