Category Archives: goals

Never Let Your Fear Decide Your Fate

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Going out on a limb. Taking a risk. Trying something new. Following your calling.

They all sound so romantic when you read about someone else doing it. When it is you, it takes a lot more guts. Britton and I really have a good life here in Colorado. We have relatively high paying and highly esteemed careers, we have a house, car, extra houses, extra cars, friends, family. We have time on our hands. We are fairly healthy, happy and numbingly comfortable.

So why leave it? Some people have asked, or rather, told us. Why leave a good thing? And logically, I really don’t know. I mean we have everything “they” tell you we should aspire to have. Everything the school system and the government and our parents and everyone with a stake in “us” turning out to be productive people said we should try to be. And we have. We are!

And yet.

And yet there is something that pulls me -us- out of the comfortable. That says that excitement will not be found in doing the usual. That growth and adventure do not lie in the routine. That there is more to life than being a cog in that same system that had a hand in making us one. But it is oh, so hard to let go once “you have it made”. Or at least it is for us.

We have some idea what our life will look like when we move to our property in Rincon, Puerto Rico. But not a whole lot. Anything is possible. It is much less predicable. Here in Greeley, on the other hand, I know exactly what to expect more or less. Little things change, but for the most part, life will go on exactly as it did last year and the year(s) before that and so on.

And so.

And so there is something inside of me that says: “There is more out there in the world for you to uncover. You have played this game, you have passed this level. You are ready for a new adventure.You have even set yourself up so that it is very unlikely to fail at the next game. Why are you scared?!”

This is a part of my lesson that I must do to learn: To never let my fear decide my fate.

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The Waiting Room

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After we got our new carpet installed, we decided that anything we weren’t going to be using right away, would go into the empty upstairs guest bedroom. We called it the “waiting room” as all the items in it would be just waiting to be sold or given away. We made a goal of listing at least 3 items on Craigslist each week with the hope of selling them.

Dresser
We sold this dresser in about 10 minutes!

We really don’t have that much stuff if it can all fit into a 11×11 room. But it is still enough that we have to figure out what to do with it. The hardest is stuff like my shoes and closet full of clothes that I love, but will have absolutely no use for down there and which, to be perfectly honest, I really don’t wear that much here anyway. I have about 5 pairs of shoes that I always wear. Similar story with my clothes. The rest are just for fun or special occasions. So far I haven’t sold any of my shoes, but I hope to at the right price. It would be a shame to have to toss these nearly new shoes and boots!

Shoe Collection
Some of my shoes I have collected over the years

We also have all of our various houseplants and gardening tools to contend with.

Lime Tree
We sold this beautiful lime tree and I think we made some new friends in the process as well!

Germination Station
We also sold this germination station heat pad super quick!

We’ve also made some bigger sales including one that is pending and Britton has started to go through and sell his old records like this autographed Guns N’ Roses album that he sold on Ebay.

IMG_2823
Guns N’ Roses Album

It’s been a lot of fun going through all of our stuff and selling it in sort of a laid back garage sale sort of way. Craigslist is cool because unlike a garage sale, people aren’t just browsing…they actually want your stuff, like we did with when we bought a  Kitty carrier we found on there. It’s not as cheap as garage sale prices, but it’s a LOT less than full retail and you can do it any time of the year.

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Drywall Free Interior Walls

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I was driving into work today while day dreaming about the house in Rincon.  I was thinking about what to do with the wood house and specifically about what to do about the interior walls.

The wall cavity between the outer siding and the inner panels/drywall seems to make a great place for bees, rats and bats to live.  This is a problem, because while I don’t have anything against any of those things in general, I don’t want them to live with me.

We know we are going to paint the inside of the house white to brighten it up.  The inside has never been painted and is all a natural wood color so it tends to be pretty dark.  I thought…”well who the hell needs drywall?  Or wood paneling?”.  Here in Colorado we need that space to insulate us from the outside which gets pretty darn cold.  The only purpose it really serves in our Rincon house is to cover up the studs and apparently make nice nests for  pests.

It is fairly hard to locate pictures of what I have in mind but I did find a few.  no drywall
Here is the idea

Basically remove the existing panels and drywall, clean everything out and paint.  Done.   It also provides shelf space.

Now, I am not sure we would do this in every room, but we don’t have to.  Some of the wood paneling can just be painted white and some can removed and the empty cavity painted.

Wall 2
Another example grabbed from Google images.

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New Carpet for our Greeley House

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This weekend we had our new carpet installed in our house in Greeley. When we first bought our house in 2003, it was a foreclosure and the carpet was badly stained in the living room. At the time, however, we did not have the money to install new carpet, so we just got it professionally cleaned. It really brightened it up and the dark stains were less noticeable, but it wasn’t perfect. The rest of the house’s carpet was in fine shape as the house had only just been built in 2001 and so the carpet had been new at that time.

Hallway spot
This was the worst spot in the house. Britton and I had made a small stain worse by trying to clean it with Oxy-clean and it had bleached the carpet

Over the years, the carpet, especially in the living room, only got worse and worse. Old Schnood had had accidents on it, both Callie and Kitty had taken their claws to it and it was the main thoroughfare to the kitchen, basement, and upstairs bedrooms. As you may remember, we had covered it up with a nice new throw rug and that helped a lot, but we still knew the carpet was on its last legs. Since we are moving this year, we want the house to be ready to rent and figured that now was as good a time as ever and we’d at least get to enjoy it a little first too.

So this weekend we moved all of our upstairs furniture into the basement, kitchen or bathrooms.

IMG_2787
Britton with most of our earthly belongings moved to the kitchen

The carpet installers arrived around 9am on Saturday and got right to work. Britton was also excited to finally fix a squeaky spot in the hallway that always creaked when we walked by. It’s nice not to have that creak but we no longer have our wonderful alarm system anymore either 🙂

Britton and squeaky spot
Britton and the carpet installer fixing the creak in the hall

Living room with blue carpet pad
It looked really weird with just the blue pad installed

Hauled out carpet
The “used” carpet

Here are some before and afters. It looks even better in person and feels good under bare feet. We love it!

Bedroom before
Bedroom before

bedroom after
Bedroom after

Hallway before
Hallway before

Hallway after
Hallway after

It’s amazing what a little surface detailing -and money- can do. We’ve seen it before in our (other) rentals, but it’s so true: paint and flooring can make a place feel new again.

Carpet close up
Close up of the new carpet (living room)

 

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