New House, New Blog

Please continue to follow our new blog at www.ckandnate.blogspot.com! You can click below to view it.

Front of House Shots

I'm going to start posting possible pictures to list our house with. Any opinions on which ones look best or which ones we should use would be really appreciated. I'm going to start with the front of the house since we spent a lot of time yesterday sprucing it up.

And just for fun I'm going to include some flower pics 

Online Yard Sale

In the process of getting our house ready to go on the market we realized that we have stuff... A LOT of stuff. So this led to thought of how we were going to get all of this stuff down to Florida which led to trying to find out how much it would cost to have people move it for us. It turns out that movers charge per pound and so this led to us deciding to get rid of some things to lighten our load. I decided to post them here so that people we are close to would have the first shot and then I'm going to post them to Craigslist so if you want something let me know! I've marked everything with what I think is a fair price but will take best offer. First come first serve. We can (and would prefer) to let things go asap but there are a few things I need to hold on to until the house sells... those things are marked with stars **.

 **Bought less than a year ago. We have 2 but a someone may be taking 1 of them. $80 **

Recliner $30

Sleeper sofa in great condition $ 90- Heavy

Wardrobe $25

Entertainment stand for small (under 42") tv $20

Coffee table with whiteboard top (you can draw on it) $25-Heavy

As we go through we may have more stuff but that is the big stuff for now. Email, Facebook or call if you want something or want more information.

Big Changes

Hi everyone! It's been awhile. We've been having a very busy few months with little work on the house. Nate has been in full swing with his thesis and applying to jobs and I have been consumed with work and track. A few weeks ago things got more interesting when Nate got a call for an on-campus interview at Lycoming college in Williamsport PA. He headed out pretty much immediately to PA for his interview and I flew out a few days later to check out the area. It was a really nice area and the job was great. The only down side was that it was 3 hours from anything. A few days after we got home, Nate got another on-campus interview, this time in FL. Once again he headed right out for the interview (I didn't get to join him on this one). At that point he had been offered the job in PA and so we were under a little bit of a time crunch for making decisions. Nate surprisingly liked the school (Florida Southern College) and the area and so after a lot of hard pro and con lists, we decided to pass on the Lycoming offer. Florida gave us a week to decide which was nice because we were already planning a trip down to FL to visit Nate's aunt and uncle during my spring break. While we were down, we visited the school twice and were able to see 16 houses to get an idea of the area. We both really loved the school, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the town (Lakeland) and the location is great. It is 45 min to Tampa and 1 hr to Orlando. With all that we saw, we decided to accept the offer at Florida Southern. It is a tenure track position in the Math department with a focus on teaching which is what Nate was looking for. It's also nice because since it isn't directly on the coast, it has Oak trees and a more New England feel which sounds silly but I think will make the transition easier. Here are a few pics of our trip.

                                       Kayaking                                       Oranges!

                                         Nate at FSC                                Spanish Moss

                                                 On Campus at Florida Southern

 Florida Southern

The obvious question now is... What about the house? We have decided to put it on the market and try and sell it before we move. As soon as we got back to MA we started getting the house ready, putting the finishing touches on all of our projects and decluttering the house. We are hoping to get the house on the market in the next few weeks and I will be posting pictures of the house as we go. Hopefully everyone will help out and give suggestions on pics and decorating so that we can sell the house fast!

New Carpet

Our final major project was the carpeting on the stairs and upstairs nook. This was quite the process. We decided to go with Home Depot because they were considerably cheaper than Lowe's. Let's just say you get what you pay for. First they had to come to the house to get a measurement. They told us they would be at the house anytime between 12 and 2:30 one Saturday. 5 of 12 I get a phone call saying if nobody showed up in the next 5 minutes the guy was leaving. Since I was running late and couldn't get there fore 15 minutes he left. Since this was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, we had to reschedule the measure for 2 weeks later. This time it was Nate's turn to wait for them to come and of course when they called that morning the said they would be there starting the one hour Nate needed to be away from the house. After much complaining to the company, they finally stopped by in the morning and spent a grand total of 5 minutes measuring.

Next came trying to pay for the carpet. You'd think this would be a simple task yet Home Depot can't make anything simple. They have a check verifying service that denies checks if you've never written a check with them before. Since we were writing a rather large check and haven't written a check to Home Depot before it was denied and once it's denied you can't use that account with Home Depot for 7 days even though it is a perfectly working account everywhere else in the world. After a very heated discussion with the very unhelpful manager at this company we decided to just walk away. (I looked up this company on the BBB and they have 1250 complaints against them and will deny checks for 5 dollars). The next day we looked into all different companies but non of them could beat Home Depot's price in a timely manner. So we took the cash out and went back to Home Depot to pay for our carpet in a way they would actually accept.

Finally the installation day came. They were supposed to call that morning to let us know when they were going to show up. Instead our doorbell rings at quarter of 8 in the morning. After checking my phone and email I find that instead of a call they decided to email us that the guy was supposed to be there between 12 and 3.... not 7:45. After a call to his manager we had to send the guy away. ( I was very unhappy at this point). At 12:30 they guy finally showed back up at 4 hours later was finally done. The kicker? I didn't notice until way to late that he had installed the WRONG carpet. It was the correct color but a different pattern then what we picked out. I however do not want to deal with this though and the carpet looks good so that the end of that... My only advice to anyone who's putting in carpet is to not use Home Dept.

 Sorry for the rant but this was a very frustrating process. We are really glad it is done and it looks really nice to have it finished. To brighten the mood a little, here are some fun pics from the holiday season plus a pic of the back porch with pictures hung.

La Salette's 10 acres of Christmas Lights

She was collecting snow! Her paws weighed more than the rest of her.

Taking a hike in the Blue Hills