When life gives you lemons, go ride Lemonade!

Planning, Plan D

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley,  or so said the poet Robert Burns.  We are not making any hard and fast plans for more than a month in advance.  We may have learned our lesson (or maybe not).”

That was how I opened the Planning, Plan C page.  And it appears that we did not learn our lesson.  We had started making plans for the whole summer, where we wanted to be, which Treffens we wanted to attend, in general a plan for several months was forming.  Then a mouse (literally) changed our plans!!!  We (and the fire inspector) believe a mouse chewed through the wiring that ran under the floor and this is what started the fire.  Instead of planning Treffens we are planning a new house.

It took us two months to make up our minds, but we have decided to sell the property and move into a condominium.  We have made an offer (and it has been accepted) on a nice three-bedroom, one-story unit in a gated "active senior" complex called "The Villas at Salmon Creek Commons".  It is on the north side of the city of Vancouver in Washington state.  They're still building the complex, about one third of the units are completed.  When finished there will be a community meeting hall with exercise room and swimming pool and 46 living units all behind an electric gate.

This is our unit.  It has 1591 square feet (148 square meters) and a large two-car garage.  It is called a Dante-X, the X is for expanded.  The garage is 2 feet longer and the front bedroom is 3 feet longer than the normal Dante model.  The front bedroom (with the "sold" sign in it) will be Kathy's craft room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The floor plan is reversed right to left from the plan in our unit, the garage is on the left instead of the right.

All outside landscaping is installed and maintained by the homeowners association.  We pay a monthly fee and forget it.  This and the fact that it is a gated community will allow us to lock the door and leave it for extended periods of time for traveling.

The plan  is to return to Europe and continue our trip as soon as we complete the purchase of the condo and the sale of our property.  We shipped our bike to Europe 14 months ago with the plan of spending a couple of years touring Europe, in actuality we have only spent five months in Europe touring and none of it has been during the summer.  We are anxious to go back.  Where we will travel to and what we will see is dependent on when we return.  If it is summer we will head north, if it is fall/winter we'll stay in the southern areas, as there is so much that we haven't seen.

We should be into the condo by the end of May, so what is holding us up is the sale of the five acres.  We have been furniture shopping and have got most of the items for the living room, dining room and master bedroom.  Because of the small size of our apartment we are having the stores hold our items for us, or they are on order and being made for us.  Hopefully it will all come together at move-in time.  We still have the guest bedroom and Kathy's craft room to furnish, but neither of those are priorities.

June 22, 2007

We are in our condo and have picked up most all of the furniture.  Some is still being made and shipped from California.  We have decided to go with a style known as Mission Oak for the main living/dining room.  The end tables, cocktail table and the bar stools were not in stock locally, so we are having them made and shipped.  They are supposed to arrive next week.  We have the dining table and chairs, a huge curio cabinet, 3 tall bookcases and a TV stand all in the Mission Oak.  We also bought two recliner loveseats in oxblood leather (they are real comfy).  The master bedroom is a different oak and the guest bedroom a third style of oak.  That wasn't done deliberately, it just happened.  I guess we like oak!  We bought a washer/dryer set and a refer/freezer too.  We've been spending the days getting set and hanging pictures.  Everything is new and is coordinated, which is a change from our other furniture which we had accumulated over many years.

We have our tickets to return to Spain.  We leave July 4th and are going to fly non-stop to Frankfurt, Germany.  We need to renew the insurance on the bike and it is through the ADAC, which is the German equal to the AAA in the US.  Then on to Spain for a few days and then on the road again.  We hope to make it to the British Isles for several weeks, and assuming another disaster doesn't bring us home we'll again winter somewhere in southern Europe.

We return to Europe on July 4th.