Not quite secrets but stuff that doesn't need to be openly discussed

While we were away last year James’s house was sold.  Later that year Louisa’s house went the same way.  Both sales took about six weeks.  Just before we left for Tasmania we put our house on the market.  That sold in two weeks.  This time we were a tad more organized and had a printer on board for printing off documents from the settlement agent rather than having them posted out to a post office somewhere.

The two houses were between 15 and 20 years old and ours is 6.  There were no issues with those houses and everything went through smoothly.  Can’t say the same about ours.

The buyer wanted a building inspection done and this showed that the roof wasn’t built to code.  The builder said it was and wouldn’t fix it but I turned on the charm and explained we were ‘overseas’ and that we didn’t want to lose the sale and I’d had nothing but good things to say about Summit, blah blah blah and within a few days a crew of roof carpenters had been round and sorted it out.  I have to say that when they were building the house they worked on it every day and we were very pleased with it.

We’ve sold all our properties and possessions.  Actually various people, mostly our daughters, have snapped up the possessions although James is having the washing machine, fridge and other stuff.  To keep our house we would both have had to go back to work in order to pay the mortgage.  If we were both working we wouldn’t be able to travel.  We thought long and hard and discussed with various people and (especially after Steve had experience of his mum’s affairs after she died) we decided to clean up our own affairs now rather than leave it to Louisa, James and Beth to deal with after we died.

Our children have dealt with everything, from packing up the house, to getting the spa removed and the house cleaned.  I’m told that Beth’s garage is full of our stuff, they moved into their new house a few weeks ago and also during this time Paige has been in hospital and Louisa had Harry Patrick Foster on the 2^nd April.

I loved that house; it was the best house we’ve ever owned.  I loved that the living area was so big.  People would walk in and be overwhelmed by the space but we had to be realistic.  Did we really need such a large house that had two spare bedrooms and two bathrooms for the two of us?  It was too easy for any of the grandchildren to stay over; they got to choose their own bed although they usually ended up in ours.  We’d even bought a king size bed to accommodate them and us.

So, from next week we are no longer homeowners.  We leave Tasmania on the 23^rd April and after a trip to an Apple store in Victoria to get Steve’s iPhone sorted we’ll be making our way to Beth’s house.  No definite plan, we hope we can get the caravan in her backyard but we’re not stressing.  One plan is to travel North for the winter and South for summer. 

We haven’t advertised the fact that we’re officially Grey Nomads, living out of a caravan and we’d rather you didn’t mention this on Facebook.   You are more than welcome to leave a comment on this blog.

The next update will be about Andre and Paula and Steve and myself almost setting up camp in an old lady’s back yard and Steve’s fishing plus any other dribbling that comes to mind.