Road Trips 2012 & Real Estate

[Gene]

Bags in the east, sacks in the west. Soda in the east, pop in the west.

Presently in Pueblo, Colorado. A birthday and a funeral brought us here. As you get older, more and more funerals—Barb's grandmother died last Monday at 102. The funeral was in a small town on the Santa Fe Trail and I-25, Wagon Mound. This was an anticipated, but sad event. The town is small, but has seen better days. The "downtown" is all stores closed for decades, a few gas stations and convenience stores next to the I-25 exit. Not much else in town but a school, a church and several hundred people. The cemetery was windswept as a cold front was coming and we were afraid all the elderly would have trouble standing up in 50-60 mph gusts. No one got blown over though. This town is so poor they can't even landscape the cemetery so it was all dirt and rocks. It felt like we were in the 1800's. Cora worked a ranch well into her 70's and when she was 99, made us a really good dinner. One tough woman. She was full of stories, but since she switched between Spanish and English all the time, a lot of us never understood her, so we all missed a lot. My mother-in-law's birthday was today, somewhat subdued.

Our listings are crazy. The house was on realtor.com, and then disappeared. Getting it on MLS it very difficult. Forsalebyowner.com has lots of omissions. Looks like I have to watch these guys every day.

Gene

[ROBERT CROSS]

Thoughts & prayers with you all....peace.

I too had a Grandma Cora, Onalee's Mother.

Bob

[slowmover]

Take care. Never easy.

[Lily&Me]

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

Presently in Pueblo, Colorado. A birthday and a funeral brought us here. As you get older, more and more funerals—Barb's grandmother died last Monday at 102. The funeral was in a small town on the Santa Fe Trail and I-25, Wagon Mound. This was an anticipated, but sad event. The town is small, but has seen better days. The "downtown" is all stores closed for decades, a few gas stations and convenience stores next to the I-25 exit. Not much else in town but a school, a church and several hundred people. The cemetery was windswept as a cold front was coming and we were afraid all the elderly would have trouble standing up in 50-60 mph gusts. No one got blown over though. This town is so poor they can't even landscape the cemetery so it was all dirt and rocks. It felt like we were in the 1800's. Cora worked a ranch well into her 70's and when she was 99, made us a really good dinner. One tough woman. She was full of stories, but since she switched between Spanish and English all the time, a lot of us never understood her, so we all missed a lot. Gene

Sorry for your loss.

Sounds like the cemetery and setting for the funeral were fitting for this 102 year old woman in Pueblo, Colorado.

Take care,


Maggie

[Steelegood]

Hey Gene:

Sorry for you & Barb's loss. We've escaped the state & went on the Cajun Caravan. We had a fantastic time. Got back & found I had only a few days to complete 8 self study courses to do in order to attend a mandatory company seminar. The self study courses had to be done online in order to get the necessary certificates of completion. This week we went to a nearby Airstream Park (TCPC) to volunteer to help clean up the park for the season. OK, now I'm going back to work tonight. Whew! House looks great, and the floor in the AS looks amazing. Good luck on the house.

Terry.

[Gene]

Thanks for all your thoughts. It is hard to let go of the cemetery and its 19th century flavor. No carpeting around the grave, no anything but a hole in the ground. This doesn't bother me because many funerals are sanitized and do not provide proper closure. It was stark as it should be. The wind from an approaching cold front was fierce and whipped down from the Wagon Mound (from which the town takes its name and was a landmark on the Santa Fe Trail). It was predicted to have 55 mph gusts, but it seemed to be a lot more. People were holding up the oldest and footing was unsure in the loose dirt and rocks. In that wind, the graveside service seemed to go on forever. The pallbearers had to lower the casket into the grave with ropes and it seemed at any moment they would drop it, but they didn't. The services were in an old Catholic church in town—maybe 100 years old—and I had no idea what was going on. People get up and sit down many times through the service. Probably half or more were not Catholics and were as confused as me. The church is well kept and that is impressive in a town like this with little money and few jobs.

Like a lot of agriculturally based towns, this is one which time has passed by. With cars and trucks and decent highways, people go to shop elsewhere. Probably Las Vegas, NM, in this case, less than 40 miles away. The ranch is about 10 miles away to the east, part of it on a dirt track to an small adobe house on the Canadian River. "River" is optimistic, it is a creek. Cora raised 5 kids in the half of the house her part of the family had. Life was hard and everything was used and used again. There is electricity now, but that's about it. Barb used to visit as a child and there was nothing to do for her and her cousins, all city girls. The radio—an early '30's one bought used right after WW II—could pull on Oklahoma City and some other stations at night. Eventually we ended up with the radio—it still worked, though not well. We donated it to the local museum. My father-in-law used to drive the school bus while still in high school, an old truck with a bus like body attached. Later they bought a house in town so the kids could stay there while they went to school. The house is fairly large and being fixed up. A very different life than most of us are used to.

The ranch was purchased sometime after the Civil War. The great-great (maybe more greats) grandfather had come to NM from Germany and became a butcher in Taos. To supply his shop, he raised cows on the ranch and that was a long trip across the Sangre de Cristo Range and the prairie. The shop was just down the street from the Kit Carson house. It still stands and had been many businesses; last year it was empty.

Gene

[Goal15]

Gene:
Sorry to hear about Barb's grandmother, sounds like she had a full, long and interesting life. We should all be so blessed.

Dana

[Ag&Au]

Gene,

I found that by going to Google maps and using street view, I am able to get a sense of your experience. There is a view of Santa Clara Cemetery (I imagine that is the right one) from the road in front of it. Wagon mound makes an imposing back drop. I have seen Wagon Mound many times from I-25, but did not know what it was. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. The street views must have been shot a little before this time of year, very brown and no leaves on the trees yet.

Ken

[Gene]

It was Santa Clara Cemetery. That is also the name of the parish.

Gene

[danlehosky]

Gene, I have been subscribed to this thread but have not read it in a while. Sorry for the loss of your wifes Grandmother. I lost my Mother last month. She was 86 and had a good but hard life as well. Her Grandfather immigrated from the Baltics as a fisherman and settled much of this area and made contributions as a boat builder and fisherman to the local economy. My Mom had 11 siblings and she was the youngest and ironically the last to go. Gig Harbor was recently voted by Coastal Living magazine as the #1 coastal town in America. This makes me sad as now the other half of Southern California will move up here and spoil the area even further. When we were growing up Gig Harbor was still a backwater fishing and lumber town. I will always remember my Mom knowing 101 ways to prepare salmon because it was pretty much all we ate. I went to her house every Sunday for dinner when I was in town. She loved having her grandchildren around her and taught my kids how to fish and crab before they were in school. I was at her house two days before she died and she was standing on a ladder scrubbing the ceiling in her kitchen. I told her to stop and I would paint it for her but she refused. She was active and healthy to the end. She went to bed one night and my Dad discovered her the next morning already gone. My sisters, brothers and the entire family are still enjoying the canned goods from her garden last year. Life can change fast, and has for us. We are getting back to normal and I am as determined to travel this summer as I was before. But I think I'll take my Dad as well. He'll slow us down some, but maybe that will be a good thing.
Dan

[Lily&Me]

Doug's mom is 94 and still living alone, on the farm in Iowa, within a few miles of where she was born and raised and has lived all her life. Still drives to the senior center for lunch every day, putters around in her gardens and is sharp as a tack. She is full of stories of being one of 8 children raised during the great Depression, on a farm in Iowa. If she has her way, she will die in her sleep or sitting in her favorite chair by the window. We should all be so lucky.

Maggie

[Gene]

The floor is finished except for two things. I have put a final coat of urethane on the trim and will need to wet sand it later. I haven't cut down the table leg 1/8" to compensate for the higher floor, but will when I take the leg off after making a new table.

I lucked out on a few things. The cloth covered doors that open downward fit even though the floor is higher. I checked them before I went through the trouble of removing part of the cloth and cutting them. I figured I'd have to cut the flooring around the "legs" for the dinette curbside seat to keep it at the same level as the streetside one. But I thought I'd see how it worked by just screwing it down. If it was too high, I could cut the flooring later. Then I measured the seat and instead of being 1/8" higher, it was 1/8" lower. Glad I did it this way. Airstream's poor carpentry worked for me this time.

I glued the rubber molding around the sink cabinet with construction adhesive, but one end was not sticking well. Superglue solved that. The molding looks good. The quarter round miters come out as usual for me—I either make them open or too tight to fit. I cannot get them between too long and short. But I was smart enough to marry a woman with bad eyesight—she doesn't see open miters, any spaces between the planks are invisible to her and she thinks I'm handsome. What a woman!

Next comes the table. We put on the antenna adapter for UHF/digital channels yesterday. The screws they provide like to fall down and disappear in the grass. The only way to get them to stay in while screwing them in is with a drill going fast to grab the expanding drywall style anchor. The Wifi Ranger Sky arrived the other day and will get installed soon. We are anxiously awaiting the newly covered seat cushions and hope we get to see some this week. The seamstress has a good reputation, but I want to see them soon.

If I were to do this again, I think I'd put the same flooring down even though the seams between the planks open slightly. I can pick it up to check for leaks and mostly no one will see the small spaces. Maybe I'd look harder for other options.

I filled out forms for listings on realtor.com and MLS yesterday. These FSBO companies are not easy to work with. The first one doing realtor.com listings was caught by the state Real Estate Commission for not having a license in this state, so my previous listing disappeared 2 or 3 days after it went up. The outfit I am using now has long, long contracts making sure I have no rights and will be charged for thinking of something I forgot. That was a pain. When I looked them up on internet reviews, they were all bad. This is an outfit that the FSBO company I originally contracted with subcontracts with for certain listings. These companies are all in need of improvement. I hope they get the listings up soon. This whole process has been a test of my patience.

Thanks everyone for your wishes about Barb's grandmother. I will tell her.

Photos:

1. I found some cheap metal transition strip at Home Depot. I cut to size and installed one piece at the bathroom and the other where the fold out door separates the kitchen and hallway.
2. Most companies buy parts by the thousands to save money. Note the 2 corner braces for the dinette seat have UPC tags on them as if they were bought by the handful at a local hardware store. No wonder Airstreams cost so much. The near one has a piece of paper curved at the end—that's the price code. The other one does too, but it's hard to see.
3. The rubber molding. I decided the best way was to bring it around the curve and cut it there. Since it wasn't much longer, it would have had a butt joint just before the propane monitor, so I thought this way looked better. I filled in the rest with quarter round.

Gene

[slowmover]

Then I measured the seat and instead of being 1/8" higher, it was 1/8" lower. Glad I did it this way. Airstream's poor carpentry worked for me this time.

I get a warm fuzzy when this happens.

All the rest, and the pics, give 2012 a headstart on the next travels. Looks great!

.

[eubank]

A friend of mine once explained the deviations from the wiring color in "the book" in a similar fashion: When the good folks at the MG factory ran short of a given wire, they'd run down to the nearest corner store and buy some while waiting for the big shipment from Lucas. Not an exact match, but close enough, and it kept the factory up and running.

Lynn

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

2. Most companies buy parts by the thousands to save money. Note the 2 corner braces for the dinette seat have UPC tags on them as if they were bought by the handful at a local hardware store. No wonder Airstreams cost so much. The near one has a piece of paper curved at the end—that's the price code. The other one does too, but it's hard to see.
Gene

[FlashSilver]

Originally Posted by eubank

A friend of mine once explained the deviations from the wiring color in "the book" in a similar fashion: When the good folks at the MG factory ran short of a given wire, they'd run down to the nearest corner store and buy some while waiting for the big shipment from Lucas. Not an exact match, but close enough, and it kept the factory up and running.

Lynn

This reminds me of an old joke :

Question: Why do the English drink warm beer?

Answer: They have Lucas refrigerators.

Ok, maybe this is only funny to those of us who have had British cars.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by FlashSilver

This reminds me of an old joke :

Question: Why do the English drink warm beer?

Answer: They have Lucas refrigerators.

Ok, maybe this is only funny to those of us who have had British cars.

I have had British sports cars and fully concur with the intent of the joke. But it wasn't just Lucas parts that were junk…. The cars were fun to drive, though.

We've been arranging and re-arranging the maple boards that will make up the new dinette table. We picked the boards for figure and color and seem to have found a balance in design. It is time to start gluing them together, but first some sanding to get the edges absolutely matched.

Real furniture makers get the edges perfect and you can't tell there is a seam there except the boards have different grain patterns. This is not easy for me, but I did it when I had to reassemble a 140 year old ash table where the pieces had split from dryness and needed to be put back together. Considering the value of that table—an early Chinese Eastlake design probably from the 1870's—this was a very scary restoration. It came out very well, but that was 11 years ago, so I have to remember what I did. The maple boards may have been cut straight, but warp has developed in various directions, so sanding is necessary. This is the kind of thing where I get tired of it after awhile and want to just glue and hope; that is not a good approach.

The original Formica table is 35 1/16" x 40. I will make it 42" front to back—that is how far out the seat cushions go. I will add a little more depth—maybe as much as 1". That would mean I wouldn't have to cut down those outer edges, but it depends how crisp the edges are. I'll put some end pieces on the front and back edges—I found a 1 1/2" piece with some excellent figure in it, so I'll cut it in half the long way and use that. This hides the end grain. A real furniture maker would put a return on the end of the strip to cover that end grain, but like doing miters, I am not qualified. I will try to cut the ends of the strip facing the kitchen in a curve to hide the end grain instead and make those corners less painful when we walk into them (this is inevitable).

So, first, do some sanding to clean up the boards a bit, then cut the pockets for the biscuits, glue, and when the glue sets, do the next board. I may do 2 boards from each end, let the glue dry until tomorrow and then put the 5 big boards together the next day. Next end pieces. This will require either brads and glue or dowels and glue—they will be too thin for biscuits. Then sand and coat with multiple layers of exterior urethane. Lastly, cut down the leg 1/8" and assemble everything to install it in the trailer. The table is never big enough for duties as desk and dining, but it will be a little bigger.

Gene

[Gene]

The table received the 5th coat of urethane today. If it dries in time, it'll get a 6th later today. I'll stop at 7 or 8, attach the leg and assembly for the wall attachment and it'll be done. Photos will follow.

If I do about 5 more of these, I'll get it right. I needed a planer to get the boards flat and I could have run them through the table saw to get the sides absolutely straight, but forgot to. Instead I sanded them and never got it perfect. I've been doing the urethane in the shop and that is dusty and the finish is not perfect either. I could have done it in the house, but we had a realtor come here, so I didn't want to the house to smell like solvents.

The floor shrinks when it is cold—mostly the long way. The seams open. It has been colder the last week, so I'm hoping when the temps go up, they will close.

We are waiting and waiting for the seamstress to have some cushions done. I am anxious to see them. We have been promised last week, but then it became later this week. These delays worry me.

I finally got the listings on MLS and realtor.com mostly correct. Typos, misinformation and the amount of photos have been continuing problems. The company I contracted with subcontracts to another for these listings and they don't communicate well and the subcontractor does not read the e-mails carefully. So I have to get more aggressive with each e-mail and play them off against each other. This is all childish, but it is what I have to deal with. When you consider what I hope to save on commissions, it is worth it.

The good news is that a cash buyer from N. England saw the listing and contacted a realtor. He came to see the place yesterday and spent quite a bit of time. The potential buyers have discussed flying out here to see the house and probably some other properties. This sounds too good to be true at this point and I am trying not to get excited, not all that successfully. In the meantime, I have been filling out some of the disclosures that I will have to do anyway and need to write the attachments to the counteroffer that I will be doing someday. Meanwhile, it appears prices are stabilizing in Santa Fe generally and an area we are more interested in has seen them drop even more. Sales are up, but much of that is foreclosures and short sales, so prices are even.

Gene

[Lily&Me]

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

The good news is that a cash buyer from N. England saw the listing and contacted a realtor. He came to see the place yesterday and spent quite a bit of time. The potential buyers have discussed flying out here to see the house and probably some other properties. This sounds too good to be true at this point and I am trying not to get excited, not all that successfully. In the meantime, I have been filling out some of the disclosures that I will have to do anyway and need to write the attachments to the counteroffer that I will be doing someday. Meanwhile, it appears prices are stabilizing in Santa Fe generally and an area we are more interested in has seen them drop even more. Sales are up, but much of that is foreclosures and short sales, so prices are even.

Gene

Mmmmm, sounds promising.

Fingers crossed.


Maggie

[FlashSilver]

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

.
The good news is that a cash buyer from N. England saw the listing and contacted a realtor.

Gene

Ok, this may be a stupid question, but what is a "cash buyer"? I thought all sales were settled in cash. Does this mean a buyer not requiring a mortgage backed loan, because he has saved the purchase price before making an offer? Or is there another definition? I have never heard this term used before. Some buyers want you to partially finance them by way of a second mortgage, is this a "non- cash buyer"?

[Gene]

A cash buyer is one with all the cash necessary to buy the property. No mortgage, no land sale contract, no mortgage held by seller.

A cash buyer is the best because a lot of mortgages fall through now and the seller is left holding the house they may have moved from, have it effectively off the market for a while, and then they can argue about the escrow. The rate of closings that don't happen has become much higher than usual because banks will pull out at the last minute on flimsy reasons figuring no one will sue them for breach of an agreement they made a month or two before to finance the property. As we know, banks get away with a lot and no matter what they do, the executives never seem to get arrested. This is why a cash deal is better than others even if they offer less. It is also good to have an agreement to stay on for about 10 days after closing so you can have the moving van (or friends) come after closing so you are not stuck with your stuff far away.

Gene