It has now been six weeks since we gained access to our new to us home in Radford, Virginia. We finally moved in about two weeks ago after the movers brought some furniture from the storage unit. In between and most everyday, we spend our time cleaning, painting, and making upgrades. And all this work is after we have spent the last three plus years on the vacation of a lifetime. We have been blessed. But, we decided it was time for a change, so buying a home base and travel part time seemed right. Today’s blog will provide a quick summary of our new home updates at the Virginia Command Center.
Pat and I now have access to our new home! We closed on the house on August 3rd, but allowed the sellers to remain until September 3rd to be able to sort, pack and move all of their possessions. Now with full ability to spend some time and inspect everything in more detail we have several short term and some more longer term home improvement plans.
Overall Plan with Rough Timing
We both really love this large old home. So many possibilities. The house is really in good shape but needs a few updates and some TLC. Here is a high level plan for the next few months:
Basement
I have always loved having a full basement. Space to do all the hobbies and entertainment plus extra storage. Although, I am committed to downsizing our clutter even further that we did almost four years ago now. And not building it back up either.
There are five rooms in the large full basement. We had some thought of opening up some more space by taking down an interior wall, but decided to try the current footprint to accommodate our hobbies and for storage.
Paint everything – They currently had old 70’s paneling in some rooms and wallpaper in others. So it is down with the wallpaper and painting everything. We bought a huge inventory of Sherwin Williams paint when it was on sale. We are doing all of this ourselves. It is tiring work but well within my skill level. Most of the painting will be done by the time the flooring is installed.
A good start on our paint buying.
New luxury vinyl plank flooring – The old floor covering was some very old and worn carpet. The new vinyl plank flooring is an amazing product. Lasts for a millennium (ok, only 50 year warranty), 100% waterproof, and can withstand tremendous weight. It is the 20 mil commercial grade as opposed to the 12 mil type from Lowes. And looks like a beautiful natural hardwood. Having the installation done and glad that we are. The tear out and floor prep are some rough work.
Working with a local Christiansburg flooring store (Floored) we chose a product made by Calivinyl called “classic acacia.” It has a warm wood tone and shows a nice wood grain pattern. The installation is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 30th.
Lighting – The current in ceiling florescent lights are not too bad with some new bulbs, but I plan to add several LED can lights as well to brighten some of the darker corners.
Pool Table – The billiards guy will load all the parts and pieces from the storage unit and bring them here for installation in the basement. The slate top is in three sections and when assembled and set up, you can’t tell that it is not one piece.
Main Level
Kitchen – The current kitchen is very nice with cabinetry custom made by a local company (Normans). It is also dated as it was installed in 1989. The counter tops are the blue formica that was popular at that time.
We are having three quotes performed for the kitchen remodeling. Will have to see how much of a dent the quotes put in our budget. This will be the first time that we have had major kitchen updates in all of the homes that we have owned, except for the flip house in Indiana. Might as well get what we want now to enjoy for several years to come (I hope).
Hardwood Floors – I have been cleaning and shining the hardwood floors with a product called Bona. A microfiber mop with a cleaner and shine liquid solutions. A couple of rooms may require refinishing at some point.
More Painting
Many of the main level rooms have some fresh paint, so we do not have to go through every room like the basement. But a few rooms do still have the dreaded 70’s wallpaper. That is time consuming and tiring to remove.
Some other rooms have a color that we may want to change as well. I hope to be able to attack the garage/workshop this fall too, but will focus on the house first.
Movers/Storage Unit
The movers are scheduled for Oct. 5th to bring over our larger pieces of furniture from the storage unit. After that is finished, Pat and I will make several more trips bringing smaller items over to finally empty the unit. The end of that era! I am glad that we paid a little more to have a very clean, heated and air conditioned unit. All of our stuff was in good condition, except for being dusty.
Pool
The prior owners had installed a very large 10,000 above ground pool. It even has a heat pump to keep a pleasantly warm temp. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be in our long term plans. There is a decent amount of daily work when it is open during the summer months and we plan to take some RV trips over the summer.
Ross and Audrey enjoying a warm early Sept day. Audrey’s boyfriend Jeremy is not pictured.
So, will decide in the spring whether to sell it or not. We did swim a few times before closing it for the winter last weekend. It is now winterized and covered.
Furniture
The last several weeks have also been busy visiting several furniture places. We sold or gave away most of our old furniture and are using our old bedroom pieces for a guest room.
It was some period of sticker shock adjustment to realize how expensive the really good furniture is these days. In years past, we bought the more reasonable (cheap) stuff as we had kids still on the loose and I was more focused on the savings accumulation years.
These new purchases may be the last major furniture buys before we are off to the senior care facility. Might as well go with some decent stuff. For the living/home theater room, we finally chose a sofa and love seat made by Flexsteel. Pretty cool stuff as it has all kinds of features like motorized adjustable headrest, lumbar, and footrest. With a 10 year warranty on the leather and mechanical parts.
The bedroom furniture selected is an Amish made set from Ohio. They have a three month lead time to custom make all the pieces. We decided on this after seeing how poorly made some of the other competition makes their furniture. It should arrive sometime around Thanksgiving. Pat decided on the Rustic Cherry wood and finish. A darker, red wood in a classic style. We purchased from Vernon at Dutch Boy Furniture in Wytheville, Va.
This is the bedroom set that was on the floor as display. Ours will be very similar with a few options added plus it will be a king sized bed..
The new mattress is coming from a company called WinkBed. The custom make each mattress, roll it up, and ship it to you in a big box. I think it was a 150 pound box. Will be interesting getting it inside, but I have a 2-wheel utility cart.
Wrap Up
It has been a busy few weeks after six months of a combination shelter in place in Florida, relocating north to Virginia, and then waiting to get possession. We still have many things to do before a possible winter trip to Florida. It should be fun!
Our RV site at Fort Chiswell.
We met another RVer couple and they are both ham radio operators as well. Their motorhome is parked two sites down from us so I reached out and invited them to a 4pm happy hour outside in our small RV yard. Hank and Selene have been full time RVers for over 10 years and continue to enjoy the combination of RV travel plus enjoying making radio contacts with their friends. Safe travels to our new friends.
More detailed pictures in the next update as we begin making some major changes to the place.
One of our few times back out enjoying things we used to not think twice about! Our current temporary residence at the Fort Chiswell RV park is near Wytheville Virginia and home to a German themed dinner theater that we used to attend occasionally. After a chat with the manager, it seemed they were operating in a Covid safe manner. While we were waiting to gain possession to our new home, we decided to buy tickets to this small venue, the Wytheville Wohlfahrt Haus Dinner Theater.
Final Days as Full-Timers – Our incredible last three years as full-time RVers is quickly coming to an end! We are now in the few final days to obtain possession of our home in Radford, Virginia. At some point, I will need to write a post about the highlights of our travels. That post will be very difficult since we have seen so much. Kind of like determining your favorite kid. Anyway, that is for another day.
It seems like it has been a long time since my last blog update – and it has been! There have been many activities and achievements and there has also been some long periods of not much of anything. This update will try to summarize all the main events of the last month. At the top of the list is we now have a new (to us) home to use as our home base for continued RV travels. Plus some other stuff to include as well.
A Drive on the Parkway – We finally decided to take a day off from doing very little. It can be exhausting, let me tell you. Our activities have been either been related to finding a house to purchase or relaxing at the base camp in Southwest Virginia. Staying close to home has kept us safe from the Virus, but it does get extremely boring. So today, we drove the 30 minutes south to the very small town of Fancy Gap, Virginia and then drove a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
It has been a very fast two weeks since we arrived to the southwest Virginia area that was our home for over twenty years. We retired just over three years ago and have since been on the road traveling all over the US. Until the pandemic arrived and then we sat it out like most others until we got the green light and good to go note. Well, here is a quick update on our activities upon arriving in Virginia to start the house hunting process!
Before we left our Florida safe sanctuary, I got all the painting supplies out for a few new efforts. While I’m never sure of the merits of the artwork, I certainly enjoy taking a few hours to create something. Similar to my other hobbies of woodwork or wood carving. They don’t all work out the best but the process is quite enjoyable. Hope you like them…
The day finally arrived for us to pack up, pull in the slides and get back to what we bought the RV for: travel. It has been over eight months since we came to Florida for the winter. And now we are into the heat and humidity of a Florida summer that takes a hardy soul to survive. Our plan is to take a few stops and be back to Virginia in a week.
While we are waiting a few more days to begin our northbound ascent, we are well into the Florida hurricane season. It officially began on June 1st, so I was curious about the timing of most of these powerful storms and whatever other facts I could find about hurricanes and Florida’s history with them.
