Welcome to the Condo

June 2011

Time to close the loop on the townhouse sale and move to the condo.

After we accepted the offer on the townhouse on 22 April, our minds immediately turned to the next step — finding a place to live for the next 19 months.  Our preference would have been for a small house with a long enough driveway to park the Phaeton.  We knew that was a pipe dream though; especially since we had one major criteria for our temporary home — the commute to work had to be equal to or better than our commute from the townhouse.  So, we turned our attention to apartments and condos instead.

Finding a place didn’t take us long — just a week.  Some might wonder why we rushed into signing a lease.  After all, we had all of May before we closed on the sale.  We wanted a reasonably priced place, with at least two bedrooms (one bedroom and one den would have worked), assigned parking, storage — and the deal breaker: it had to be on the top floor.  We absolutely did not want anyone living above of us.  When we found the place that met all of our requirements, we jumped on it.

We’re on the third floor at the far end of and on the backside of this building.

OK, so if you counted the number of floors in the pictured building, you know that there are four not three floors.  What happened to our requirement to be on the top floor?  Nothing.  You see, the condo is a duplex with the main living space on the third floor and the bedrooms on the fourth floor.

This is the side of the building we’re on; corner unit on floors three and four.
the small balcony is a bonus we weren’t expecting to find in a rental.

Secure, underground parking with two assigned spots comes with the condo.
no more snow shoveling to clear the driveway!

We’ve never had the luxury of extra time to move from one place to another.  Always before, the transfer happened right around closing.  With a month on our hands on this occasion, we took our time.  After our cleaning lady did a deep-clean, we started to take the small stuff over to the new place.  Whatever we took to the condo was immediately unpacked and put away to reduce the number of boxes that would be laying around once the movers brought the furniture and heavy boxes.

Main Floor — Kitchen and Living / Dining Rooms

Master Suite

Guest Bedroom / Study

The distance from the door of our condo to the elevators is 98 steps (the pedometer did the counting).  That’s a lot of steps going back and forth when you’re moving!  But we did it.  And we achieved our goal of having everything unpacked and in its place by the end of the month.

Is the place perfect?  No, but we try not to notice the askew column in the living room, or the other construction details that would not be acceptable were we buying the place.  I’m going to miss having color on the walls, but I can live with the contractor egg-shell blahness knowing that we won’t be here forever.  It is all temporary.  In the living room, we have two too many pieces of furniture, but it beats having to rent off-premises space to store some of the pieces we’re keeping for our “after we’re done being on the road” home.  I’m not one to place furniture around the edges of a room and leave the center empty, but that’s what I ended up doing in the guest room; so be it, at least all the computer cords and cables are hidden from view (and the layout gives me space to do my ironing).

Main Floor — Kitchen and Living / Dining Rooms

Master Suite

Guest Bedroom / Study
(note the sofa — we took one of the two sofas out from the phaeton;
a story for another time and blog post.)

Laundry Room and Upstairs Foyer

So what about the storage requirement we had for our new place.  The condo came with a separate storage room located near the elevator on the third floor.  Mui quickly filled it up with his tools and gadgets.  But fear not, we found plenty of space around the condo for the rest of the stuff.  It pays to be creative (wink, wink)!

We’ve never been “tub people.”  So, Mui built a heavy duty platform over the tub in the master en suite, put up a few posts, and voila.  Hidden behind the shower curtain, no one’s the wiser to how we re-purposed the area.

We also found space in the over-sized powder room.  We put foot-wide shelves in the 13-inch (33 cm) deep niche that runs along one wall, hung a couple of shower curtains, and voila — the perfect place to store paper towels, extra TP, cleaning supplies, and the vacuum cleaner.

Now you see it; Now you don’t!

All settled into the condo, we're ready to make it our home as we continue the countdown to retirement.

X-Stitch: Swans a-Swimming

When I look at this cross stitch project, I almost always start singing the Twelve Days of Christmas …

On the seventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.

OK … OK, I know there are only two Swans a-Swimming in this piece, but what can I say — my mind has a mind of its own.

This was one of my earliest projects. It was also the one that took the longest to complete. Not because it was an overly difficult pattern, but because I got bored with the repetitive nature of the leaf trim. Finally, in 2009, I found the kit tucked into the corner of a drawer and decided to just get it over and done with. I buckled down and in less than a week I was taking the finished work to the local crafts store to get it framed.

The colors of this piece would actually work great in the kitchen/dining area of the condo, but alas there is no wall space big enough there. Since the rest of the walls are filled with other projects, this one has been wrapped and placed in storage for now.

Those little butterflies in the corner — they’re my addition to the pattern. Somehow a few small stains had developed on the fabric (probably from being stuck in a plastic bag with some colorful floss). It was either find a way to cover the spots, or toss out the completed project. I think they worked out nicely with the swans and lilies.