If I were a professional painter, my business card would read, “Neither good nor fast”. Some people are one but not the other. A few are both. I’m just not a painter.
I know, you’re all saying, “But Kristina, you said only a couple of weeks ago that you’re not going to do the painting yourself!” You said, “No, no, no, nope, not happening!”
Uh, yeah. I still plan to hire painters to do the majority of the painting. One of these days, after I’ve tamed the chaos to some extent. Meanwhile, I just need to get my kitchen good enough to at least temporarily unpack!
Here’s what happened. I have ancient (1960’s) kitchen cabinets complete with dorky “tropical” themed faux bamboo hashmarks. They’re, like, amazing (not). At least someone painted them white and they’re no longer mustard (they once were mustard, I can see it in the corners).
They remind me of a 1960’s pool party (not that I was ever at one. I’m not that old.)
I bought the house knowing full well the kitchen needed remodeled, and I am willing to overlook the cosmetic issues like faux bamboo marks. But the contact paper had to go. I tried to clean it. There’s no cleaning ancient contact paper. Contact paper is evil, it’s right up there with wallpaper. I ended up tearing it out. Problem is, it left sticky goo behind. One of the 3 different types of contact paper was foam-backed, and that one left bits of glued-on foam as well as sticky goo.
I tried to wash the drawers and shelves with wallpaper remover, but that didn’t work. We eventually gave up and realized we had a project on our hands. The shelves and drawers were going to need sanded and painted.
I really need my kitchen in working order asap, and am not ready to try to collect painting bids from contractors and wait until someone is available sometime maybe next month if we’re lucky. Plus, the pandemic is nuts right now and I don’t want anyone in my house.
Which is why we spent most of our weekend on an unplanned remodel project, and we’re still not done. John did the sanding and taping and I’m doing two coats of white paint – primer and an enamel. I’ve finished the drawers and the removable shelves, but am still working on the interior of the cabinets.
It’s annoying putting this much work into cabinets that I want to replace soon, but who knows when I’ll actually be able to fully remodel the kitchen. Meanwhile at least I’ll be rid of the contact paper mess and able to put stuff away!
John had wisely arranged to pick up the U-haul the evening before the morning we were scheduled to load. As we were about to leave to pick it up he got a text saying that the truck he had reserved would be in Rio Rancho instead of Albuquerque. He called to find out what that was about and after some careful questioning, he realized that there wasn’t a truck at all.
No U-haul truck in Albuquerque, and the replacement in Rio Rancho that they were going to give him wasn’t actually there yet either. The Rio Rancho truck they assigned us was already a day late coming in, and they had no idea, and no control, over when or whether it would show up. They were just hoping it would be in soon. There were no actual U-haul trucks available in Albuquerque or Rio Rancho. So much for having reserved a truck.
What were we going to do without a moving truck? We had movers lined up for the next morning! So John called Penske and it cost us nearly twice as much, and we had to wait an hour at the Penske shop while they cleaned it, but we got a truck. Whew!
The next morning our movers showed up on time and they were excellent. We’ve used them before for unloading, but we didn’t know how good they were at loading. A good loading job takes skill, and it makes all the difference in the world. You can get twice as much in a truck if it’s loaded tight, and your stuff is less likely to get damaged because it doesn’t shift around.
We had a huge truck, but we also had a ton of stuff. I told the movers to load the couches I got from Craigslist last, because they took up a lot of space and I hadn’t paid very much for them. I planned to abandon them if we ran out of space. Luckily, our movers got it all in, even my lumpy second-hand couches.
For my Albuquerque readers, if you every need movers in Albuquerque, use these guys, https://affmove.com/. They also deliver furniture and can get oversized items from the hardware store, etc. We discovered them when Jackalope (a furniture store in Albuquerque), recommended them a couple of years ago when I bought a heavy sideboard and needed it delivered.
Ignore the U-haul trailer in the picture, that wasn’t ours. The enormous truck was big enough, lol. The movers had the trailer with them for another job later in the day. They were smart to have picked it up early!
They spent several hours carefully loading our truck on Friday morning. We were glad they took the time to do such a good job, but it was mid-afternoon before we could get on the road. Luckily we planned to stop partway anyway. We were driving two vehicles, John driving the enormous Penske, and me following behind with the camper van.
I’m not up to driving huge vehicles late at night. My goal was to get off the freeway before dark. We didn’t quite make the goal. Nightfall found us driving down a twisty road toward a mysteriously missing state park campground. We had accidentally passed our turnoff and found ourselves at a dead end, in middle of nowhere, in the pitch black. The road just stopped. Getting both the truck and the van turned around at the end of the road in the dark was a challenge! John couldn’t see behind him at all, so I had to tell him what to do and he just had to trust me. Once we got turned around and headed the right way again, we didn’t have to backtrack very far. We found the campground and (eventually) found the site we had reserved. Whew. Glad to be done for the day.
The next morning we still had almost 5 hours of driving ahead of us. We had unloaders coming at 2:00, so we left the campground promptly at 8:00 AM, expecting to arrive in Tucson by 1:00. But what a headwind! We had alternating crosswinds and headwinds the entire drive. It was miserable.
The 26′ Penske truck has a huge profile, of course, and the van is the “tall” version, so we were both being blown around. And the truck didn’t have as much power as we would have liked. John spent most of the time with the accelerator pressed to the floor as we slowly chugged along, struggling against the wind.
We finally got to our new house, with 15 minutes to spare before the movers were due to arrive to help us unload.
One of the movers actually beat us to our house and was waiting when we arrived. But that’s the only good thing I can say about the couple of guys who unloaded for us in Tucson. They were lousy. The whole process was miserable. The winds were still gale force, rain was threatening, and I just wanted those guys out of my house and away from my stuff.
I try not to blame movers for breakage, because I figure it’s all in the packing (and I packed). But I watched this happen, and the guy was simply being sloppy and boneheaded. The container was balanced precariously on top of a bunch of other things, dropped way too far, rolled, and came open spilling its contents.
Finally, the truck was empty and the guys were off to help their next unfortunate customers.
I took solace from this welcoming flower in my new front yard. Blooming red cactus!
This other member of our welcoming committee was equally brilliantly red, but not as welcome.
The reason I was able to get a clear shot of the red hourglass on her belly is because she was hanging upside down on a wall. Yes, she was alive when I took the picture. (No, she’s not still alive.)
I shouldn’t post that picture because now you’ll never come visit me! I’ll make sure we’re spider free, don’t worry. We had black widows on the back patio when we first moved into our house in California and in Albuquerque too. It’s just part of moving to a new house in the southwest. That kind of spider doesn’t like people and won’t hang around in the yard once the house is occupied. And the pest guys can take care of them anyway.
At least our house is fairly centrally located in town, so we’re unlikely to get rattlesnakes in the yard. Last year our vacation rental in a rural area just outside Tucson had a rattlesnake in the dog run one morning. Not good!
Here’s our new home sweet home (not looking its best yet, that’s for sure)
Meanwhile, the house back in Albuquerque looks great, now that it’s not jammed full with an entire second house’s worth of stuff!
Last month we went to Taos for a few days. Has it only been a month? A lot has happened since then, but I thought you’d like to hear about the trip. We got some nice pictures. Our goal was to get into the mountains to see the fall color – in this case, yellow aspen. We do have some red maple in one or two forests in New Mexico, but for the most part our fall color is aspen in the mountains, as well as cottonwoods along the river.
We were lucky we got out to the mountains to see the aspen this year, because the fall color never got good along the river. That’s because shortly after our trip to the mountains, Albuquerque had an early hard freeze and a snowstorm only a week into October. A lot of the leaves down in the valley just went directly from green to dead.
We loved our vacation rental in Arroyo Seco, just north of Taos. The casita was walking distance from central Arroyo Seco (all block or two of it), yet still out in the country.
It was just a 1-bedroom cottage, but it was very spacious. It had a wonderful patio and lots of New Mexican charm.
Here’s the patio, very quiet and peaceful, nothing nearby.
Lots of wood and adobe details in the casita.
This quaint church was near our casita, along our walk into town.
On one of the days we drove into Taos. Here are photos from a very large Mexican furniture store we briefly went into, but we were reluctant to linger or go into any smaller shops because of covid. This was shortly before New Mexico’s covid rates started to skyrocket. After the rates got so bad, I stopped going into stores altogether. But as you can see, it wasn’t crowded (except crowded with stuff, lol).
That was a fun place to wander around in, but if you actually want to buy furniture in Taos, I recommend Antigua de Mexico Imports instead. We’ve purchased from them before, and have gotten to be friends with the owners, Gonzalo and Blanca. They import some of their furniture, but they also make a lot of their own furniture themselves and will make to your custom measurements if you want. They also have much better prices than that other store we checked out.
I was too busy buying stuff to take very many photos at Antigua. Just this chair – we bought 6 of them and Gonzalo made us a table to match.
He managed to get the table done just in time to take to Tucson with us. Everything we’ve purchased from Gonzalo we’ve taken down to Tucson.
Here’s a little side road in Taos we walked while waiting for our take-out food to be ready.
Unfortunately, the food was terrible. We didn’t even eat it, it was that bad! After that day, we decided we’d seen enough of Taos and stayed in Arroyo Seco for the rest of the weekend. Arroyo Seco has a few small galleries and a great cafe, https://solfoodnm.com/sol-food-cafe/, all within walking distance of our casita. I could eat at Sol Food every day and never get tired of them!
Here’s a Greek salad with hummus and dolmas. It would be even prettier if it wasn’t in a take-out box, lol.
Here’s a sweet little place to sit among the cosmos and hollyhocks, and a statue of the Greek God Pan, in “downtown” Arroyo Seco:
Right near there I bought earrings directly from the artist who made them. She said they represented “strength.”
I figured we could all use a little strength nowadays.
The hiking trails are closer to Arroyo Seco than Taos – just a short drive from the casita. Because I’m still low in energy, we only hiked a mile or so on the most level trail we could find, but it was still steep, and a challenge for me. We went on the same trail two different times, because I didn’t want to try anything steeper. Luckily it was beautiful both times!
It wasn’t crowded but there were enough people that we wore our masks (mandatory in New Mexico anyway). Mine is in my hand, just off for the photo. And don’t worry, John usually wears his mask right. That “fake beard” look was just for the photo, so we could see how happy he was 🙂
We went up there to see the trees and wow, we got trees!
No posts for 10 days, did you miss me? Well, you knew I was moving.
Today is Wednesday, fasting day. On one hand, I dread Wednesdays because it’s a bummer to be hungry all day. But I try to make up for it by making it an easier day for myself. I don’t have any clients (usually) on Wednesdays and I give myself a free pass to sit around and not work too hard on anything.
Although the reality today is I probably won’t manage to do a lot of sitting around this particular Wednesday. We moved on Saturday, and we’ve encountered a variety of hiccups (as moves usually do). I do not yet even have basics such as my clothes and the dishes unpacked. I’m fairly motivated to get my clothes and dishes available, so I may not do as much lazing around as I otherwise would today.
If you didn’t read why I’m fasting once a week, it’s for cancer prevention. That post is here, and the video is here.
I will tell you all about our move in the upcoming posts, but before I do that, I want to write a catch-up post about our trip to Taos over a month ago. Lots of nice pictures. Hopefully I’ll get that one posted tomorrow, then I can start on the tale of our moving adventure. More soon!
We have spent our first 24 hours at our new house in Tucson! Our first night here happened to be Halloween night, lol! I didn’t see or hear anything that sounded haunted.
Here’s the view from our back patio last night, where I intend to spend most of my time for the next several months.
Note there are trees rather than houses looking down on us from back there! Even though we’re right in town, it’s a much more private backyard than we have in Albuquerque. Nothing out there but trees!
So far we love the house, although all the work that goes into moving is a bit overwhelming. And we don’t even have our furniture yet! We have to go back later this week, load a U-haul, and drive it out this coming weekend.
We’re doing the move in two trips. First trip out, I drove the van and John drove our pick-up truck with a load of stuff. The main purpose of this first trip was to do reconnaissance, and also to get the pick-up truck out there without having to tow it.
Then this coming weekend we’re going to drive back to Albuquerque in the van together, and then back out again with the van and the U-haul. I’ll have to drive the van the entire way back to Tucson by myself again, while John drives the U-haul. We’d fly back and drive the U-haul together if it weren’t for covid. But we’re not flying. So, that means lots of driving.
I’m not really strong enough yet to do a 7-hour straight drive by myself. On the way out we stayed overnight at a state park halfway here, and we’re going to do the same thing on the way out again next weekend. The park is a little bit out of our way, but worth it to break up the trip.
It’s a bizarre place; a group of crazy big rocks out in the middle of the desert.
We’re super excited to be in Tucson, and this house has a lot of potential. Although right now it’s rundown and too blue. Blue paint everywhere! At least 5 different shades of blue in the interior plus on the wall behind the pool. As soon as we get unpacked, we’re going to start painting. If not sooner!
John thinks we can do it ourselves, slowly, but I’m saying no. No, no, no, nope, not happening. We aren’t retired! He’s still working full time, I’m working part-time and not yet recovered from cancer. We came to Tucson to take walks, ride our bikes on the bike path, and swim in the pool. I came here to get my health back. Plus, we still have all of our regular work to do! We’re not adding bunches of big do-it-ourselves house remodel projects to our already-full schedule.
As soon as we’ve picked our new beige paint colors (which I admit, might require a tad bit of exploratory painting from those mini sample cans, which yes, ok, I’m willing to do a little bit of test painting), but then, once we’re sure exactly which shades of beige – not too yellow, not too pink, not too white, not too dark – then we’re hiring a painting company!
The bathrooms and kitchen need remodeled too – especially the kitchen. It’ll be a total gut job. That is also going to be done by a professional, but not immediately. I’m going to wait until covid is over before wandering around in tile and cabinet stores trying to decide on materials. Plus, we should save up some money for it first. A project for next year!
We did enjoy doing a little bit of gardening today. I trimmed some dead palm fronds and took out some volunteer mesquite suckers. John did some watering and general clean-up.
It’s a nice front yard with a variety of healthy desert plants. The back yard though – let’s just call that a “blank slate”. Potential! LOL. There’s nothing growing back there at the moment, but soon there will be bright red bougainvillea and citrus trees and (knowing John) probably more palms. I enjoy a little bit of yard work, if it’s not too tedious or strenuous. And the weather is amazing!!! No snow here. Just a bit windy today, but quite warm.
When I was working in the front yard I met our mailman, Roger, which was fortuitous because I didn’t know how to use our mailbox! I know that sounds idiotic, but it’s a locking mailbox to prevent theft, and I couldn’t figure out how to put outgoing mail into it. He kindly showed me where to clip the outgoing mail – I would not have figured it out myself!
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