So, we finally did it. We put the house up for sale. It has been a long hard push to get to this point but that milestone has finally been reached.
We needed to re-side the house before putting it up for sale. We did the work ourselves and it took most of the summer. We knew it was going to be a lot of work and it was. The siding wasn’t in bad shape but it just didn’t have the look expected for a lake house in Northern Michigan. So we stripped off the mortar-less brick and put up lap siding on the main part of the house and shakes on the gables. Here are some before and after pictures. We think it turned out pretty well.
There were many days where we had to force ourselves to work on it because there were so many other things we’d rather be doing. It used up our entire summer which is a big deal for us. I’m sure when we look back on it in a few years it will seem worth it but giving up a summer to something you don’t like doing is hard. Kind of like sitting in some boring meeting at work when it’s a beautiful summer day outside. It was also hard because I didn’t get to do much photography and as a result hardly any blog posts. We were pretty much single focused on getting that job done and doing good work.
We’ve also continued to sell off our stuff. Mainly big items but also some small ones. I was pretty deep into large format film photography and had an extensive darkroom. I’ve sold off most of the darkroom equipment and all the film cameras and lenses. I had 8×10 and 4×5 view cameras and lenses, a full Bronica 6×7 medium format kit, and several 35mm film cameras. It was a lot of stuff. All gone. We’re planning for a big garage sale soon and hope to get rid of a lot of the smaller items. As I mentioned in the post “Stuff, Maintenance and Alaska“, we have a lot of stuff to get rid of. We’re still at it and it takes time to accomplish. A big one though is the house and at least it’s on the market now. Not sure how long it will take to sell so that makes planning for a launch date for hitting the road a little more dynamic but physically and mentally it’s a big milestone.
One. Step. Closer.
