House in Prineville

The last time we went shopping for a house we spent three years and five failed attempts before we finally bought our beautiful Craftsman house in Portland. So, this time, I decided I would not write much about our house shopping efforts because it so often went sideways in the offer or escrow period.

We are buying a simple little rancher house in Prineville, Oregon. The inspection was Friday and there were no surprises, so there is very little to stand in the way of close at this point. I have to admit, I'm a little freaked out because we're buying the new little house before we sell our beautiful big house in Portland, but I simply can't deal with moving into storage and living out of luggage while we find another. So, we're taking the leap of faith that it will work out. I guess we shall see.

Historic houses in Prineville were pretty much nonexistent, but, in reality, I didn't really look for them. I decided I didn't want a really old house because I am slavish to the details of "getting it right" in my remodels and decorating. By buying a newer house, we don't have to spend anything upgrading the plumbing, electrical and other systems and are free to do what we like without feeling guilty about messing it up. (But since I love the Craftsman style, our work with be heavily influenced by it.)

Why Prineville? Well, we have a good friend who lives there and it is significantly cheaper to live there. It's rather hotter there than Portland but, in truth, we spend most of our time indoors and we'll be fine with air conditioning.

I will do another post with interior photos. The Frankenstein kitchen counter is pretty funny. As usual, we do have plans to do some remodeling, though we have a strict budget and we'll have less grand interiors than we have now.

I know I will be sad to leave our big, beautiful house in Portland, but when we bought it we planned to both be working full-time and expected to be more financially able to afford Portland, but we've since realized that's no longer our plan. If we stay in Portland, there's a good chance we'll outlive our retirement assets. I'm hoping by cutting our cost of living to something less than half the present cost will extend the time.

I expect our Portland projects to kick into high gear later this year. The current plan is to get the house onto the market next spring. That gives us the winter to get rid of roughly half our stuff. I really should get started now, but I think I'm still in denial.

Considering a Move

Jeff and I love our beautifully restored home. We do not, however, love Portland anymore. I wish we could pick up our house and put it someplace else, but that's not possible. Ever since our last property tax bill, we've been contemplating a move.

This week we've started poking around property listings in a few different cities. We're still pretty casual in our efforts. We don't know if or when we'll move, but we've started exploring our options.

On Saturday, we drove down and visited Sandy, Oregon. It's a small town not far outside of Portland. It was a nice little town with some cute Western-themed facades along their main business route. I wish I'd remembered to bring a camera. Here are a couple of photos I swiped from a google search.

We looked at one teardown house. The lot would be perfect to build on, but the owners want way too much money for the disgusting little shack.  We liked Sandy, but I'm not sure if we can deal with 80-inches of rain a year. LOL

We're also planning to look at Springfield and Prineville, Oregon.

If we find the right house, or the right lot to build on, we might just make the jump.

2nd Lap Quilt Finished

And now the other lap quilt is done. It took about two hours to from start to finish to cut out and sew on the binding. I doubt I'll hand sew another binding now that I've learned this process.

Lap Quilt Finished

Denise and I picked up the finished quilts earlier this week. We were quite happy with how the quilter finished them. Today, I finally got around to finishing the binding on the tool lap quilt.

I spent a few hours earlier this week watching videos about how to properly sew on machine bindings with all machine sewing, and now that I've successfully done it, I'm a fan. (The secret I was missing is start by sewing the binding on the backside then fold it forward and sew it down along the edge. It's very tidy.) I doubt I'll hand-sew too many more bindings.

It's quilted with a fun repeating tool pattern:

I've still got to add the binding to Jeff's space quilt.

I also dropped off my father's train lap quilt. It should be finished in a week or two.

The Next Quilt Project

I'm not really planning to turn this into a quilt blog, but this is just what I feel like doing right now. Since the weather is changing, I'm sure we'll get back into house projects pretty soon. I'd really like to finish the interior of the garden shed soon.

No sooner did I make a plan for a new quilt, then I realized I didn't have enough fabric for it and I originally bought that fabric way back in 2011 so it's discontinued. I can't buy more. Then I started playing with different blocks in Electric Quilt and made a few options. This was Jeff's favorite.

And, because I can, here are the rotary cutting instructions for making this block.

I won't be using the last batch of fabric as there still isn't enough. I'd really like to make it out of batiks, but I don't have enough of them either. I almost bought batiks until I filled up the cart and it was over $150. Then it will likely be about $150 to get it quilted. I really cannot spend $300+ on another quilt, so I'm going to see if I can find enough fabrics that are basically the same color so I can use several smaller pieces. I need to paw through my collection and see what I can come up with.

Update later. Here are the final fabrics. I did end up buying more of a couple of colors, because I didn't have 3 yards.

Another Lap Quilt Finished

I just finished another lap quilt. Excuse the bad photo; I'll take a better picture after I finish the binding.

This is a train quilt for my father, who is a huge fan of trains. He frequently takes train vacations. I had this marvelous train fabric but the trains were so large they wouldn't have worked well cut into small pieces so I used this pattern from my favorite quilt pattern book, 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts. When I realized the pattern was called The Railroad, it seemed like it was fate.

Quilting Binge

I've spent most of this month working on quilt projects. Jeff, as usual, has been keeping busy with his volunteer work.

I helped my friend Denise finish her king-size trailer quilt. Sadly, neither of us managed to take a picture of the finished quilt and it's already been dropped off at the machine quilter, so it will be another couple of weeks before we can show off the result of our hard work.

This is one of the in-progress photos of the squares laid out on a bed:

I also finished another lap quilt for a gaming friend who is a contractor. It's also been dropped off for machine quilting. (Yeah, these are the same pattern. LOL)

I've actually got a couple more quilts that I'd like to finish before the end of the month before I move onto outdoor activities.