Days 38 - 44: We have a house! Holy crap!

On the morning of Labor Day Patty and David drove us to the airport YET AGAIN, and we flew up to Portland to spend four days finding a place to live.  We landed and picked up our rental and immediately went to an open house.  Cute place, but not for us.  For the next 24 hours we went to house after house after apartment and almost got into a couple of fights about navigation and ate some really good Thai food in the Alberta Arts District and then FINALLY at 4pm on Tuesday we saw the house wanted.  It was available for rent right away, close to a grocery store, close to the train and multiple buses, quiet street, great rent and best of all A HOUSE!  Not an apartment!  With a yard where the dog can sun herself and we can plant a garden.  A GARDEN!!  Im going to have herbs!  And lavender!

And a mature lilac off the front porch, a mature laurel and big beautiful fig tree in the back yard.

FIGS!  You're all getting fig jam for Christmas.  So now we have an address!  And lots of space for you to come and see us!  We'll have a guest room, and John will have a separate office and I'll get to have a work room for sewing and projects.  The interior needs work.  A lot of it.  Horrible carpet that has to come up right away, and wallpaper in the kitchen and dining room that'll have to come off, too.  We have permission from the landlord to do whatever we want to, since anything we do will raise the property value.  But it has four bedrooms, one bathroom and a basement.  And the rent is less than what we paid in Chicago.

SO EXCITED!  I'm going to start ripping out the carpet in the upstairs as soon as we get there.  Then once we figure out what we have underneath that, we'll decide where to go from there.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!  Melanie, if you're reading, call me!  I'm going to need advice on what to do, especially if the wood underneath ends up being painted, which is what I suspect.  I'm thinking of Flor tiles, modular carpet tiles that you can put in wall to wall, or area rug style.  No padding, doesn't stick to the existing floor, and when you move, you either take them with you, or send them back to Flor for recycling.  Neato.  And really cheap.

Our application was approved by our curmudgeonly yet kind of sweet landlord and we spent a couple of days exploring the new neighborhood.  We came back to Denver on Friday, and tomorrow we'll pick up the new Behemoth, load up and drive the first leg to Salt Lake City.  45 days after leaving Chicago.  I'll be posting some photos from the road, and we'll stop for a night with John's aunt and uncle near Eugene, and oh my sweet lord, we live in Portland.