Chasing Sales

When we took off to full-time RV, we put absolutely nothing in storage. We don’t regret that decision because, at the time, we had no way of knowing what our post-RV life was going to look like, and much of our stuff was aging out, just as we planned for it to do. Since we ended up, for all intents and purposes, where we started, we’ve often found ourselves saying, “Maaaaan, we had that!” And so it goes as we re-enter the sticks and bricks life. And so it also goes that we’ve been consumed with All Things House these past few weeks, and zero hiking has occurred. You read that right. I said zero, nada, none. That’ll put the “vent” in your adventure, eh? We did start running again, but that doesn’t produce the stunning photos and trail tales I’d rather blog about. It’s far less time-consuming and much easier to fit in between TBG’s marathon work sessions at the house and mine online, though. I’m going to tell you all about every bit of it in this post in wholly random order, while trying to break up all the blah-blah (if you view it as such, and how dare you) with a combination of illustrative and completely unrelated photos. It’ll be exactly like our lives at present!

It can be hard to get started on a chilly morning, but we’re never sorry to get out for a run.

Remember when I told you about the local Sears outlet that was closing? And remember several posts ago when I went over how we chose our new refrigerator? Good. Now, I’ll tell you about another staggering deal at the Sears before they closed for good that decided which washer/dryer we were getting. We’d been waffling over top vs. front loaders, the tops being hard for a shorty like me to reach into (lest we forget my painful rolled rib incident in a Georgia camp laundry,) the fronts generally not as long-lived but more easily accessible. Agitators get clothes cleaner, but tear them up more quickly. Fronts have notoriously long cycles, some feel they don’t use enough water to clean properly, but they are very easy on fabrics. Either style comes in large-capacity, and when one of you is a giant, that’s important. They all come with a tremendous number of features, the Wi-Fi ones being the most puzzling to me. I can use my phone to control my appliances? Stop it. Why? Why would I ever want to do that? As I researched machines, this troubled me immensely because I thought surely there must be good reasons for it that I was just too techno-old to understand. Let me save you time: There aren’t.

As we contemplated our laundry room configuration, we talked about custom-building a platform for front-loaders, and I remembered seeing a bunch of pedestals at the Sears. We had front-loaders before, but I never felt the need for the exorbitantly-priced pedestal drawers. Even so, we thought it prudent to check out the pile of them at the Sears, since we’re older and less bendy now. We came away with a monster deal on this:

It’s called an LG Sidekick, and, as you can see, it’s a pedestal with a built-in mini-washer. Now, you may be asking yourselves, why would someone who just mocked frivolous gadgetry get something like this? And I will defend myself by saying that the close-out deal we got made it cheaper than even a regular pedestal drawer, and the reviews on these are surprisingly good. Plus, look how fun that little thing promises to be! It can be used alone or at the same time you’re running the main washer. If it craps out, it won’t take the main washer with it, and it will still be a functioning pedestal (with a storage drawer that looks suspiciously like a miniature washer.) This purchase limited us to which brand of washer we could get, those being either Kenmore Elite, made by LG and not widely available anymore if at all or, duh, LG. “Maaaaan, we had that!” They’ve been updated a bit since we got our first set (Wi-Fi and Turbowash, y’all!) but essentially, we’ll have what we had. A completely cosmetic update is the flat door fronts rather than the dust-trap recessed doors of yore, and TBG will build a pedestal for the dryer to even things out. Or maybe we’ll find the height discrepancy quirky and leave them that way.

TBG is a Master Craigslister, and we’ve made several purchases in that realm. We’ve gotten a shop vac, assorted garden tools, a cool wooden folding table, and for the jaw-dropping best deal of the century, a like-new king-sized Sleep Number bed for 1/4 of the price of a brand new one. If you don’t know what those beds go for, I can tell you, it literally saved us thousands. We know we’ll like it because “Maaaaan, we had that!” Now I’m stuck in the bed linens vortex, but that’s a tale for another day, perhaps Black Friday.

Much to my delight, and that of the fruit flies I’m now raising in the RV, we also got this:

A big-ass composter! Oh, how I have hated throwing out so much compostable stuff these last four years. The pic on the left shows it before I scraped off the rust on the aerator bars, then on the right, refurbished with Rustoleum. I will have a nice jump on my own potting mix come Spring. And you guessed it, “Maaaaan, we had that!”

One day, I took a break of sorts, and went on a little thrift-store outing. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how I’m going to display my little painted gourds, or if I’m even going to display them at all. I considered a basket I saw, then dismissed it, then got out of the checkout line to go back and get it. I’m so glad I did.

Here it is with ALL the gourds — perfect!

Besides missing the ability to compost, I have sorely missed magazines ever since most of them became online entities. In what we thought would be a little splurge, we subscribed to Sunset magazine, one that’s still available in traditional glossy form, and one we’ve always enjoyed. Turns out, they were having a 60% off deal, and it came with the full online version of their Western Garden Book, the quintessential guide to gardening in the West. Yes, of course, I had that book before, and I used to read it like a novel. I would’ve rather had a paper copy of it, but free was hard to beat. Then, on another thrift outing, TBG found me all of these:

for $11 total, a whole Sunset garden library!

About every week, we call one of the places from which we’ve ordered the appliances and push back the delivery date. Sometimes, we call to have the price adjusted if the item goes on sale while we’re waiting. Mostly TBG handles that part of things because I go stark raving mad if I have to spend hours on the phone, haggling over prices. That’s not an exaggeration — he has occasionally spent hours on the phone doing just that. I go in the other room and turn up the radio because I can’t even stand to listen to that sort of process, and I am grateful he can stomach it. I’ll do it if I have to, though, like I recently did with the dishwasher. The original store wouldn’t adjust their own sale price, and after confirming they didn’t mind losing the sale, I canceled and ordered from their competitor. [too bad for you, Lowe’s!] Speaking of that particular appliance, let me introduce you to our dishwasher.

I’m sorry if this is getting tiring, but it’s another “Maaaaan, we had that!” purchase. This time, though, it’s because we had this same appliance before and adored it. Why? At 38 dBA, it’s the quietest out there. Both racks glide like butter, and it was now available without KitchenAid’s signature ginormous industrial handlebar. I’m not thrilled with the visibility of the controls, but our previous one had them on the top of the door. That was visually pleasing, but completely obscured them when in use, and you had to choose your cycle then close the door within a few seconds, which was panic-inducing. I’m also not sure what color its little lights are, and it may seem like a piddling detail, but it irritates me that each kitchen appliance has lights and clocks and beeps and boops and all of them are different.

We try to take breathers, and the above shots were gotten on an afternoon driving expedition to three local bird hotspots. We determined that even during the cold, rainy season, we will load up a thermos or two and repeat this cozy, calming activity.

I spent a seriously stupid amount of time getting window shades chosen and ordered so that we could take advantage of a Costco Bali sale. Here’s an A-to-Z guide if you ever need to attempt this yourself.

• A) measure windows
• B) compare prices from four other companies
• C) order 15 swatches from Bali
• D) reject 90% of the swatches on arrival
• E) take swatches to house & hold them up to the walls, floors, tiles
• F) burn your retinas holding them up to the sun trying to see how light-blocking they are
• G) make your choice
• H) change your mind
• I) order swatches from another company
• J) fall in love with a color you chose on a lark called Pumpkin Spice
• K) be sad because they don’t come in the style you want
• L) remember The Home Depot sells Bali
• M) go there with sample to color match
• N) dance a jig right there in the warehouse when you find one
• O) rush home and start the order process
• P) realize you need more measurements
• Q) go back to house and get them
• R) continue the order process, only to discover you need even more measurements
• S) and another trip to The Depot
• T) resume order
• U) resist the urge to throw the laptop against the wall when your internet connection keeps crashing
• V) lose sleep
• W) wait on hold for roughtly 1.5 million hours when you call the company with questions
• X) try online chat while you’re on hold with about as much success as anything that never worked
• Y) curl into a blubbering ball when you find out one of your choices is not available on the Costco deal
• Z) pull yourself together and go all-in with your second choice, a much bolder, much riskier one because you’re tired and stressed and for cryin’ out sakes, you can’t keep measuring and choosing and choosing and measuring, and it’s going to look a-fricking-mazing. Done.

Relax. They’re only shades.

The front door finally arrived. It gets a clear coat which will enhance the deep mahogany wood color, and the sidelight glass, obviously, still needs to be installed. The interior doors and trim are all painted!

Say, what’s this?

Why, it’s a wall oven! You’ll probably all be even happier than I will when this puppy is operational, and you don’t have to listen to me whine about not having an oven for over a year and a half. When that day comes, the front will look like this, and it goes in that taller cabinet, where its height is customized to my height.

At first, I was looking at convection micro/wall oven combos. It quickly became apparent through dozens of reviews, that having an all-in-one unit wasn’t a wise idea because the convection feature on microwaves, as we are painfully aware, is notorious for failing. When it’s half of a combo, it takes the oven with it, whether the oven deserves it or not. We ended up choosing a Fisher & Paykel, not only for its excellent reputation, but because both its racks glided like pure silk. Most others are made with one rack that’s smooth-gliding and one that’s like any other oven where you have to lift and wrangle with it. The F&P is a true convection, a feature I really liked on my previous oven (I was an air-fryer before air-frying was cool) and it has a sleek, simple design. (Ignore the handle, no oven comes without one.) I would have loved a french door oven because it eliminates reaching over a hot oven door, but we couldn’t find an electric one we liked. That makes the smooth rack operation even more important.The microwave, which is just a microwave not also a convection cooker, is a brand called Galanz. I’d never heard of it, but it gets rave reviews, wasn’t overly expensive, has the right capacty per TBG, and it looks like it’s made to match the F&P. It’s a countertop model that gets its own custom cubby above the oven. It also has a push-button open, a must-have for me, because, after years in an RV, I am very much over having to yank things open. It is the only appliance we ordered without laying hands on it in person.

I hope to brighten our field eventually with wildfowers like these that light up a local garden.

When we were still in the blueprint stages, we were thinking we’d have a gas cooktop, even though it would mean we’d need some sort of external propane tank, the thought of which I loathed. Then I stumbled on induction, and we never looked back. Induction is far from new, but it never really caught on to the mainstream. It’s becoming more popular recently, though, and for good reasons. I could tell you to search induction to find out those reasons, but you’re already here, so I’ll tell you. Cons: 1) You need the right cookware. Induction works through magnetism, and not all pans will be compatible. 2) There can be a buzz or hum while in use at higher heat settings and possibly some electronic clicks at lower temps. 3) The magnets can mess with digital thermometers. 4) It’s more expensive than regular electric ranges. Pros: 1) They’re more efficient than gas or standard electric. 2) Safety = If you turn on an induction burner with no pot on it, it won’t get hot, and when you take a hot pot off it, the burner won’t be hot then, either. 3) It cooks faster than gas or electric. 4) It cooks more precisely and evenly than the other two. 5) It’s always easy to clean and especially while cooking since you don’t have to wait for the surface to cool before wiping up any spills or splatters, and my personal favorite Pro of the model we chose = no big stinkin’ knobs!

I was able to attend another event with the Sequim Botanical Society at which we dug and divided many of the garden’s dahlias. The season was long and productive this year, and I’ll go back in another week or so after the first frost to help dig the rest. Of course, helpers are rewarded with tubers for their own gardens and bouquets for their tables.

We, TBG much more than me, have been hard at work making the countertops, and that whole process will be a post unto itself, quite possibly the next one. I’m sorry in more ways than one that it probably won’t have any hiking or much outdoorsy stuff at all. Then again, maybe we’ll get those counters done and go crazy out there.

Not everyone is eager for us to move along.