Farewelling the Past

May 4, 2013
by Rodney Olsen
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demolition

As I was cycling to work yesterday morning I rode past an older home that I’ve passed many times over the last few years. It had recently had a for sale sign in the front yard and eventually that sign had big sold sticker placed across it. Yesterday morning it had a wire fence across the width of the property. Sitting quietly behind the fence was a large excavator.

All was quiet at the house but I knew that the peacefulness wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later workers would arrive and that house would flattened.

Sure enough, on my way home the excavator was pushing rubble around. The house was demolished. No walls or structure, just splintered and broken building materials.

I wonder what stories those piles of bricks could tell.

I wonder how many families grew up there and where they are now. Were the rooms in those houses full of laughter? There must have been good and bad times, smiles and tears. Now there are just memories amongst the broken fragments of what had once been a home and I’m sure that within a few days even the remaining rubble will be gone.

I’m sure that over the coming months a brand new building will rise on that piece of land and that new house will bring good and bad times of its own but it’s good to reflect on what has been before we move forward towards what is still to come.

Around thirty four years ago I left the only home I’d ever known when my parents sold the house where I’d grown up.

I haven’t visited that old road for a while but last time I did it the old house was still there. It’s in a bad state of disrepair and it really should be demolished too. It’s an old asbestos house. No one’s ever going to renovate it so it’s really a matter of time until it’s gone. Although I haven’t set foot inside it for decades and the fact that it hasn’t been my home for most of my life, I’ll still be a little sad when it’s finally pulled down.

What sorts of stories could your home tell?

Would they be mostly happy stories? Can you remember the home where you grew up? Does it bring good or bad memories to mind?



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Ding Dong

May 24, 2010
by Rodney Olsen
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Yesterday afternoon I installed a device that will allow me to hear my music at a louder volume when I’m at home. I don’t want to blast my ears but I do enjoy listening to music at a reasonable level.

Our stereo has always had the capacity to play at the right volume but there’s been a problem. The living area of the home we bought last year is towards the back of the house so if the music reaches a certain level we can’t hear anyone knocking on the front door. We don’t have a lot of people dropping in but I don’t want to miss hearing anyone who might be trying to grab our attention.

Yesterday I finally got around to putting a button for the door bell next to the front door. With the drilling and the fastening done everything’s as it should be. (There was a doorbell in place when we first moved in but it stopped working after a short while.)

The doorbell’s chime is quite loud, and at the back of the house, so I can now enjoy my music without the fear of missing any visitors. Now we just have to wait for someone to come along and press the button.



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Home Sweet Sweet Home

August 10, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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I haven’t been around here for a while. I’m sure that you figured out that it’s nothing you said or did, it’s more the fact that we’ve been moving house.

We are now proud co-owners, with the bank, of our lovely new home. Well, it’s new to us. It’s actually an eight year old home but it’s so much nicer than the home we sold. And the best part? It already feels like home. In fact, it felt like home almost as soon as we got here last Wednesday.

We are surrounded by boxes and our days have been filled with wondering what goes best where. We’ve also had a few friends and family members dropping in to see our new place. The busyness is sure to continue for quite a while. I had last week off work to help make the move happen and this week off work to try and get things in some kind of order. We’re discovering all the things that don’t quite suit our style of living and making plans to make the minor changes required to have it even more feel like ‘our place’.

The new home is within walking distance to the school that Emily and James are attending. Up until now, Pauline had been driving around 130 km a day to drop them off in the morning then to go back and pick them up in the afternoon. We had planned this move last year and so Emily and James started at their new school in February, at the beginning of the new school year. We had imagined that Pauline might have a few weeks of driving that distance. We never imagined that it would be over half a year.

It’s so very good to finally be here and settling in.

I certainly couldn’t write this post without acknowledging the fact that so many people helped make this happen. I won’t start mentioning names because I’m sure to forget someone. I’ll just say that from our real estate agent to family members, friends from our old church, friends from our new church and various other dear friends, this whole process has been an incredible team effort. Those who have helped may never know just how much we have appreciated their kindness and extreme generosity.

We also need to thank God for teaching us so much about patience and for providing the right home at exactly the right time.

It’s good to be home.



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The Final Countdown

July 8, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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newhouse.jpgThe end is finally in sight.

After so many delays we are now moving to put the final pieces of the puzzle in place. The final approval we needed to sell our home came through yesterday so we’re now about a month away from moving to our new home. You have no idea what a relief that is.

Selling our current home and buying another has been a long process. We’re not there yet but the light at the end of the tunnel is now almost blinding.

Once we made the decision to make the move it took us a lot longer than we expected to get our house to the point that we were happy to have it on the market. There were a few bits and pieces to fix, rooms to de-clutter and a garden which needed a make over. We have many generous friends and family members who helped along the way.

Once the house was placed on the market it sat there for three months without an offer. We then switched real estate agents and within three weeks we had rejected an offer which was too low and accepted one that was suitable. On the same day that we accepted an offer we put an offer on the home in the picture in this post.

The people buying our current home are first home buyers and so they needed approval through the government’s Key Start process. That took over 40 days. We were were 99% sure it was going to be OK but the sense of relief and joy when we had formal approval yesterday was amazing. From the time of approval, Key Start conditions require us to wait thirty days until settlement. So that’s where we are now. In around a month we’ll be deciding where the furniture fits best in our new home.



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Moving forward

May 29, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
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sign_1.jpgWell …. a sold sign may be a little premature but we do have an offer on our home.

After nearly four months on the market and two real estate agents, we got a suitable offer on our home. We’re pretty excited.

A young lady visited our home during last Saturday’s home open and told the agent that she’d like to make an offer the following morning. He had an appointment at her home last Sunday morning at 10:00. While he was chatting about the offer, we were trying very hard to concentrate on the sermon at church. After church we waited for the phone call to come. Finally, our agent phoned and told us about the offer. While it wasn’t huge, it was what we needed to be able to move forward with the moving process.

Once we got home from church we signed the necessary paper work and our agent rang the buyer the buyer with the good news. Of course we still need to wait for approval from her lender but we’re very confident that things will run smoothly.

On Sunday afternoon we visited a couple of homes in the area where we want to live. We’ve seen a lot of homes in the past few months but it really came down to just two, and we were convinced that one of them wasn’t really all that suitable. Unfortunately we had heard that a successful offer had recently been made on the other house which was the one we really wanted.

We went to see our ‘second favourite’ house, more or less to rule it out before starting the search all over again. We were very surprised. It seemed different. It seemed so much better than we had remembered. We phoned our own agent who then dropped in to look around and give us his opinion. We then went to the other place, the one we couldn’t have. It didn’t seem quite as good as we’d remembered. Our agent said that he liked the other one a lot more. So did we.

We headed back to the house we thought we didn’t want, excited about how wonderful it would be if we could buy it. We made an offer and a short while later we got the call to say that our offer had been accepted.

So after all the months of waiting we sold one house and bought another all within a day.

Our new home is just a few minutes walk from school for Emily and James. Pauline won’t miss having to drive 130 km every day just to get the kids to school.

As I mentioned, we’re ‘not home yet’ with the deal. We’re very confident that we will get the finance we need and that the person buying our home will get their approval but at this stage it’s a matter of waiting.

We should have our approval sometime next week but our buyer’s approval is unlikely to be given for about another month. After that, it’ll be another thirty days before we move.

We’re not done with waiting yet but we are seeing movement in the process and we’re thrilled.



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