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Farewelling the Past

May 4, 2013

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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Two Weeks

July 21, 2009

by Rodney Olsen

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After all the waiting we’re almost there. In just over two weeks we’ll be moving to our new home across the other side of Perth. The process has been long and at times frustrating, but we’ve done our best to be patient and if all goes to plan we’ll soon be turning our new house into our new home.

If you’re available on Wednesday the 5th of August you’re more than welcome to join us as part of the shifting crew. 🙂

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The Final Countdown

July 8, 2009

by Rodney Olsen

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The 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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Well …. 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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Putting life on hold

March 17, 2009

by Rodney Olsen

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I love flying.

Give me the opportunity to get on an aircraft and I’ll be there but I remember many years ago sitting on a plane as it circled Melbourne airport. I think I was on a flight from Tasmania or perhaps Canberra. There had been delays earlier in the evening and so there were lots of aircraft waiting for their time to land. If I remember correctly we flew in wide circles for around 45 minutes.

As I said, I love flying, but this was just frustrating. I wanted to land so I could catch my connecting flight and then head back home to Perth.

More recently I flew home from Brisbane after travelling to the Gold Coast for a conference. We touched down at Perth airport and then had to sit in the plane on the tarmac for some time until we could taxi around to a gateway to disembark. All the gates were in use and there were a couple of other planes ahead of us waiting. Once again I felt incredibly frustrated. I was home in Perth but if I couldn’t get out of the plane I may as well have been a thousand miles away. It was as if life was on hold and there was nothing I could do about it.

Life is on hold again.

As I’ve mentioned before we’re selling our home and moving to a different area of Perth. The housing market is slow and so we’re still waiting for the right buyer to fall in love with our home in the same way as we did over 15 years ago. This home has served us well but it’s now time to move on.

In preparation for the move we enrolled Emily and James in a school in the area where we are relocating. That means that Pauline is driving them a long way each morning to school, returning home, then doing the same long drive each afternoon. On the weekend we’re going to church in the new area so it’s another long drive. It seems as if life is on hold. We’re neither in one place or the other.

Yesterday we put an offer on a home we’d like to buy in the new area but as our current home is still for sale we had to make the offer subject to the sale of our home. We don’t know if the owners of the other home will accept our offer but even if they do, we could still lose the home if someone else can make an unconditional offer.

It’s all so unsettling and it feels as if we’re just circling looking for a place to land or sitting on that tarmac hoping to find a way to get off the tarmac. The flight has been great but it’s time for it to be over so that we can move on. We truly believe that everything will happen in God’s timing but we ache for the time that it’s all over and we can go about the job of settling into our new home, wherever that may be, and get on with our lives. We’re tired of being on hold but we look forward expectantly for what’s in store. We don’t know how much longer things will be like this and we shudder when we hear of homes that take many months to sell.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that this is an added stress on top of what has already begun as a stressful year.

Our family would very much appreciate your prayers for our home to sell and for us to find the right home to take us through the next stages of our lives.

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