Seems like we got out in time. Since listing our home, two more divorces have cropped up on the old block. One the product of a failed business venture and hurt feelings over a mismanaged menage a trios. (they were never good at negotiating with third parties) The other was the picture of suburban bliss – he the aw shucks neighbour always with the goofy smile, she the prototypical stay at home mom, spit cleaning her shiny kids. Even in the midst of a separation they seem the picture of marital bliss. The strain must be killing them, they’re wound tighter than a 3 dollar watch.

It’s not to say I think divorce is a contagion I’ve avoided. It’s not like yawning. Still it’s a sharp contrast to where we find ourselves now. Sliding into middle age we’re nonetheless the young whippersnappers of the neighbourhood. Our neighbour Tony just attended the wedding of his GRANDson and spends his days puttering around his garden, tending his lawn with the occasional trip to Niagara Falls to scratch that gambling itch of his wife’s.

On the other side of us, Mary drives out everyday to the nursing home to bring her wheelchair bound husband home for lunch, wheeling him into their small kitchen for a shared meal. Over for a visit Mary’s husband Carl would reminisce of the days spent at the original Kitchener Farmer’s Market, wandering over to his friend Dom Cardillo to mitigate some parking tickets.

Rita across the road is trying to hold it all together. Two year ago her husband died, followed shortly after by the loss of her mother. She’s only just managed to get back into a routine only to suddenly be the caretaker to her son and his two kids as he navigates through a messy divorce. Suddenly she finds herself having to lay down ground rules as the grandkids tear through the doiley’d living room.

All of this is to say I’m grateful for my new neighbours. Sure they’re a little long in the tooth and maybe I won’t be sharing a beer with them in favour of tea (non-caffeinated thank you very much).  Instead of sharing poker stories we’ll be swapping gardening secrets. I just hope they stick around for awhile …and keep me out of any three way negotiations.

Let me start by saying I’m not much of a food critic. I’ve all the gustatory refinement of a rabid opossum. I unabashedly love all food, and true to my Korean heritage, I can tuck into a meal with all the brio of a dog eating spaghetti. But what I truly relish is the company a good meal often invites. Whether it’s the Dutch side of the family assembling for Thanksgiving, the Korean community gathering for those crazy meals of my youth or even a mass of co-workers descending on the local Ye’s Sushi like a pack of killer whales; it’s the act of community that comes with sharing a meal that I love.

Last nights 100 Mile Feast hosted by the Greater K-W Chamber of Commerce was no exception. Our table was an absolute blast with the lovely ladies from Ladybug Teknologies and Jason from Something On. And the food was absolute perfection.

I won’t bore you with too much hyperbolic food douchery which only underscores how difficult it must be to write food reviews. How many times can you say something was delicious? Instead I present last night’s menu with embedded links to the local food providers used. I sometimes take for granted the host of local fare available to us and how lucky we are to have well established Farmer’s Markets in St. Jacobs, Kitchener and Galt. So while I book my visit to Oakridge Acres and Barrie’s Market I can’t forget there are a host of other local venues to be found with the help of the Waterloo Region Foodlink. BTW if you weren’t there last night you missed one hell of a meal.

Herrle’s strawberry wrapped in a Wild Boar Reserve proscuitto with Cabernet Franc ice wine syrup

Lyndon Fish Hatcheries trout roasted with Burkhart’s maple syrup and Pristine Gourmet soy served on Tanjo Family Farm heritage bacon and Winroe Gardens barley salad, with Kozlik’s triple-crunch mustard vinaigrette and Sleger fresh shoots

Herrle’s chilled pea soup with tarragon creme fraiche.

Oakridge Acres beef tenderloin and Perth Pork Products wild boar belly accented with Stemmler’s spicy jerky, and Niagara Baco Noir demiglace and sour-cherry glaze served with Barrie’s Country Market asparagus and grape tomatoes from Floralane Produce

Hewitt’s Dairy sour cream cheesecake with maple gelee and fresh strawberries.

Valuable lessons from the great Stuff No One Told Me (But I Learned Anyways)

Moving isn’t high on our daughter’s list of inspired events. She’s been patient and trusts us implicitly …but she still gave the for sale sign a good kick the moment it magically appeared in the front yard.

The couple that bought our place found us online. However, 80% of the inquiries that came through the house were from drive-bys. Not being on MLS didn’t seem to hurt us and we had three offers by the first week.

Nonetheless private listings, as anyone who’s sold on kijiji can attest, is a magnet for crazy. We got the earnest home buyer wondering where Ayr was, and the “homey” asking when he could “scope this bitch”. And maybe it’s just the paranoia that comes with selling a substantial piece of investment but I swear we had a number of undercover real estate agents and their decoy clients wander through the house. Looking for chinks in the private selling armour so they could sweep in and offer to sell our home. Our mailbox quickly filled up with agent flyers. Mike Maurer and his team sent us the paper equivalent of a small catalogue extolling the virtues of his services. Hey, someone’s got to pay to have his face plastered across half the buses in town.

In Mike’s defence many private sellers are their own brand of crazy. In our search we saw at least 3 “For Sale by Owners” flip to a real estate listing after a month of no activity. Many are using the private sale to inflate their home’s value and outright lie. There are more than a few would-be sellers that are thinking “I wonder if I could get…” and posting their property privately. I’ve been turned away from viewing potential homes by private sellers citing general “busyness” or “it’s not ready for showing yet” despite being listed for 2 months only to see them up the asking when they get a few calls.

Realtors will leap up and cry Aha!, pointing to these very inconsistencies but they’re no better. They will wag their fingers, tut-tutting an inflated price proffered by a homeowner and then list 20K higher when they get a hold of it. They will renounce false promises made by private sellers and yet we found a “fixer-upper” in Waterloo the realtor described as a single mom who had bought all the materials but simply ran afoul of a shady contractor and couldn’t finish the renovation. We walked into a home heavy with cigarette smoke, empty tallboys thrown in a cardboard box in the living room, water damage on the ceiling. the main floor bathroom lacked a toilet and the opening vented sour gas into the confined space. It was the type of place you wiped your feet leaving. The nicest thing in the main floor was the moped parked in the dining area. Out of morbid curiosity we tentatively wandered upstairs only to find the “single mom” and her boyfriend eating chili and smoking in bed watching TV. We quietly backed out of the home. It was one of those places you’re still smelling for hours after you’ve left.

Buying or selling either privately or through a realtor the watchword as always is caveat emptor. For us the process was pretty seamless. It was an active seller’s market and things moved quickly. Our house shows well and really it’s the ideal neighborhood for a young family. I love our house and I love our neighborhood. It’s not a hard sell.

The couple that bought our place are great. I love knowing their kid is going to dig the school in the fall. Representing themselves in the transaction it was all face to face dealings, not a realtor in sight. Meetings at the Tim Hortons to sign the necessary papers with boilerplate legal (vetted through our lawyer) but essentially standard provisos that have been outlined a million times before. Not without it’s stresses but I maintain it’s more from being so actively involved in the transaction. With a realtor you get to remain blissfully unaware, trusting in the actions of your agent. On your own you obsess about things like the sell-ability of the buyers home which the sale of your home is contingent on. This is no different with a realtor – you just don’t think about it.

Hayaku: A Time Lapse Journey Through Japan from Brad Kremer on Vimeo.

We’ve seen this a hundred times before, Japan is the go to for showing the human masses. Doesn’t matter – I’m still hypnotized every time.

We did it. After a month and a half of harrowing ups and downs, last minute reversals and a heaping of compromise, we’re set to move. Who knew it would all end in tears?

Part 1: Getting ready
2200 pageviews, over 20 viewing requests, 3 offers in 1 week and 98.5% of asking. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

We live in divorce alley. It’s a predominantly upper middle-class, blue collar neighbourhood. Infidelities run rampant and intramural, extramarital affairs are hardly uncommon. We have the housewife who ditches her three kids (the oldest was six!) for the boy toy five houses down. The kids are going through the motions of playing in the front yard as she drives past from her out of town digs, eyes averted, for a midday booty call. Eventually the house goes up, priced to sell; both parties eager to just get on with their lives. We’ve had 3 fire sales on our street alone.

When it’s our turn to sell (motivated by a lack of highschool and the looming prospect of driving our kid repeatedly into Cambridge when she can’t land the one, part-time, Short Stop gig downtown) we were concerned about a depressed local market.

Twitter gets us started. While toying with the idea to sell we realize early that our house isn’t exactly, to put it delicately, presentable. We need professional help. Knowing Mike Shanks (@mikepgww) was in the business I figured he’d have a good staging reference and he came through in spades. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – Lynda was invaluable. I know those Home and Garden Network shows have you convinced that you can decorate and reno your home on your own. Don’t. The market is littered with barely concealed DIY disasters.

Within hours of tweeting Mike, we had Chelsey from PropertyGuys at our door to explain the process. The next thing we know we’re listing our home privately. Actually it takes a month before the sign officially goes up. Minor renos, lots of paint, new window coverings, new countertops in the kitchen and a last minute acquisition of the mother-in-laws furniture to finish off the back room and we’re ready for some glamor shots.

Chelsey’s back again and lovingly photographs our place. Those MLS listing shots lack panache, are completely devoid of verve! These suckers on the other hand pop! High dynamic range shots mean the inside as well as the outside are exposed beautifully and Chelsey shows off our home to great effect.

We also avail ourselves to an appraisal through PropertyGuys. Deborah is an independent appraiser with 20+ years in real estate. She comes out to the place, checks the neighbourhood and runs some numbers. We price it at the high end and set a new precedent for the neighbourhood – adulterers be damned! To be fair it is a hot market.

…Coming up. Getting to sold means going through the crazy.

Ours is a purely functional house. There is no great aesthetic at work here. It is clearly the home of two working parents and a growing child. While the place is far from being in shambles I’d say what best typifies the design motif is suburban hillbilly or maybe white collar trash.

The majority of furniture is begged, borrowed or stolen. We’re a single rung above student housing. Cinderblock shelves give way to pressboard and laminates. The gerry-rigged Led  Zeppelin curtain is replaced with off color blinds and the prized Reservoir Dogs poster is now generic framed art, the stock photography of interior design.

With the prospect of selling our home becoming a reality we knew we needed professional help. Off to the Twitterverse where I follow a local Real Estate expert.  I figured he might be able to recommend a good stager. And so that’s how we ended up with Lynda Schmidt. Lynda is the real deal.

Lynda scheduled two hours to go through our place, top to bottom. She’s careful to preface the inspection. “Don’t take it personal – your house has been set up for the way you live, now you need to set it up to help you sell.“  Our dog’s breakfast of cabinets, shelves and tables that barely contained the onslaught of day to day stuff that accumulates over the course of years needed to go, along with the day-glo pumpkin on the kitchen walls. That was determined in the first five minutes.

Over the next few hours Lynda pulled together a comprehensive binder of recommendations. Simple, commonsense stuff working with the bones of what we have and our willingness to invest some sweat equity into the project. 2″ blinds throughout, carpet cleaning, neutral but not insipid paint colors, a complete purge of personal effects, updated lighting, new countertops and some minor repairs. Open up the space and be sure each room’s purpose is clear.

It sounds easy doesn’t it? Seems like anyone can be a stager. Sure you’ve picked out the absolutely perfect vase to accompany your Victorian table in the front lobby of your home and all your friends tell you what impeccable taste you have – doesn’t mean you’re going to be doing much good staging a down on it’s luck two storey with hand me down furniture and a limited budget. A good stager needs to work with what they have at hand. Lynda’s been at this for over 25 years so we’re not just getting a clear perspective forged over years of experience — we’re getting her contacts as well. Her carpenter was fantastic! As someone with experience working with more “fly-by-night” journeymen, an honest, skilled laborer is worth his weight in gold. Lynda provided a great deal on an inexpensive countertop and install, we even got her discount on paints. But really we got armed with a plan, lots of moral support and an unflinching eye. We’ve got enough balls in the air trying to sell the place – it’s nice to have professional help.

You’re not going to see us on the pages of Architectural Digest anytime soon but the glamor shots that are going to accompany our listing look like they’re from someone else’s home. All things considered I’d say that’s a good thing.

I just love me some of that classic oil can design. They don’t make them like this anymore. A Flickr set capturing a fathers oil can collection. (I love the Sinclair tag “Mellowed 100 million years”)

It’s been less than 24 hours since we wrapped up on our second Ignite Waterloo Conference and already the community has weighed in on the evening. As one of 60+ events happening during Global Ignite Week, Ignite Waterloo laid it out and nailed it down.

Once again the Children’s Museum proved the ideal venue for this event and everyone there ensured it all went off smoothly and in high class. The food was great (local and organic) and even the beers were microbrews from the Mill Street Brewery. If you’re thinking of hosting an event the Museum has got this down to a science.

The Toy Building Zone at the St. Jacobs Outlet Mall was kind enough to lend us two huge bins of Lego from their birthday room. This time out instead of cupcakes attendees, armed with pitifully meager scoopfulls of Lego distributed across several tables, were tasked with building their masterpiece. The level of creativity eked out of these plastic odds and sods was truly incredible. (Frankly all I could think of was how I rescued these pieces from the “Birthday Room” at the Building Zone which meant essentially this was a multi-colored petri dish victim to the hygiene (or lack thereof) of thousands of booger-eating, snot-nosed, adolescent germ farms hopped up on sugar, adrenaline and balloon helium.)

And the speakers! Monkey balls, Jasmine lust, military hardware, Tupperware, random howling, Alec Baldwin, Alec Baldwin and Alec Baldwin! (Alec Baldwin) It never ceases to amaze me the level of skill and polish on display. These people brought sexy back to accordions and roundabouts. They make it look easy and it seems to have inspired a number of people to prepare something for our next Ignite in July.

The community here is beyond awesome and always pulls together to crowdsource a generous recap in words and pictures.

@angrycelery shares her thoughts as both a speaker and attendee as does the wonderful @ericarw at her blog. As @cutergecko from CuteGecko states: “It just keeps getting better” Event co-organizer @primalmark offers up his take on the evenings festivities. @monsterfarm (as a quarter of the foursquare, Kitchener core cabal) has some great shots. As does @mseliske on his photo blog. @catbear offers up his photographic take on the evening’s event along with MC extraordinaire and Ignite presenter @ramynassar who gets the event hat trick by taking his usual spate of awesome shots. @wendyhoomo just updated her posterous with a recap as well. Communitech gets on board with their comprehensive review. So go on, get outta here! Check out some of the great stuff already out there! We’ll see you in July!