Friday, June 10, 2011

New (to us)House, Old Motorhome Sold and New (to us) Motorhome bought.

After 4 1/2 years full-timing in our RV, on December 23, 2010 (the eve before Christmas Eve) we closed on a house in the San Antonio, Texas area to make it easier to spend time with our two young grandsons and son & DIL. Christmas Eve found us parking the 40’ Phaeton in the back yard and moving our stuff into the house. Not a way we recommend spending Christmas Eve.

We did get to spend quality time with the family over the Christmas weekend.

Ehren & Nate at Christmas

The boys both got bikes for Christmas:

The boys on their bikes

Ehren, Nate & cousin Mackenzie

January, February, & some of March were spent moving into the house and making a number of modifications we deemed necessary to live comfortably in the house.

The key mod we wanted was to open up the living room for better access to/from the kitchen and breakfast area and to bring the floor of the living room up to the save level as the rest of the house. The living room was built about 6” below the rest of the house. The step up/down would really make it hard for Sharon to get in and out of the living room with her walker.

Living room, note wall to the left of the fireplace.

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The sunken floor in the living room

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The wall coming down

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Laying the support for the new floor

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Putting the carpet back down on the new floor

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Completed

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The last half of March was spent cleaning up and fixing up our 2003 Phaeton diesel pusher motorhome and finally on March 31, 2011 I posted an ad on Craigslist in San Antonio. Five weeks later, May 3, the it sold. Craigslist is the only place we listed the Phaeton for sale. I don’t know if it would have sold sooner if we has listed it on some of the national want ads or not.

A couple of pictures of the Phaeton:

With awnings extended10Kitchen & Refrigerator

Once the Phaeton was sold it didn’t take us long to find and buy a new to us motorhome. May 20th we closed on the purchase of 2005 Born Free 26RSB (Rear Side Bed). We purchased the BF (Born Free) at PPL Motorhomes in Houston, Tx. They are a large RV consignment dealer.

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This is some serious downsizing from the 40’ motorhome we had been living and traveling fulltime in for the last 3 years.

The living area is a bit smaller, but has two nice chairs for us to sit on.

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and the bedroom bath:

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and the kitchen

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While the BF is much smaller than the motorhome we lived in, this will better suit our needs in the coming years. The BF will allow us to travel and explore w/o needing to pull a car to drive around the areas we visit.