That Was Then, This is Now

The last post in this blog is over five years ago, when we were living at 721 N. Sergeant, Joplin, Missouri. Much has happened since then. Let me explain.

Hannah, Steve, and Norah lived in Chicago then. After the frigid winter of 2013, Hannah told Steve she was tired of working in Chicago and freezing while waiting for the downtown train. So she began looking in St. Louis for a job. She got one, and they moved in the spring of 2014. Since Kelly, Mike, and the boys already lived in the area, that left us as alone in Joplin with both families living in the St. Louis area. We thought it over and decided that we would look for a home in the St. Louis area, so that we would all live in the same area for the first time in a couple of decades. So we engaged a real estate agent in the St. Louis area and came up a few times in the fall of 2014 to look at properties she found for us.

First, we were looking for condos, so that we wouldn't have to keep up the yard and driveway and worry about repairs. After looking at a couple of them, we decided that we couldn't live in tiny apartments with no dance practice areas, plus have to pay monthly fees.

Then we looked at bungalows, like in the University City area and elsewhere in the county. Although the bungalows themselves had some charm, they had dark, dank basements; small yards; and single-car garages.

Then we opted for mid-century ranchers. We visited several in the county area, even found one or two that we thought had potential, but they had detractions, too. We finally settled on one rancher between Creve Coeur and Maryland Heights, on Decorah Drive. It was pretty much the opposite of what we started out looking for: huge lot (100 by 200), more square footage than we thought we wanted, and a basement with 12 steps down. Leslie thought we wouldn't be able to navigate steps in our old age. But it had a wide 2-car garage, a finished area in the basement that could be used for dance practice, and a nice step-down den, or living room. On November 27, 2014, we signed papers on it, stipulating that we could not close on it until several months later. The owner agreed, and so we waited.

Finally, on February 27, 2015, we closed on the house. I am leaving out some details in order to shorten the story. Receiving the keys and then changing the locks, and installing ADT security service, we went back to Joplin to prepare for the move.



Meanwhile, Leslie still had a few months left before she retired. I had already retired as of June 1, 2014, and she would retire as of June 1, 2015. We made several trips up to the house to paint and fix things up. A couple of times I came up to do some painting and projects. We had a new refrigerator put in, we bought a new laundry set: washer and dryer. We tore out carpets in the back bedrooms, exposing underlayment. We had new hardwood flooring installed in two bedrooms, plus refinishing the flooring in another bedroom, which became our office.

The house was nearly ready for the big move from Joplin to St. Louis. All that remained was selling our house in Joplin, the 103-year-old foursquare historic home we had lived in since 1988, 27 years. The story of the sale and the move will be the subject of the next blog post.