Those of you that have been following my blog (thanks!) know about Diane and my “Scottsdale Adventure”.  Just to re-cap, we decided to leave Las Vegas for 6 months and live in the very art friendly community of Scottsdale, AZ for our 20th. anniversary.  Diane has been coming here for many years to attend the renowned Scottsdale Artists’ School and has really enjoyed all of the workshops and open studio sessions during this time.  I’ve also spent time there selling frames and being a portrait and character model.  All in all, we’ve enjoyed it so much that we’ve decided to sell our home of 20 years in Las Vegas and move to this area.

To explain the title of this post Woodworkers Withdrawal  I’ll remind you that all I have is a carving bench and chisels to work on frames.  Although I enjoy that I really miss the creativeness of building furniture and boxes!  Whenever I read the various blogs I follow that are building tool cabinets, staked furniture, etc. I get a pang of jealousy and realize what a huge part working with wood and being creative is in my life.  I’m now vicariously living woodworking through the blogs I follow!  As we came closer and closer to deciding to move here we began looking at real estate.  A Sunday tradition was finding open houses after church just to get a feel for the market.  At one of those, we met Audrey Tolley from RealtyOne and she was intrigued with our quest for a home near the Artists’ School that also had  shop space.  It wasn’t too long after meeting her that she found a couple of houses that met our needs and showed them to us.  One of them was so appealing that Diane and I put a contingency offer on it.  For Diane’s work, there are two master bedrooms; one of which will become her studio complete with a separate entrance for future students and a walled in courtyard.  For me it had a 580 square foot shop space!

With a view!

Shop at our new (maybe) home in Phoenix

The ceiling is a little “wonky” and it only has a single entry door which will need replacement so I can get my table saw in but it fits our requirements to a T!  We put in a contingency offer which they accepted so, good Lord willing; all the pieces will fall into place and we’ll be leaving Las Vegas!  There’s been a positive home inspection on the house, the previous owners have the majority of their stuff moved out already, and we’re just waiting on the final piece to fall into place which is selling our home in Las Vegas.

First off, we needed to list our home in Las Vegas.  We’re using an agent that Audrey recommended and went back last week to prepare the house for listing.  Also, Adam and Kim got married that same time and Diane and I worked like crazy to get the house ready, here is a LINK to the listing — be sure to pass it on to anyone you know looking for a great home in Las Vegas!  After four trips to the dumps, replacing the bathroom floor in the kids old bathroom, cleaning up the back yard (thanks Adam!), and staging it we’re ready to go.  At this point, there have been several showings of the house and an Open House scheduled for this upcoming weekend.

As any of you that have sold and bought a home, there is a multitude of things that need to come together in a prescribed period of time.  From a woodworkers point of view I’d kicked around the idea of going completely to hand tools and selling off my machinery rather than move it.  After deliberating all of that I’ve decided to stay the course and be the hybrid woodworker that I am.  To cut and join my picture frames for carving you really can’t beat the accuracy of the table saw with a good jig.  Since I like to work with exotic woods, being able to use the bandsaw for re-saw work and the segmented head planer for rough preparation just can’t be beat.  Everything will still be hand joined and planed before it leaves my shop anyway.  A feature of this house that helped make this decision is that there are two, single car garages.  I’ll have the luxury of using one of those for machine work, lumber storage, etc.  I will need to figure out the electrical requirements of the 220 volts needed for them but that’s a bridge to cross later on.

Must remind myself of Step One —–  Sell Las Vegas!