Saturday, March 20, 2010

New Season

It's been a long and busy year, and truth be told, we've missed our weekend jaunts in search of cheap video games. But the weather is warming up in New England, and the yardsale bug is already nipping at our ankles. We are beginning to plan just how we're going to attack this year's season, taking into account the limitations of our area. We have some ideas and are looking forward to venturing out very soon.

Much of our time these last 6 months have been spent not only maintaining our home, but finishing our basement game room. This has been priority #1 and we still have a ways to go. The major tasks included repainting the walls, installing a plaster ceiling (including installation of lighting), installing new carpet, and building shelving. The first two activities we completed by the end of December. The carpet will be installed within a few short weeks, and we're in the process of building the shelves. We decided to build custom floating shelves from scratch in order to ensure we had exactly the right dimensions that we wanted. We have built 8 so far, which are in the final polyurethane stages. We will mount them after the carpet is installed. But we have loads more shelves to build, and it will likely be a year-long project for that alone.

In the meantime, we've kept an eye on our local Freecycle and Craigslist, but as typical with those methods, they did not yield much.

But you can't keep a true yardsaler down! We're looking forward to getting back in the game!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey guys....I was reading your post about Japan and I had a quick question: I am going to Japan too in a few weeks and I was wondering how did you manage to get all those games back home? Did you mail them back or just stuff them in your bags? Just wondering if there are any English-friendly post offices in Tokyo anywhere since I too will probably be buying tons and tons of used games and consoles

Liz P said...

We actually carried everything home with us, and it was quite an endeavor! We had two large suitcases, two backpacks, and two shopping bags. For our flight, there was a 50-pound weight limit on checked luggage, so we filled the suitcases to as close to 50 pounds as we could to avoid the $100 surcharge. We were also able to take two carry-on items each, so we stuffed our backpacks and two shopping bags full with everything else.

Almost everything is bilingual in Tokyo, and everyone is super friendly and helpful, so if you end up having to mail stuff home, you'll be fine. But it can get expensive real fast.

As for used games, we recommend Book-Off in Akihabara. They have tons of games for wicked cheap. Super Potato also has an incredible selection of games and consoles but they are more expensive.

Hope you have a great trip!

Zach said...

Sorry to bug you about this again, but I am about to leave soon and now I am worried about customs...did you get charged any crazy "duty fees" or anything for bringing all those games into the US?

Liz P said...

We did not encounter any fees. They didn't open our baggage when we left or when we arrived home. We did however write down on the customs form where it asks how much merchandise in US dollars we were bringing into the US.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email us!

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