The News Is: House Stuff (Duh)

Things are progressing. We didn't close on my old house last week, which I'm really miffed about. But it's finally all in place - I have the check for the sale amount in my paws, I just have to drop it off at the title attorney's office Monday morning. Due to the holiday (grumble, grumble), he can't do anything with it till Tuesday, so I'll probably get my final settlement statement on Thursday.

I can't close on the new house till I get that final settlement statement on the old house. It remains to be seen whether or not I'll get to close on the new house Thursday as well, thereby getting the keys on Friday and moving next Saturday as planned ... or whether they'll make me wait to schedule closing until I have the settlement statement, which means we won't close till Friday or the following Monday and I will have to delay moving by a week.

On the one hand, I really don't want to do that ... and on the other hand, it wouldn't be the end of the world, as I'd have another weekend to pack and try to get things ready here.

Packing. Oi. It's kind of icky. We have a lot packed. A lot of what's left can't really be packed (large items that don't lend themselves well to boxes, like large wall decor, bows and arrows, etc.) or can't really be packed now (the entire kitchen, our clothes). The place still looks like a complete disaster area, and I'm concerned ... and probably rightly so. I suspect this upcoming week is going to be a royal pain in the hindparts, trying to frenziedly finish the packing up ... just in case we do get to move this coming weekend.

A piece of good news ... the sellers finally finalized what they were doing with the issue with the water in the front closet. They had two contractors out to look at it, neither of whom could find anything wrong. Sorta good news - I mean, obviously something happened there, but at least it's not some blatant horrible repair, like a big hole in something. Both recommended some ice shield be put in the area, and - the really good news - the sellers pre-paid to have that done, and as soon as the weather's a little better, a contractor will come out and do that for us. So that's nice - the problem should be fixed, at no cost to us. Can't complain about that.

You know, I go through phases of being sad about moving out of my house, and then cycling around to thinking, "Who are you kidding? You hate this place." I ran onto a photo the other day of the place some years ago, when my dad was still coming over here doing things all the time, and it looked so nice - it was a picture of the front of the house, when the dogwood was still alive and all the shrubs were trimmed up nicely. It reminded me of how the whole place looked in years past, when I had it fixed up fairly decently inside and out ... the rooms not overjunked with stuff (this was back before I joined the SCA, and before I started knitting - yeah, back when it didn't take an entire apartment to house my hobby stuff), the place basically neat and well-kept all the time.

I sometimes wonder if my slack-assed housekeeping and yard maintenance attitudes that have developed over the last 8 or 9 years are just going to carry over to the new house, and I'll junk it up as badly as this one.

But really, I don't think so ... I can't explain it, but I lost all interest in maintaining this place at some point, I just didn't care anymore. It was like, no matter what I do to it, there were still so many issues I couldn't fix that it just seemed a drop in the bucket, and not really worthwhile. Maybe that was the wrong attitude to have, but ... there it is. I mean, for one example - the place was so small, and we have so much stuff because of our various hobbies, that it got to the point where there just wasn't anyplace to put things anymore. When I would stack something else onto a side table or the kitchen table, and think "there I go again, adding to the clutter and mess" - it wasn't pure laziness, it was in part that there simply wasn't any place else to put it.

But with the new place, I don't see that happening. I'm starting out with a clean slate, and one all of our stuff should fit tidily into without it being such a mess. There will actually be places for everything. Starting out that way makes me want to keep it that way, inside and out.

Even the yard, and my 'gardens' - my back yard at the old house was pretty much a 'clean slate' and you'd think that would have encouraged me to do something, but it never really did. I'd look at the dull rectangle that was mostly in shade, and just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with it. Even when I tried fixing up the pond area, it never really went well (it was too small to effectively do much with, at least with my limited skills), and I never could figure any good way to tie it in with the rest of the yard. It was just it's own stand-alone half-finished corner garden.

Ironically, at the new house, I plan to do something different with my hoped-for gardens. I'm not focusing on the back yard. I'm letting the back yard just be, the big rectangle of a yard dedictated to the kids' play area and whatever the Dread Reverend wants to do with it. I'm focusing my efforts on the front yard (curb appeal!) and the little side yard, which is the area dedicated to becoming my private garden. And since these areas have different shapes, and the front already has a base of basic landscaping (the ubiquitous evergreen shrubbery), plus interesting areas to work with (two trees, a lamp post, a front walk, a front porch for goodness' sake!), I'm much more excited about fixing them up.

I don't know. Maybe I really did just get tired of the old house, and lost interest in trying to fix it up. But one thing does occur to me ... I always had the feeling that no matter how much I did to this house, it was always going to be a cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood of nearly identical houses, all lined up like base housing or something. It was never going to look 'really great.' I could do tons of work and spend tons of money, and it was always just going to be so-so. There were two houses on my street where the owners obviously took pride in their homes, and had their front yards nicely landscaped and pretty, and I always enjoyed seeing them. But ... nice as the little yards looked, these places pretty much just looked like every other place on the street. It's kind of like having a condo, or a trailer in a trailer park, and you can do all the fixing up you want, it's just going to look like you took a row of graham crackers and put some Redi-Whip on one of them in the middle of the row. It's still a graham cracker.

The new house has character, that's what it is. It doesn't look like the other houses on the street, and with a little sprucing up, it'll have it's own beautiful, unique look to it.

I don't know ... maybe the 'cookie cutter' theory is a lousy excuse for doing nothing. I don't know, but it is what it is, and my feeling on it is: (a) it's too late now, I'm certainly not canceling the home buying just to stay here and try to force myself to make this place something it's not, and (b) it'll be whatever it is at the new house. If I maintain my interest in wanting to fix the place up nice, then happy happy joy joy. And if I don't, I'll at least have the bare minimum of required decent-looking shrubbery out front, and I'll grumble about trimming it and mowing the lawn, and we'll still have a house that's three times bigger than this one. With an Imaginarium. And a pub. I think it'll all work out.

Rant Recant (in part); New News

I have to retract part of my rant. It turns out I screwed up, when I got the alleged 'invoice' that was the sellers' agent's fax cover sheet with some scrawled number on it, that was only the first page of the .pdf document ... there were two more pages that I failed to notice, which were the actual invoices. Okay, duh, my bad, consider me flogged.

But the invoices weren't much help, in that the furnace guy said he couldn't find anything wrong, that the problem the inspection turned up didn't exist when he checked. So I'm not sure what to think of that, but it is possible - it is the kind of thing that could have, possibly been temporary (although it was truly a bit of a fluke). But I've got enough on my plate, I'll leave that go till we're settled in, and then maybe this spring or even next fall before cold weather, I'll have it double checked, just to make sure.

And, when I conveyed to my buyer had badly he was screwing me over by not having done anything about this closing, he decided to waive the title search, which meant next to nothing needed done, and we should be able to close on Denison today!

That doesn't speed up things at the new house, but at least that will be out of the way. It's a bittersweet moment, the one I've been both waiting for and dreading - selling my house. But that's a post for another time, as it's too complex for 7:00 a.m.

And, my agent called me yesterdy and was friendlier than she had been in awhile, even criticizing the sellers for dragging their feet and taking so long with this repair issue. She said she'd light a fire under them yesterday, but I haven't heard any more from her since.

I still have no news on what the sellers are doing about the closet repair. I'm about to complete the last two things I needed to do - close on my house sale, and pre-pay my new house insurance. Then it's just, and only, waiting on the sellers and this closet issue.

The one thing that makes this less angsty is the lender tells me they couldn't have closed this week anyway, they weren't ready on their end. So despite all the delays, it looks like it would have been next week regardless.

I know, next week will come, and the flurry of activity will have me in a tailspin, then we'll move in, and next Saturday night I'll be sitting in my pub with a fire in the fireplace, surrounded by unpacked boxes but with friends, getting completely liquefied on rum and diet Coke, and it'll all be a bad memory.

Still Waiting ...

Warning: A minor rant.

Why do people have to be so diffcult? (that was a rhetorical question).

When the house inspection turned up a few issues, the sellers initially jumped all over volunteering to take care of all these things. I was overwhelmed with gratitue, and even asked my agent to tell their agent how grateful I was, how I appreciated their efforts.

But in the last week they've only done one thing I didn't ask (or need) them to do, and haven't ponied up on the rest of the deals. Then when I ask them to do what they said, I get flak from their agent, saying 'Look, my clients have done a lot for you.' Really? What? Failed to disclose important defects, then promise to fix them, then not do it?

There was an issue with the furnace which they volunteered to have fixed, and to provide me with a copy of the invoice so I could see exactly what the problem was and what was done to fix it. When they finally sent it yesterday, it was a fax cover sheet from their agent's realty company with the words "furnace fixed" and an amount I could barely read scawled on the bottom. Nothing else. As I pointed out to my agent, in a couple weeks I have to live with this furnace - I'd like to know what caused the problem, and what was done to fix it. That doesn't seem too much to ask. I initially volunteered to have the furnace looked at myself, for that very reason - I told my agent, if I have someone come in and I'm there, then I'll know exactly what was what. But when the sellers jumped all over offering instead, we opted to let them take care of it. And now I have no information on what the problem was or even how it was fixed ... for all I know it could have been their cousin's uncle Bob who came in and mumbled over the thing for five minutes and declared it fixed, whether it was or not.

There was another repair issue - the water in the closet from the frozen gutter - they said they'd get an estimate on it, then either claim it on their homeowners' insurance, or credit me the estimate amount at closing. That was a week ago yesterday. Over the weeked my agent advised me that the sellers' agent told her that they'd stuck a dehumidifier in the closet, it was all dried up, and so the problem was resolved. I said, umm, no? (especially in light of the fact that three days after the inspection they decided to enlighten me as to the fact that that 'happens every winter' - so obviously it's not resolved).

That's not what they said they'd do. Reluctantly my agent (more on her later) contacted the sellers' agent back and reminded him of their promise, and now - a week later - they are supposed to be finally dealing with this issue.

We could have closed this week - this week - all my ducks are in a row. I'm a horrible procrastinator and hate making phone calls, but I did everything I needed to do to have made a closing possible in two weeks from the date our offer was accepted. But I'm waiting on other people who won't do what they said.

Speaking of which ... my buyer is dragging his feet as well. I told him two weeks ago that we hoped to close on the new house by the end of this week, and they wanted me to close on the old house first, so he had two weeks to get the closing lined up. He said 'no problem.'

Guess what I found out yesterday. Nothing's been done toward making that happen yet. The title attorney hasn't even been contacted yet to start the procedure (like doing the title search, for one thing). Lovely.

So there's no chance we can close this week and get the keys by Friday as we'd hoped. We planned to move next Saturday, the 21st, and had people already lined up to help us that day. But if these people don't get their heads out of their collective asses and get things moving, we're not even going to be able to do that.

I undertand how frustrating these processes can be, but it's doubly frustrating when I did everything I was supposed to do, and did it quickly, and now I'm waiting on other people who are just screwing around not bothering to keep their word. Growl.

My agent's giving me grief too ... it's like, once an offer was being considered she 'turned,' and hasn't really seemed to be working for me since. Several times she's made comments that directly convey more concern for the sellers than for me. When I thought the whole deal was falling apart because my buyer was backing out, and I told her I needed a little time to try to resolve that issue, she got all spiky and one of the first things she threw at me was, did I understand how that was going to effect the sellers if I backed out of the deal now - these poor people who had their house on the market two years, and now thought they had a sale, to pull the rug out from under them that way would be cruel of me. Never mind that I was facing being stuck with two mortgages I couldn't afford - she didn't care about that, only about how the sellers would feel.

Same thing's been going on with the problems with the house. Her whole take on it seems to be, from her comments to me, that I'm just nitpicking, and I should just ignore all these semi-major issues that turned up in the inspection, chalk it up to "there's going to be something wrong with every house," and move on. Never mind the fact that they misrepresented or didn't reveal at all several important things on their property disclosure. I'm not stupid - I know there are going to be little things that come up in any house. But these weren't "little things." And, the sellers promising to do things, then not doing them, has delayed us past the point of my being able to do anything about it myself, as my agent reminded me recently I only have 'so many days' to address issues that turn up in the inspection. Well, if I hadn't been waiting for other people to renege on their promises, I could have had these things done by now!

Sigh. Okay. I know it'll all work out eventually - in a month this'll all be water under the bridge, and we'll be moved and settling in. But ... it's still very frustrating in the moment.

Packing Sucks

Okay, packing officially sucks. Especially when you don't plan out well in advance where you're going to stash the packed boxes.



Our living room is now an Official Disaster Area (R). Of course, it's also a tribute to just how damned small this place is ... there is no place else to put these packed boxes! You'd think they'd somehow take the place of the stuff that's packed in them, but, ummm ... no.

I am ready to admit that we have far more stuff than the average couple. Okay, fine. So shoot me. I have hobbies. I have a life. I have stuff.

Fortunately, I now also have a bigass house to live it in. My only and worst fear is that we'll manage to junk the place up as badly as we did this one ... you know, expanding to fit the space. I vow to be extra vigilent to never, ever let that happen.

(Remind me to post about this one year from now, and see how I've done).

I mean, I don't get it ... what does 'everyone else' do? Where do they stash their stuff? When I look at pictures of pristine houses in Better Homes & Gardens, and there's nothing in them but the bare necessity of decor ... what do these people do after work? Do they just sit on their pristine sofas and watch their pristine TVs-in-an-armoire? There's nothing personal out. There are no half-finished knitting projects laying about, no stacks of magazines to read and clip articles from, no haphazard notebooks with gardening ideas in them. Where are the bills laying about to be paid? Where are the guitars and bodhrans? Where are the bottles of booze and soda pop and shot glasses? Where are the goofy "Niagara Falls" ashtrays or "OBX" drink coasters? No laptop computers laying on the living room floor, no phones on chargers on the kitchen counters, no remote controls for God's sake!! No phones, no boats, no motor cars! Not a single luxury!

Are these pictures of the houses of real people??

That's it ... I'm sending in an article to BH&G when I get moved ... How A Real Person Decorates Their Real Home. Day-core for the fiber-enthused masses.

Bah. Those are fake homes. I should quit looking.

So anyway ... I packed for several hours today, finishing 1 or 2 boxes downstairs, then finally getting the courage to tackle the upstairs, and doing about 18 boxes up there. I ran out of finished (taped and ready) boxes, and decided to call it a day. I mean, it has been a day ... I was up at 6:30 (on a Saturday!), took Tyler to the groomer's, ...


... went in to work for 2 hours, where I felt like I was having an early Monday, as everyone was there - even the boss. Who knew?

Then I came home and have been packing off and on ever since. And it's now 5:00 p.m.



And my back hurts. Yeah, I think I'm done.

Although I also think I'm clever. This ...


... is an ingenious idea. In this box are random knick-knacks and items of decor. I don't want to go strewing these about the house till we move in and get settled, and decide what areas need something, and what they need. I don't want to just clutter the place up willy-nilly with my old junk. So I'm packing all items of decor like this. That white paper on the outside is an inventory of what's in the box. It's taped over completely with clear packing tape, to protect it from any potential weather and keep it from getting torn off the box. And all 'decor' boxes are going in the basement.

Then, once I settle in and begin to get an idea of what items I'd like to see out, and where, I can easily find them without rooting randomly through dozens of boxes. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm not inventorying every box, just the 'random decor' boxes ... though every box has a label as to where in the new house it's to go (living room, kitchen, bedroom, Imaginarium) and then a little tag line underneath giving a broad overview of its contents (books, baking stuff, linens, books, shoes and accessories, books).

Yeah ... I have an unGodly number of boxes of books. I didn't realize how many were still here, as I donated about 12 or 15 copy-paper-boxes of books to the library in the last year. Sheesh!

I am currently astounded at the sheer number of boxes I've labeled "Imaginarium." It looks like 95% of what I own is headed up there. I keep looking at the pictures of that space, and thinking, "It's so huge! What am I going to do with all that?" Well, if the number of boxes headed that way is any indication, I'm having no trouble filling that space entirely.

It's a little disconcerting. Am I going to have nothing in the main living area of the house? What in the hell all do I have to put up there anyway?? Well ... many, many books. Boxes of sewing stuff, as well as stuff for embroidery, weaving, knitting, quilting, etc. So I guess that's not so crazy. I mean, who of you fiber freaks could look around and say that if you had to pack up your entire house, less than 50% of it would be your personal fiber-freaky stuff? (Okay, more hands than that, please!)

I'm consoling myself with the fact that I do in fact have other household items I just haven't packed yet. There are linens. There are bunches of kitchen stuff. There's the TV, DVD, VCR, stereo, movies, DVDs, CDs ... bath towels, the entire hall closet, and the medicine cabinet in the bath ... phones on chargers, laptop computers, remote controls ... all that kind of normal living stuff. It's not all yarn and books!!!! Really, it isn't. Mostly.

Oi. I'm too tired to type. And anyway, I don't care ... it's worth $90,000 not to have my washer and dryer in my friggin' kitchen anymore.


P.S. The real kicker is that I haven't yet convinced myself that we're actually moving ... my brain is telling me this is all just a weird exercise in inventorying, and after awhile, I'll unpack it all and settle back in. I'm sure I'm going to be quite shocked in two weeks when I wake up in a strange bedroom and can't find the bathroom. Or the washer and dryer.

Voice of Reason in my Wilderness of Worry

Thanks for your comment, Rhys. And you're right. Especially about this place ... it was getting to the point where it was going to start needing a lot of maintenance and repair - expensive stuff. I hadn't thought about it because I had no real intention of doing it. ;o) I just didn't feel inclined to spend that kind of money on this house.

And the stuff at the new house isn't that big a deal, fortunately.

I'm sure once we move in I'll feel much better.

The living room is starting to be taken over by boxes. And we've only just started ...

Ups and Downs

I knew this would probably happen at some point, and it did, but not for the reason I expected. I figured I'd go through a mild house-buying freak-out at some point simply because of the amount of money I'd just committed to - just the usual paranoid, anxiety-ridden fears. What have I gotten myself into, what if it's too much for us, what if something goes wrong, should we have looked longer, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

That didn't happen. I wasn't thinking any of those things ... until the inspection.

The inspection turned up a few more issues than I'd have liked. Now, to be fair, most of them were, in fact, quite minor. It's just that you don't like to hear any of this when you've just committed to a rather large mortgage.

The only expensive-looking thing was that the inspector said the furnace was 23 years old and had rust inside, and may not last much longer. He estimated the cost to replace it at around $2,500. While I was initially disappointed to hear that, it's not the end of the world. First, it might last much longer than he anticipates (I've known furnaces that were 30 or more years old). Second, I purposely didn't spend all my money when buying the house, so I'd have a fund for things like this, so when it happens, we can pay for it. And third, if it happens to die within a year, the Home Warranty will likely cover it. So all around, not that big of a deal.

And as far as major house maintenance goes, that's about the worst we'll have to worry about - the roof, windows, and hot water tank are all newer, so that's an expense we shouldn't have to think about for a long time yet.

I then discovered that there's a chance my truck won't fit in the garage. This time at the house we were the first ones there, and pulled my truck right up to the garage door - and said "Holy crap, that door looks tiny." Some measurements confirmed it's a full 12" narrower than my door at home, and will only give me a couple inches clearance on either side of my truck.

That was a little more disconcerting, as I never expected that. I knew the house only had a one-car garage, but the Dread Reverend said he didn't care about having his vehicles in a garage, and as I was the only one who did, that was fine. But I naively assumed that all one-car garages were created equal, and if my truck fit in mine at home, it'd fit at the new house. I was shocked to learn that might not be true.

This bums me out, as widening the garage door is probably not going to be cheap. It may have to wait a year or two. But, I reasoned, that's really not the end of the world either. I mean, it's not a major 'repair' that must be done ... it's a convenience. I can park in the driveway until we get that issue resolved. And, I don't know that it won't fit - just that it'll be tight. I may well be able to get it in and out of there after all, with a little practice. (she says uncertainly)

Okay, fine.

Then the inspector found water inside a coat closet by the front door. Okay, now we're pushing my patience. The furnace alone I could live with. The furnace and the garage was a bummer, but I was dealing. This was a bit much.

To make matters worse, the sellers, upon having this brought to their attention, advised, "Oh, this happens every winter." Not what I wanted to hear. My inspector thought it was due to ice damming because of the extreme weather we've had - an isolated incident. Then I learn it's an ongoing problem that will definitely need addressed.

It was around then I began to panic, thinking "What have I gotten myself into? I spent all this money on a house that has this much wrong with it?"

But good news came and my sanity retrned. The sellers voluntarily have decided to have someone come and give an estimate to fix whatever's causing the water in the closet. Then they are going to see if their homeowner's insurance will pay to have it fixed, and if not, they are going to credit me the entire repair cost at closing.

Well. I can't ask for more than that, and I'm quite relieved. Knowing that problem is going to get fixed immediately, and at no cost to me, is quite a load off my mind. The worst the problem should be is some type of gutter, flashing or isolated area roof problem, but it doesn't matter - it will get fixed, it'll get fixed right with a warranty, and it won't cost me a dime. So I have nothing to worry about there anymore.

Now the problems that for a few days seemed to be growing so insurmountable have shrunk back down to reasonable and bearable again, and I'm back to being very psyched about the house! I'm back to being excited about moving again, and looking forward to living there. And that's a good place to be ... especially since we'll be moving in only a couple of weeks. It's looking like the weekend of the 21st will be the big move weekend!

We haven't done any more packing since Sunday, which may have been a mistake. I figure we should have been doing some work during the week as well, but I just haven't been up for it. If we don't get in gear soon, we may be scrambling at the last minute. But I think I'll do some tomorrow night while the Dread Reverend is up seeing the kids, and then there's the whole weekend, which like it or not will be devoted to packing. Now our main problem is figuring out where to put all these packed boxes that isn't incredibly in our way.

~happy dance~ It's going to be a great house!

Packing, packing, packing.

Yep. We finally started packing today. We did about 25 boxes in a couple hours, and barely made a dent in it, but it's a good start. I got my entire bedroom closet cleaned out, and two shelves of books. So it was good progress, and really - it seems overwhelming, but what have I been complaining about? The house is small. Though we have a lot of stuff crammed in it, there aren't that many places to pack up. Doing a whole closet is actually a big deal, as I only have a couple of closets.

I doubt I'll be doing any more knitting or crafty stuff until awhile after we've moved. Which bums me out, but there's too much else to do right now. But the good news is ...


... the Imaginarium! The fiber arts haven, the creative eyrie. At some time in the future my posts will start to be all about fixing up that crafty-area-on-crack, as well as (of course) the rest of the house. But what can I say. I'm highly distracted at the moment.

I'm a hands-on person, and won't be able to make any real progress in organizing the Imaginarium until after I've moved in and gotten to spend some time in the place. And it well may be that it'll take several tries to get it right, arranging and rearranging things until I get it the way I want it, that works best.

But once I do, I'm confident my projects will take off and soar, as I'll have the place and the resources to work on them ... for a change!