Part of the joy of buying a new home is the chance to go in and make "corrections" upon the poor choices in decor made by the previous owner. Whole television series are based around this concept.
For instance, when we gazed upon the deep sea blue that the previous owners (or perhaps even the owners previous to them) had painted the walls of one of the bedrooms, and when we noted how it really sucked the life out of the room, we knew right away that we'd be changing it. And we did, switching it to a tone that I picked out called Camel Back, (which my wife is very annoyed that I insist on referring to as Camel Toe) and it was perfect.
And when we noted the gangrenous shade of green that the previous owners had seen fit to paint the walls of our new master bedroom, we knew that too must change. We actually liked the idea of a green bedroom, just not that one. So we got paint chips and found what we thought was the perfect grayish green that was soothing and non life-sucking. It turned out to be pretty much full on dark gray when we bought a test pint of it. So the wife went back to try again and bought three gallons of what we thought was a cucumbery sort of grayish green, but which we realized, after we'd painted nearly the entire room, was more of an institutional light gray with no green in it at all. We took the two remaining gallons we had back to Lowes and, with the help of their magic computer, transformed it from what it was into a darker, grayer green of my choosing which was PERFECT! Won major brownie points on that one, yes I did.
Then there were poor choices in items, such as with the appliances. Now, I can't blame the immediate previous owners for the appliance mistakes, no matter how much their discarded gift of used cat litter that we had to clean up might make me want to. I know it wasn't their choice as the elderly nature of the appliances themselves have indicated that the choice to include them probably came shortly after the house was built, say round about `1989.
First off, the microwave/oven hood, while a good idea in concept, was a poor one in execution due to the fact that this particular model of microwave sticks out so far above the oven that it prevents the cabinets to its immediate left from being opened. At some point, an owner had simply removed that particular door so they could use the cabinet beyond. The same can be said for the oven, the door of which blocks access to the lower level cabinets to the left. It struck us as the kind of thing that could have been prevented with a little forethought. It also made us determined to use said forethought in all future appliance choices.
The wife began applying it immediately, researching oven hoods, sans microwave, in an effort to find a good brand that would have enough clearance to allow us the use of our cabinet and which would be stainless steel, to match the rest of the appliances that came with the house. After many hours of searching ebay, she finally found one, a Windster brand that was as sleek and sexy as an oven hood could possibly be. The twin jet turbines it is equipped with remind me an awful lot of the Goblin Glider in Spider-Man and, had we not gone through the harrowing ordeal it took to install this thing in our new kitchen this weekend, I might have taken it out for a test ride.
The Windster is designed for duct venting, but can be modified to circulate filtered air into a cabinet as well. Ours came pre-modified from the manufacturer. Installing it, however, is still fairly complicated because while the hood itself is designed to appear as a thin, stainless steel minimalist wafer, there is actually another section that is hidden within the cabinet beneath which it is to be installed, containing the actual engines and power system. This, we knew, would require the cutting of the floor of the cabinet to accommodate. Fortunately, we recently purchased a house-warming gift for ourselves of the kind of power tools that can get the job done. Unfortunately, even after the hole was cut--which was no picnic--our problems were only just beginning.
I thought it would be easy enough to hold the hood in place and then screw it in from the bottom, rather than mucking about with all this tedious measuring. Unfortunately this was countered by the fact that only one side of the oven hood offered access to the support holes, while the other was plated over to protect the wiring. I'll spare you most of the gory details of our many failed attempts at getting the hood installed, cause they're very complicated, hence why it took us so many attempts. No matter what we did, we just could not get the screws that would hold the oven hood placed properly to fit the hood onto them and slide it forward into place. We kept getting the measurements wrong, then ruined our 1x2's screwing new ones in, then had to drill more holes in new wood, then discovered that the lip of wood we'd left in the front floor of the cabinet actually prevented the hood from fitting in there anyway.
In the end, once we got the hole big enough, we decided we would remove all the plating on the blocked side of the oven hood, which pretty much meant we had to take a good chunk of the machine apart, and finally expose the screw holes. Once that was done, I held the oven hood in place while the wife screwed it into place, hell for stout. Then, upside down on our backs lying on the oven itself, we had to put it all back together.
I would also like to point out that even though we turned off the breaker for the oven hood in advance (also the breaker for the fridge) our entire power went out early Sunday morning due to a line of storms coming through. It stayed off for the rest of the day. In fact, it stayed off even though our surrounding neighbors all got their power back. We wondered if perhaps this was God's way of sparing us electrocution from some sort of wiring mistake on our part. The less than ideal part of this (as though something could be less ideal than not getting electrocuted) is that because our power remained out up until the time we were to return to Tri-Metro, we didn't feel we could turn the breaker for the fridge and oven hood back on, lest we risk burning down the house from some faulty wiring mistake we'd made. So we had to pack up all our refrigerated food items and haul them back with us.
By the way, momma bunny moved all her babies. That was the first thing we checked when we arrived Friday night. We crept out into the yard, flashlight in hand and pulled back the opening of her burrow to find no dead baby bunnies. We saw momma bunny lurking in the area, chasing off birds, so evidently they're still nearby. I'll just be careful when mowing from now on.
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Borderland Report
Since we closed on the house, the wife and I have been traveling to our house in Borderland every weekend to do work on the place to get ready for the big move. As much work as it's been, and it's been a lot, I've enjoyed it all because it's work on a place that's ours. It's certainly not always been stress free, though.
For instance, the exterior of the house and the surrounding land have been almost completely ignored by the previous owners, seemingly for months. This makes a bit of sense, as they likely wouldn't have done as much work on it during the winter months, but while they at least raked the leaves out of the front and back yards, they did nothing whatsoever about the leaves that pretty much took over the flower beds that surround almost the entire house. We're itching to get in there and clean them out, but have been concentrating on getting the interior of the house in good repair first before tackling things that can be taken care of after the move itself.
The previous owners also seemed less concerned about picking up the large, lawn-mower killing sticks and limbs that had fallen from the trees during the winter. These were of great concern to me, though, as finally mowing the lawn was my major project for the weekend. It was looking quite a bit shaggy last weekend, but because our next door neighbors' lawn was in an equal state, we didn't think it would matter so much. This week, the neighbors mowed, including the tip of our triangular shaped property as well, which was mighty nice. It was time for me to do the rest and for that I would need a lawn mower.
We didn't own a lawn mower and haven't for our entire marriage. We've always lived in places where mowing was provided. I didn't really know, therefore, what sort of mower we might like. Oh, sure, I'd love one of those new super fast and maneuverable riding models, with the two levers, but they're so expensive that if we bought one I'd have to start driving it to work.
With gas prices what they are, I've been on something of a green kick so I began looking into rechargable cordless mowers. Unfortunately, the battery life on such engines is pretty short for mowing 2 acres in under four days, so my wife suggested I go with something more traditional. She also suggested something self-propelled, which would help out for mowing the kind of hill our house sits atop. And there at the Borderland giant hardware box store, we found a reconditioned Troy Bilt self-propelled mower/mulcher that cried out to be purchased. So we did.
Saturday, after painting the kitchen, I headed outside to try out the new mower. I wanted to see what this mulching business was all about, so I used that as an excuse to rake the leaves out of the largest flower bed in the back yard. I fired up the mower and mowed over the leaves. It worked pretty well at mulching and bagging all the leaves. However the limited capacity of the bag meant I had to keep emptying it onto my makeshift compost heap every few minutes. Once I was just mowing grass, the emptying was less often. The trouble was, I couldn't just mow the yard without first collecting all the sticks. Now, I know stick duty is a vital part of any mowing operation, but these were really huge limbs in some cases. By the end of stick time, I had a pile of sticks and limbs that was taller than our wood pile.
After finishing up I the back yard, I started on the front, which involved more stick spotting in a much larger area. There were also some pretty large rocks that would need to be avoided, many of which were in the tallest grass in the lower part of the yard. I ran out of gas around sunset, having made truly pitiful progress. I decided I'd woefully underestimated the amount of time it would take to mow the lawn.
Sunday afternoon, I started anew. I made it down to the tallest grass, ever annoyed at the number of trips I was making to empty the mulch bag, particularly since the wet tall grass kept clogging it up. I decided to use the giant garbage can that the previous owners had left us as a place to empty the clippings. Unfortunately, in addition to the garbage the previous owners had left in it, there was also a very large paper back with an equally large hole in the bottom of it, filled with used cat litter from their two devil Persian cats. (And here I thought that with my own cat in the past tense, I'd not have to deal with litter for the foreseeable future.)
I then decided to ditch the mulch bag altogether in favor of just shooting grass clippings across the yard. Trouble was, our reconditioned lawn mower didn't come with the handy side attachment that clips on beneath the spring-loaded side guard, so I had to remove the entire side guard. Mowing went much smoother after that. It didn't look neat, but was a lot less work.
Mid way down the yard, I rounded the corner of the square section I was cutting and was on my way back across when I noticed some grayish fluff flying out of the side of the mower. It looked like loose fur of some sort. I thought that perhaps some animal had died in the yard, months back, and this was all that was left. I looked down at the ground to see if there were bones to avoid and instead saw a hole in the ground in the freshly mowed patch of grass at my feet. And within this hole squirmed tiny furry bodies.
"AHHHH!" I screamed, as I realized I'd just run over a nest of infant... somethings. I released the mower handle and it came to a halt. Terrified, I quickly eyed the most recent clippings to see if there were any infant something parts. Nope. Not a one. I then stooped down and moved aside some of the downy fluff covering the hole and saw that within it were what looked like tiny baby rabbits. At least, I think they were rabbits. Their legs and tail looked rabbity and their ears, while not very long, were much longer than those of a squirrel. I don't know how they didn't get sucked up into the mower, but being below ground I guess they were low enough that they were out of range of the blades and suction. I dashed up the hill and into the house to fetch the wife.
"Come out and look at what I almost killed," I said. Out we went, peering into the hole as the little creatures, whose eyes are not yet open, scrambled away from the light, each trying to be the rabbit on the very bottom of the pile. As I looked at them, I was continually struck at how fortunate it had been that they hadn't been mowed. With all that's happened recently with the cat, killing a bunch of cute little bunny babies would have just done me in. Had to say a little prayer of thanks.
Having mowed away their cover, we piled all the rabbit down we could find back at the top of the hole and covered the whole thing with grass clippings. My guess is their mother will move them to a safer location.
By the end of the mowing process, I was again having visions of the riding mower we will one day have to purchase. Either that, or we'll have to til up the lower half of the yard and plant lots of decorative tall grasses that we won't have to mess with. I was also very thankful that my wife had not only talked me down from the ledge of the electric mower (which wouldn't have been able to handle even a fifth of the yard at a stretch) but had also suggested the self-propelled push mower. That yard would have killed me otherwise.
For instance, the exterior of the house and the surrounding land have been almost completely ignored by the previous owners, seemingly for months. This makes a bit of sense, as they likely wouldn't have done as much work on it during the winter months, but while they at least raked the leaves out of the front and back yards, they did nothing whatsoever about the leaves that pretty much took over the flower beds that surround almost the entire house. We're itching to get in there and clean them out, but have been concentrating on getting the interior of the house in good repair first before tackling things that can be taken care of after the move itself.
The previous owners also seemed less concerned about picking up the large, lawn-mower killing sticks and limbs that had fallen from the trees during the winter. These were of great concern to me, though, as finally mowing the lawn was my major project for the weekend. It was looking quite a bit shaggy last weekend, but because our next door neighbors' lawn was in an equal state, we didn't think it would matter so much. This week, the neighbors mowed, including the tip of our triangular shaped property as well, which was mighty nice. It was time for me to do the rest and for that I would need a lawn mower.
We didn't own a lawn mower and haven't for our entire marriage. We've always lived in places where mowing was provided. I didn't really know, therefore, what sort of mower we might like. Oh, sure, I'd love one of those new super fast and maneuverable riding models, with the two levers, but they're so expensive that if we bought one I'd have to start driving it to work.
With gas prices what they are, I've been on something of a green kick so I began looking into rechargable cordless mowers. Unfortunately, the battery life on such engines is pretty short for mowing 2 acres in under four days, so my wife suggested I go with something more traditional. She also suggested something self-propelled, which would help out for mowing the kind of hill our house sits atop. And there at the Borderland giant hardware box store, we found a reconditioned Troy Bilt self-propelled mower/mulcher that cried out to be purchased. So we did.
Saturday, after painting the kitchen, I headed outside to try out the new mower. I wanted to see what this mulching business was all about, so I used that as an excuse to rake the leaves out of the largest flower bed in the back yard. I fired up the mower and mowed over the leaves. It worked pretty well at mulching and bagging all the leaves. However the limited capacity of the bag meant I had to keep emptying it onto my makeshift compost heap every few minutes. Once I was just mowing grass, the emptying was less often. The trouble was, I couldn't just mow the yard without first collecting all the sticks. Now, I know stick duty is a vital part of any mowing operation, but these were really huge limbs in some cases. By the end of stick time, I had a pile of sticks and limbs that was taller than our wood pile.
After finishing up I the back yard, I started on the front, which involved more stick spotting in a much larger area. There were also some pretty large rocks that would need to be avoided, many of which were in the tallest grass in the lower part of the yard. I ran out of gas around sunset, having made truly pitiful progress. I decided I'd woefully underestimated the amount of time it would take to mow the lawn.
Sunday afternoon, I started anew. I made it down to the tallest grass, ever annoyed at the number of trips I was making to empty the mulch bag, particularly since the wet tall grass kept clogging it up. I decided to use the giant garbage can that the previous owners had left us as a place to empty the clippings. Unfortunately, in addition to the garbage the previous owners had left in it, there was also a very large paper back with an equally large hole in the bottom of it, filled with used cat litter from their two devil Persian cats. (And here I thought that with my own cat in the past tense, I'd not have to deal with litter for the foreseeable future.)
I then decided to ditch the mulch bag altogether in favor of just shooting grass clippings across the yard. Trouble was, our reconditioned lawn mower didn't come with the handy side attachment that clips on beneath the spring-loaded side guard, so I had to remove the entire side guard. Mowing went much smoother after that. It didn't look neat, but was a lot less work.
Mid way down the yard, I rounded the corner of the square section I was cutting and was on my way back across when I noticed some grayish fluff flying out of the side of the mower. It looked like loose fur of some sort. I thought that perhaps some animal had died in the yard, months back, and this was all that was left. I looked down at the ground to see if there were bones to avoid and instead saw a hole in the ground in the freshly mowed patch of grass at my feet. And within this hole squirmed tiny furry bodies.
"AHHHH!" I screamed, as I realized I'd just run over a nest of infant... somethings. I released the mower handle and it came to a halt. Terrified, I quickly eyed the most recent clippings to see if there were any infant something parts. Nope. Not a one. I then stooped down and moved aside some of the downy fluff covering the hole and saw that within it were what looked like tiny baby rabbits. At least, I think they were rabbits. Their legs and tail looked rabbity and their ears, while not very long, were much longer than those of a squirrel. I don't know how they didn't get sucked up into the mower, but being below ground I guess they were low enough that they were out of range of the blades and suction. I dashed up the hill and into the house to fetch the wife.
"Come out and look at what I almost killed," I said. Out we went, peering into the hole as the little creatures, whose eyes are not yet open, scrambled away from the light, each trying to be the rabbit on the very bottom of the pile. As I looked at them, I was continually struck at how fortunate it had been that they hadn't been mowed. With all that's happened recently with the cat, killing a bunch of cute little bunny babies would have just done me in. Had to say a little prayer of thanks.
Having mowed away their cover, we piled all the rabbit down we could find back at the top of the hole and covered the whole thing with grass clippings. My guess is their mother will move them to a safer location.
By the end of the mowing process, I was again having visions of the riding mower we will one day have to purchase. Either that, or we'll have to til up the lower half of the yard and plant lots of decorative tall grasses that we won't have to mess with. I was also very thankful that my wife had not only talked me down from the ledge of the electric mower (which wouldn't have been able to handle even a fifth of the yard at a stretch) but had also suggested the self-propelled push mower. That yard would have killed me otherwise.
Friday, April 18, 2008
House on the Borderland (Part Three)
One of the terms the Relocation Dicks set in our contract on the house was that all home inspections had to be concluded by March 20, two weeks from our contract date. Unfortunately, while some of the inspections were easy enough to get done, others, such as the septic and well inspections that had to be done by the Borderland Health Department, took a bit more time.
For days the Borderland Health Dept. told our real estate agent that they were coming "tomorrow" then would fail to show up. Why were they stalling like this? Well, I don't know for sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that all of this stuff had been inspected almost exactly one year beforehand and was therefore still "under warranty" except by the time the Health Dept. finally showed up, mere three days before the deadline set by the Dicks, the previous inspections had expired by six days. And once they did arrive, they announced that they weren't going to even attempt to inspect the well or the septic system because the owners had moved out of the house five days previously and health dept. regulations stated that someone had to have been in residence for 30 days prior to the inspections. So in essence, the inspections that we had to have in order to buy the house could not occur by the Dicks' deadline, or conceivably AT ALL, because the previous owners had moved out.
Adding insult to injury, the Health Dept. announced that they also weren't going to pass the well-system until a concrete well-cap was constructed around the existing well pipe. (For those of you in cities who've never heard of such, this is basically a big metal or plastic pipe, sealed, that sticks up out of the ground and leads to the well reservoir below. The concrete well-cap must be in place and built conically to cause rain water to flow away from the pipe and not collect around it, possibly contaminating the water supply.)
Now keep in mind this is a 20 year old house that has been sold more than once during its existence--most likely a year and six days previous to that point--so why were we getting busted on it now?
To us, this matter smacked of the sort of thing that the owners should really have to take care of. After all, it was their house that had to pass inspection before it could be sold and their fault we couldn't get it inspected cause they'd thoughtlessly moved out of it. Our agent warned us, though, that he'd already spoken to the Relocation Dicks and they'd outright refused to have anything to do with any of it, as per their status as dicks. He suggested we drive over to Borderland and construct the new well-cap ourselves.
Leaving aside my entire lack of skill at this sort of thing, we thought it was a bit out of line for people who don't own a piece of property to be asked to construct ANYTHING on it, let alone something that is going to have to pass some sort of rigid governmental standard. We asked a number of people what they thought, including one of Mrs. A's local government contacts and our own local health-dept. Everyone advised us that we had no business building ANYTHING on property we didn't own. So we phoned our agent back and explained to him that because we could not legally fix this issue ourselves it had to fall to the people who legally could, i.e. the relocation dicks or the original owners. If they wanted the house sold at all, they were going to have to make a move. We'd set our foot and spoke our mind.
We never heard what the dicks' response was to this, because I'm pretty sure our agent didn't approach them about it knowing they were going to be dicks and lose him his commission on the sale. Instead, he had a plumber come out and test both the septic system and well (they passed) then worked out a deal with the health department in which they would go ahead and issue official passes on the well and septic system provided we signed no-fault documents stating that they'd not been officially inspected yet and let them come back and test them for real after we'd been in the house for 30 days. Seemed a fair enough trade to us, so we went for it. The only other outstanding question was whether our bank's lawyer would do the closing or whether the dicks' lawyer would do it. We preferred ours, as we couldn't imagine the dicks' lawyer being any less of one. We told them to fight it out amongst themselves.
We were approved for our mortgage, told we needed to come up with $2500 to cover the closing costs and had to have all of it documented as to its place or origin. The bank was quite insistent about this part. We couldn't, for instance, take credit card advances to pay for it, but had to have documented legitimate sources. So we scrambled to pull all of that together, with help from family, and managed to get it done fairly quickly. Once everything was in place and all the inspections approved or otherwise noted, our banker called to tell us that our closing had been approved and would take place the following week. We just needed to wait for the bank's lawyer (yay!) to phone and let us know the full closing cost amount to have a check for. Only the days went by and no call came. Finally, the day before closing, we phoned the lawyer's office to ask.
Oh, no, they said. You don't have to bring any money. We're giving you a check.
See, part of our offer on the house included $2000 of earnest money to let the owners know we were serious. However, because we don't have any real liquid cash on hand, we financed 100 percent of the house instead of 100 percent minus the $2000. So the earnest money was extra that went toward covering the closing costs. The costs weren't as bad as all that, so we got the difference back.
And since I won't have a job in a couple of months and since potentially neither of us will have one in July, that will be money we'll probably have to either live on or pay house payments with until the wife's job kicks in come August.
For days the Borderland Health Dept. told our real estate agent that they were coming "tomorrow" then would fail to show up. Why were they stalling like this? Well, I don't know for sure, but it might have something to do with the fact that all of this stuff had been inspected almost exactly one year beforehand and was therefore still "under warranty" except by the time the Health Dept. finally showed up, mere three days before the deadline set by the Dicks, the previous inspections had expired by six days. And once they did arrive, they announced that they weren't going to even attempt to inspect the well or the septic system because the owners had moved out of the house five days previously and health dept. regulations stated that someone had to have been in residence for 30 days prior to the inspections. So in essence, the inspections that we had to have in order to buy the house could not occur by the Dicks' deadline, or conceivably AT ALL, because the previous owners had moved out.
Adding insult to injury, the Health Dept. announced that they also weren't going to pass the well-system until a concrete well-cap was constructed around the existing well pipe. (For those of you in cities who've never heard of such, this is basically a big metal or plastic pipe, sealed, that sticks up out of the ground and leads to the well reservoir below. The concrete well-cap must be in place and built conically to cause rain water to flow away from the pipe and not collect around it, possibly contaminating the water supply.)
Now keep in mind this is a 20 year old house that has been sold more than once during its existence--most likely a year and six days previous to that point--so why were we getting busted on it now?
To us, this matter smacked of the sort of thing that the owners should really have to take care of. After all, it was their house that had to pass inspection before it could be sold and their fault we couldn't get it inspected cause they'd thoughtlessly moved out of it. Our agent warned us, though, that he'd already spoken to the Relocation Dicks and they'd outright refused to have anything to do with any of it, as per their status as dicks. He suggested we drive over to Borderland and construct the new well-cap ourselves.
Leaving aside my entire lack of skill at this sort of thing, we thought it was a bit out of line for people who don't own a piece of property to be asked to construct ANYTHING on it, let alone something that is going to have to pass some sort of rigid governmental standard. We asked a number of people what they thought, including one of Mrs. A's local government contacts and our own local health-dept. Everyone advised us that we had no business building ANYTHING on property we didn't own. So we phoned our agent back and explained to him that because we could not legally fix this issue ourselves it had to fall to the people who legally could, i.e. the relocation dicks or the original owners. If they wanted the house sold at all, they were going to have to make a move. We'd set our foot and spoke our mind.
We never heard what the dicks' response was to this, because I'm pretty sure our agent didn't approach them about it knowing they were going to be dicks and lose him his commission on the sale. Instead, he had a plumber come out and test both the septic system and well (they passed) then worked out a deal with the health department in which they would go ahead and issue official passes on the well and septic system provided we signed no-fault documents stating that they'd not been officially inspected yet and let them come back and test them for real after we'd been in the house for 30 days. Seemed a fair enough trade to us, so we went for it. The only other outstanding question was whether our bank's lawyer would do the closing or whether the dicks' lawyer would do it. We preferred ours, as we couldn't imagine the dicks' lawyer being any less of one. We told them to fight it out amongst themselves.
We were approved for our mortgage, told we needed to come up with $2500 to cover the closing costs and had to have all of it documented as to its place or origin. The bank was quite insistent about this part. We couldn't, for instance, take credit card advances to pay for it, but had to have documented legitimate sources. So we scrambled to pull all of that together, with help from family, and managed to get it done fairly quickly. Once everything was in place and all the inspections approved or otherwise noted, our banker called to tell us that our closing had been approved and would take place the following week. We just needed to wait for the bank's lawyer (yay!) to phone and let us know the full closing cost amount to have a check for. Only the days went by and no call came. Finally, the day before closing, we phoned the lawyer's office to ask.
Oh, no, they said. You don't have to bring any money. We're giving you a check.
See, part of our offer on the house included $2000 of earnest money to let the owners know we were serious. However, because we don't have any real liquid cash on hand, we financed 100 percent of the house instead of 100 percent minus the $2000. So the earnest money was extra that went toward covering the closing costs. The costs weren't as bad as all that, so we got the difference back.
And since I won't have a job in a couple of months and since potentially neither of us will have one in July, that will be money we'll probably have to either live on or pay house payments with until the wife's job kicks in come August.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
House on the Borderland (Part Two)
After doing the math and seeing how expensive it would be to both buy the A-Frame and fix it up, I began to panic.
We'd looked at a great many houses in Borderland, but the A-Frame was definitely the coolest we'd seen of them all so far. (Actually, there was another house that was arguably cooler and in much better shape, but which was quite a bit more expensive. Furthermore, it did not have cool land, had more neighbors closer about and had interior decoration that looked as though Pier One Imports had taken a shit in it. I'm so serious. It was exactly like the worst, most cramped Pier One you've ever been in, magnified. You could NOT take a step without bumping into big honking statuary and delicate vases on rickity wicker-wrapped tables. There was, in fact, barely any room to walk with all the crap in there. And, properly divested of metal statues of ballerinas and goats, the place would have been quite roomy. It was a minimalist's screaming nightmare, but was one we were still considering, minus the crap.)
With the A-Frame's future in jeopardy, I was determined to find something equally cool to trade for, should that become necessary. So I went online and looked some more and immediately found the place. The exterior shot alone with its wood and rock siding told me it was our kind of house, but the added description of it that mentioned how it offered distance from its neighbors and quiet seemed like a place we definitely would want to see more of.
Meanwhile, we were still very actively considering the A-Frame, despite its problems. We'd even decided to have the place inspected, almost hoping there would be some massive deal-breaker that would block our path to purchase. Since we wanted to be on hand for the inspection, we scheduled a Saturday showing of what we had come to call the Wood House, followed immediately afterward by the inspection of the A-Frame.
The day before we were to head over to Borderland to visit the Cedar House and have the A-Frame inspected, our real estate agent called to ask if we could flip the order of business. Instead of meeting him at 9 to see the Cedar House, we'd just meet at the A-Frame, have it inspected, and then roll over to see the Cedar House afterward. As it turns out, we would have probably saved $250 by doing it in the original order.
The A-Frame inspection went well. Our inspector gave the place a three hour thorough once-over, pointed out some things he thought needed to be changed, made some suggestions, but overall gave the property a passing grade. In fact, we were a little afraid he wanted to buy it himself by the end of things. Feeling very good about our decision to pay for the inspection, we headed over to the Cedar House where we realized the error of our ways.
While while not quite as eclectic as the A-Frame, the Wood House was very nice indeed. It was a 20 year old ranch-style seated atop a hill overlooking trees and countryside. It was indeed very private, comfortably distant from neighbors, and, best yet, could be moved into with a minimum of work. Sure, some of the rooms had paint and wallpaper choices that we would not have made ourselves, but that's cheap enough to fix.
In short, we liked it quite a bit. To me, it didn't have the same atmospheric vibe as the A-Frame, particularly in the land-department, but it certainly made up for it in a lack of back-breaking work to make it our own. And when your major bread-winner is also the major skilled-laborer of the family, as my wife most certainly is, that counts for a lot.
We made an offer on the place that night. Within a couple of days, we learned that our offer had been accepted--though just barely. Despite some pretty fierce competition, our offer won out . The competition evidently came back with larger counter offers, but the owners fortunately decided to honor their verbal agreement with us and keep us on as the buyers. Unfortunately, the owners were actually only owners in name because they were working through a relocation company that had technically purchased the house from them, giving them a say in who gets it, but otherwise taking care of all other decisions about the house. As we soon were to learn, the particular relocation company in question is seemingly staffed by canker-encrusted dicks.
You would think in a housing market as crappy as ours is right now that the buyer would have a good deal of leverage. And perhaps that might have been the case if we'd had no competition at all. But the Relocation Dicks knew there was competition, so they pretty much bent us over a coffee table at every opportunity. Sellers fees that all sellers in every home purchase agreement from time immemorial have traditionally had to pay, with the actual words "SELLER'S" and "FEE" in their very title, the Dicks refused to pay. We had to pay them. In fact, we paid all fees for all the inspections of the property, all the closing costs and even a few more fees that cropped up during the process. But let me say, in what little defense the Dicks have, we knew about most of this going into the process (except for that whole "SELLER'S FEE" thing) and we went in willingly. In fact, we were prepared to be pretty accommodating in all of this because we really wanted the place.
Even with the hassles put upon us by the Relocation Dicks, things really went smoothly for the most part. Not to say there weren't bumps...
(TO BE CONCLUDED...)
We'd looked at a great many houses in Borderland, but the A-Frame was definitely the coolest we'd seen of them all so far. (Actually, there was another house that was arguably cooler and in much better shape, but which was quite a bit more expensive. Furthermore, it did not have cool land, had more neighbors closer about and had interior decoration that looked as though Pier One Imports had taken a shit in it. I'm so serious. It was exactly like the worst, most cramped Pier One you've ever been in, magnified. You could NOT take a step without bumping into big honking statuary and delicate vases on rickity wicker-wrapped tables. There was, in fact, barely any room to walk with all the crap in there. And, properly divested of metal statues of ballerinas and goats, the place would have been quite roomy. It was a minimalist's screaming nightmare, but was one we were still considering, minus the crap.)
With the A-Frame's future in jeopardy, I was determined to find something equally cool to trade for, should that become necessary. So I went online and looked some more and immediately found the place. The exterior shot alone with its wood and rock siding told me it was our kind of house, but the added description of it that mentioned how it offered distance from its neighbors and quiet seemed like a place we definitely would want to see more of.
Meanwhile, we were still very actively considering the A-Frame, despite its problems. We'd even decided to have the place inspected, almost hoping there would be some massive deal-breaker that would block our path to purchase. Since we wanted to be on hand for the inspection, we scheduled a Saturday showing of what we had come to call the Wood House, followed immediately afterward by the inspection of the A-Frame.
The day before we were to head over to Borderland to visit the Cedar House and have the A-Frame inspected, our real estate agent called to ask if we could flip the order of business. Instead of meeting him at 9 to see the Cedar House, we'd just meet at the A-Frame, have it inspected, and then roll over to see the Cedar House afterward. As it turns out, we would have probably saved $250 by doing it in the original order.
The A-Frame inspection went well. Our inspector gave the place a three hour thorough once-over, pointed out some things he thought needed to be changed, made some suggestions, but overall gave the property a passing grade. In fact, we were a little afraid he wanted to buy it himself by the end of things. Feeling very good about our decision to pay for the inspection, we headed over to the Cedar House where we realized the error of our ways.
While while not quite as eclectic as the A-Frame, the Wood House was very nice indeed. It was a 20 year old ranch-style seated atop a hill overlooking trees and countryside. It was indeed very private, comfortably distant from neighbors, and, best yet, could be moved into with a minimum of work. Sure, some of the rooms had paint and wallpaper choices that we would not have made ourselves, but that's cheap enough to fix.
In short, we liked it quite a bit. To me, it didn't have the same atmospheric vibe as the A-Frame, particularly in the land-department, but it certainly made up for it in a lack of back-breaking work to make it our own. And when your major bread-winner is also the major skilled-laborer of the family, as my wife most certainly is, that counts for a lot.
We made an offer on the place that night. Within a couple of days, we learned that our offer had been accepted--though just barely. Despite some pretty fierce competition, our offer won out . The competition evidently came back with larger counter offers, but the owners fortunately decided to honor their verbal agreement with us and keep us on as the buyers. Unfortunately, the owners were actually only owners in name because they were working through a relocation company that had technically purchased the house from them, giving them a say in who gets it, but otherwise taking care of all other decisions about the house. As we soon were to learn, the particular relocation company in question is seemingly staffed by canker-encrusted dicks.
You would think in a housing market as crappy as ours is right now that the buyer would have a good deal of leverage. And perhaps that might have been the case if we'd had no competition at all. But the Relocation Dicks knew there was competition, so they pretty much bent us over a coffee table at every opportunity. Sellers fees that all sellers in every home purchase agreement from time immemorial have traditionally had to pay, with the actual words "SELLER'S" and "FEE" in their very title, the Dicks refused to pay. We had to pay them. In fact, we paid all fees for all the inspections of the property, all the closing costs and even a few more fees that cropped up during the process. But let me say, in what little defense the Dicks have, we knew about most of this going into the process (except for that whole "SELLER'S FEE" thing) and we went in willingly. In fact, we were prepared to be pretty accommodating in all of this because we really wanted the place.
Even with the hassles put upon us by the Relocation Dicks, things really went smoothly for the most part. Not to say there weren't bumps...
(TO BE CONCLUDED...)
Monday, April 14, 2008
House on the Borderland (Part One)
Not long after we became fairly certain that a move to Borderland was in our future, we began looking for a house there. Neither of us have ever been home owners. (Well, technically, we own a hippie cabin in Alaska, but that's not precisely what we think of as a "home" home, being as how it's held together with baling wire and frozen spit and it sits on a property warrened out with hidden tunnels constructed out of a series of hollowed out oil drums, buried there by the previous tenant, who was a survivalist nut. Occasionally one of these tunnels rusts through and people and their lawnmowers fall into it. You only think I'm kidding.) So, really, we wanted somewhere to call our own, where we could at last have a dog and maybe a rugrat or two.
When we first interviewed in Borderland, the hospital rep took us out on a tour of the area, showing us the houses and neighborhoods where a lot of the docs live. Most of them were either cramped subdivisions of cookie-cutter two-levels built practically on top of one another, winding around the hills and valleys of the area or were sprawling multi-million dollar homes owned by surgeons and other specialists, the kind that take a staff to keep up and which we could never afford in a billion years, even if we wanted such a McMansion, which we don't. I think our hospital rep thought we might be impressed by them, but to us it just looked like a lot of work. We have no desire to have "a staff" and houses that big would just be more for us to have to clean ourselves. No, our taste tends toward the simple and unadorned, yet still unique, with a little more space from our neighbors, even if it's just a matter of a couple dozen feet. What we wanted was a nice, reasonably-sized house that wasn't a cookie cutter copy of every other house in the neighborhood. In fact, if we could avoid neighborhoods altogether, that would be pretty sweet.
"Maybe we should buy a farm," I said. We know quite a few doctors who own farms because of the tax benefits of owning a working farm. The farm didn't even have to make any money for the benefits to kick in. So I suggested that I could start a less-than-profitable hens & chicks farm in which I would grow crops and crops of hens & chicks spawned from my own strawberry pot full of them, and then fail to sell a one. The wife thought we might need farm animals, too, so I suggested we buy a goat who we would name Douglas Goat and he could keep the grass trimmed so I wouldn't have to mow. Every morning we'd go out and stake him in a grassy part of the yard, pet him on his goat head and he could much away contentedly the whole day long. Idyllic, no?
So we began searching the real-estate websites in search of something cool and possibly farm-like. Before long we found it. Not far outside of Borderland exists a very picturesque A-frame house, with three bedrooms, and three full baths situated on a beautiful section of land and which had formerly served as a bed & breakfast. We loved the pictures, so we contacted the real estate agency that had the listing and went over for a look.
The place was even more gorgeous in person, with a vine-covered stone chimney, coy pond out front, jutting natural boulders around the edges of the property, a walking path through the trees, room for a garden, a heated out-buiding that might be used as an office or home studio. It even had a small barn in the back for Douglas Goat. And while there were neighbors nearby, they weren't on top of you. The place was just fantastic and quite easy to fall in utter love with--which I did.
The inside of the house, however, while completely livable, was still something of a fixer-upper. Probably the most obvious flaws were the floors, which sloped just a teensy bit on both the ground and second levels, though in opposite directions. Cosmetically, there was also plenty to consider. The place had been built in the 1970s and had cheap, plastic cabinets in its kitchen that would have to be torn out and replaced with something better. (I don't know if you've looked at cabinet prices these days, but doing a new kitchen from the ground up is very expensive.) At the same time, both bathrooms in the place, while completely usable, were lacking in the design department and we didn't much like them. (I don't know if you've looked at bathroom prices these days, but doing a new one from the ground up--let alone TWO--is very expensive.) And the bedrooms, all three of them, were pretty small and got smaller as you went up in levels. Their closet space was severely lacking and they just struck us as rooms that really needed a couple of walls torn out and completely redesigned. Adding to this the fact that many of the walls in the house were not made of drywall, but rather of thin wood paneling that gave when you pressed it. Some re-walling would have to be done, though not necessarily right away.
Now, it would be one thing if I had the kind of skills necessary to do some of this myself. The problem is, no matter how many flip this house shows I've watched, at the end of the day I'm just not that handy and am so far from being capable of doing ANY of it that it was pretty clear that this would be the sort of job for which you'd have to hire a contractor or three, possibly over the course of several years. (I don't know if you've looked at how expensive contractors are, these days, but getting them to pretty much gut a great deal of your house is very expensive.) The more we looked at the place, the more our hearts began to sink at all the work it would take to get it where we wanted it. It was a home of fantastic potential, but when you're just starting out in life as a new doc in a new clinic with all the stresses that come with it, do you really want to have to come home to torn out walls, drywall dust and broken plastic cabinetry?
Add to this the fact that it's difficult for new home buyers to get the sort of mortgage that allows for such improvements without a 25 percent down payment that we don't have and you see our dilemma.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
When we first interviewed in Borderland, the hospital rep took us out on a tour of the area, showing us the houses and neighborhoods where a lot of the docs live. Most of them were either cramped subdivisions of cookie-cutter two-levels built practically on top of one another, winding around the hills and valleys of the area or were sprawling multi-million dollar homes owned by surgeons and other specialists, the kind that take a staff to keep up and which we could never afford in a billion years, even if we wanted such a McMansion, which we don't. I think our hospital rep thought we might be impressed by them, but to us it just looked like a lot of work. We have no desire to have "a staff" and houses that big would just be more for us to have to clean ourselves. No, our taste tends toward the simple and unadorned, yet still unique, with a little more space from our neighbors, even if it's just a matter of a couple dozen feet. What we wanted was a nice, reasonably-sized house that wasn't a cookie cutter copy of every other house in the neighborhood. In fact, if we could avoid neighborhoods altogether, that would be pretty sweet.
"Maybe we should buy a farm," I said. We know quite a few doctors who own farms because of the tax benefits of owning a working farm. The farm didn't even have to make any money for the benefits to kick in. So I suggested that I could start a less-than-profitable hens & chicks farm in which I would grow crops and crops of hens & chicks spawned from my own strawberry pot full of them, and then fail to sell a one. The wife thought we might need farm animals, too, so I suggested we buy a goat who we would name Douglas Goat and he could keep the grass trimmed so I wouldn't have to mow. Every morning we'd go out and stake him in a grassy part of the yard, pet him on his goat head and he could much away contentedly the whole day long. Idyllic, no?
So we began searching the real-estate websites in search of something cool and possibly farm-like. Before long we found it. Not far outside of Borderland exists a very picturesque A-frame house, with three bedrooms, and three full baths situated on a beautiful section of land and which had formerly served as a bed & breakfast. We loved the pictures, so we contacted the real estate agency that had the listing and went over for a look.
The place was even more gorgeous in person, with a vine-covered stone chimney, coy pond out front, jutting natural boulders around the edges of the property, a walking path through the trees, room for a garden, a heated out-buiding that might be used as an office or home studio. It even had a small barn in the back for Douglas Goat. And while there were neighbors nearby, they weren't on top of you. The place was just fantastic and quite easy to fall in utter love with--which I did.The inside of the house, however, while completely livable, was still something of a fixer-upper. Probably the most obvious flaws were the floors, which sloped just a teensy bit on both the ground and second levels, though in opposite directions. Cosmetically, there was also plenty to consider. The place had been built in the 1970s and had cheap, plastic cabinets in its kitchen that would have to be torn out and replaced with something better. (I don't know if you've looked at cabinet prices these days, but doing a new kitchen from the ground up is very expensive.) At the same time, both bathrooms in the place, while completely usable, were lacking in the design department and we didn't much like them. (I don't know if you've looked at bathroom prices these days, but doing a new one from the ground up--let alone TWO--is very expensive.) And the bedrooms, all three of them, were pretty small and got smaller as you went up in levels. Their closet space was severely lacking and they just struck us as rooms that really needed a couple of walls torn out and completely redesigned. Adding to this the fact that many of the walls in the house were not made of drywall, but rather of thin wood paneling that gave when you pressed it. Some re-walling would have to be done, though not necessarily right away.
Now, it would be one thing if I had the kind of skills necessary to do some of this myself. The problem is, no matter how many flip this house shows I've watched, at the end of the day I'm just not that handy and am so far from being capable of doing ANY of it that it was pretty clear that this would be the sort of job for which you'd have to hire a contractor or three, possibly over the course of several years. (I don't know if you've looked at how expensive contractors are, these days, but getting them to pretty much gut a great deal of your house is very expensive.) The more we looked at the place, the more our hearts began to sink at all the work it would take to get it where we wanted it. It was a home of fantastic potential, but when you're just starting out in life as a new doc in a new clinic with all the stresses that come with it, do you really want to have to come home to torn out walls, drywall dust and broken plastic cabinetry?
Add to this the fact that it's difficult for new home buyers to get the sort of mortgage that allows for such improvements without a 25 percent down payment that we don't have and you see our dilemma.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Friday, April 11, 2008
So, yeah...
...the wife and I will be moving to the new digs sometime during the next coupleathree months.
This is something that's been in the works for a while now but in varying stages of certainty until fairly recently.
For instance, I've known for several years now that the wife would finish up her medical training in June of 2008 and would be in need of a job at that point. We'd both somehow always assumed that an ideal job opportunity would open up in the Tri-Metro area for her. And while there were actually quite a number of possibilities in the general region of the state, including some very tempting offers, the major one we had thought would materialize failed to do so and there wound up being very little close to home that seemed a good fit.
In the end, the choice came down to two different hospitals both located an inconvenient distance from Tri-Metro. So we decided that if we were going to have to move anyway, it may as well be for the better of the two offers, one which created the least amount of hassle for us and the most amount of opportunity to start paying off the VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN of student loans we're now buried under, the deepest magma tunnels of which we are only just beginning to tickle.
So, we're moving.
The actual move is still a little ways off, but it'll probably happen a bit sooner than my original possible forecast from November. After all, while the wife is still here through the end of June, mortgage payments will be coming in a bit sooner and it would get pretty tight if we had to pay both the mortgage and rent on our house here at the same time. Besides that, there is still some work to do on the new house before it's ready for all our crap to get moved in (not to mention crap to get rid of so we don't have to move it) and we'll be using all of our intervening weekends to get that taken care of.
As to where we'll be moving, I'm calling it Borderland for the time being, just cause it sounds cool and because the only other name I've thought up for it is way too obvious.
"What does that mean for the blog?" you ask. Well, I don't know for sure at this point, but I suspect it means it will come to something of a point of closure within the next coupleathree months. At around an hour and a half away, Borderland is not a commutable distance from Tri-Metro. Not with the kind of weather we get in the winters here and not with gas prices at their current levels. It's possible I might find employment with one of the "liberries" in Borderland County, at which point I'd have to start "Liberry" 3.0 and continue on. I suspect, however, I'll probably do something else.
I do still have more time with my current gig as a "liberry" ninja and several as yet untold tales to tell from there. (After all, no one has yet solved the grand mystery of "Liberry" 2.0--or, if they have, they've kept it to themselves. The hints are all there, one inadvertently posted quite recently, in fact.)
I'm also certain that the move itself will generate some fun stories. And there's the tale of the new house itself, not to mention some roads not traveled which I've been itching to write about for a while.
This is something that's been in the works for a while now but in varying stages of certainty until fairly recently.
For instance, I've known for several years now that the wife would finish up her medical training in June of 2008 and would be in need of a job at that point. We'd both somehow always assumed that an ideal job opportunity would open up in the Tri-Metro area for her. And while there were actually quite a number of possibilities in the general region of the state, including some very tempting offers, the major one we had thought would materialize failed to do so and there wound up being very little close to home that seemed a good fit.
In the end, the choice came down to two different hospitals both located an inconvenient distance from Tri-Metro. So we decided that if we were going to have to move anyway, it may as well be for the better of the two offers, one which created the least amount of hassle for us and the most amount of opportunity to start paying off the VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN of student loans we're now buried under, the deepest magma tunnels of which we are only just beginning to tickle.
So, we're moving.
The actual move is still a little ways off, but it'll probably happen a bit sooner than my original possible forecast from November. After all, while the wife is still here through the end of June, mortgage payments will be coming in a bit sooner and it would get pretty tight if we had to pay both the mortgage and rent on our house here at the same time. Besides that, there is still some work to do on the new house before it's ready for all our crap to get moved in (not to mention crap to get rid of so we don't have to move it) and we'll be using all of our intervening weekends to get that taken care of.
As to where we'll be moving, I'm calling it Borderland for the time being, just cause it sounds cool and because the only other name I've thought up for it is way too obvious.
"What does that mean for the blog?" you ask. Well, I don't know for sure at this point, but I suspect it means it will come to something of a point of closure within the next coupleathree months. At around an hour and a half away, Borderland is not a commutable distance from Tri-Metro. Not with the kind of weather we get in the winters here and not with gas prices at their current levels. It's possible I might find employment with one of the "liberries" in Borderland County, at which point I'd have to start "Liberry" 3.0 and continue on. I suspect, however, I'll probably do something else.
I do still have more time with my current gig as a "liberry" ninja and several as yet untold tales to tell from there. (After all, no one has yet solved the grand mystery of "Liberry" 2.0--or, if they have, they've kept it to themselves. The hints are all there, one inadvertently posted quite recently, in fact.)
I'm also certain that the move itself will generate some fun stories. And there's the tale of the new house itself, not to mention some roads not traveled which I've been itching to write about for a while.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Ominious Rumblings
Kind of big news for us...
We closed on a house today.
It looks like this:
Um...
Did I mention it's not in Tri-Metro?
(TO BE CONTINUED... YA THINK?)
We closed on a house today.
It looks like this:
Um...
Did I mention it's not in Tri-Metro?
(TO BE CONTINUED... YA THINK?)
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