Building Our House

Sorry to keep you up in the air, Stephanie! It’s been a wee bit crazy around here. We have no home land line phone and thus no DSL or other home internet access for at least another week, and work has actually been needing me to, you know, work, so opportunities for electronic updating have been limited.

New house closed as previously noted, and moving went ahead as scheduled on August 25th. Closing for the old house happened on the 30th but with the long-distance stuff (they live two states away) and things having to get overnighted back and forth, it wasn’t supposed to be officially recorded until September 1. No confirmation that this actually happened, but I’m figuring somebody would have called… Money was to be electronically deposited to our account, it’s not there yet but I would expect it to take a day and of course today is not really a day (Labor Day) despite the fact that I personally am at work.

New house joys:

• Cleaning of downstairs air handler of mold and sealing of duct work in crawl space have been completed; somewhat reduced musty smell.
• Cleanup of mold in crawl space is ongoing - old insulation is out, beams and subfloor have been cleaned and treated, most of the vapor barrier put down. To be finished tomorrow, installing clean insulation and finishing sealing the vapor barrier.
• Old flooring has been removed from living room, dining room, and downstairs hallway, and part of the master bedroom. New wood flooring is in a big stack in the dining room, acclimating to the environment. Master bedroom and den to be finished removing old flooring tomorrow, lay new floor and sand it Wednesday, apply polyurethane Thursday-Saturday. This is assuming 1) the subfloor moisture has come down to an acceptible level, between the work in the crawl space and being exposed to air above, and 2) the additional termite damage (and live termites!) discovered by the front door have been dealt with.
• Termite company that treated house about 5.5 weeks ago (soil treatment should have killed them all in 3-4 weeks) will be back tomorrow.
• Handyman dude will hopefully be out tomorrow or Wednesday morning to reenforce the damaged joists and install new subfloor, assuming he ever calls back like he said he would.
• I still need to find someplace for us to stay (including cats) for Thursday-Saturday nights. We’re using low-odor polyurethane but still, between being pregnant and having to leap from the front porch to the stairs in order to access the upstairs bedroom and bathroom… not to mention the bad scene if a cat escaped the bedroom prison and made a run for it towards newly finished floors…

After all that is done, there’s the painting of walls, windows that ought to be replaced, figuring out if there’s some way to adjust what is apparently a thermostatically controlled attic fan that runs until the attic is below 70 degrees (doesn’t happen often in summer when the low temp outside is 72 overnight!), Jeff wants to replace the carpet, still need a frame for the new bed, we’ll need area rugs to put on the new hardwood floors…

Meeting with the architect regarding ideas for kitchen renovation and studio addition on Friday…

Fortunately, the new bed is quite comfortable, as you can see we need our rest!

The new house is ours. Not without a little bit of last minute anxiety, but it all worked out OK. Just back from visiting it after Jeff got home from teaching, and am now way too tired to post any details, but the main point is: it’s done. We are now proud two-home owners, hopefully for only 2 weeks or so.

Packing has commenced. It’s hard work, and it’s a crazy busy time anyway - I went in to work (the paying kind) both yesterday and today for several hours each. My nap quota is so far behind I will never catch up.

Our agents have been out of town for 10 days but should be back around now, so we expect to hear from them tomorrow. We haven’t heard anything about how our buyers feel about the inspection reports they got on our house. We don’t have definitive word on what the seller has been up to at the new house, or what they are offering for the window replacement issues. But reinspection on the new house is Tuesday morning, our final walk-through is Wednesday morning, and closing is noon Wednesday.

Our new sofa - ordered for the current house, long before we saw the new one - should be here in the coming week, so we can have it delivered straight there. And we just bought a new bed, or rather, new mattress for which we are still in search of a frame (it’s a step up to king size). It can be delivered straight to the new house as well. Assuming closing goes off according to plan…

Movers are scheduled for Friday the 25th. Closing on the old house should be around the 30th but it isn’t scheduled yet.

So tired.

Our house is under contract! A grand 72 hours after being listed. Or rather, it will be as soon as the buyers get to their hotel and fax back the signed updated contract, but we have no reason to think that they won’t (knock on wood) - it is apparently a seller’s market.

There were two offers, actually, the second much stronger than the first in both price and background story/plans of the buyers, which was important to me along with the dollars. The slightly weird/awkward element was that the buyers are represented by the wife of our primary agent, and they generally work as a team, so they were doing the dual-representation dance. Can’t envy them that. The wife had to go stand around outside in the heat while the husband helped us with strategy - he had kept himself away from the details of the buyers on purpose.

So the negotiation happened in the dining and living rooms, basically. The buyers had given their agent some guidance on what they would negotiate, and she was able to reach them though they are headed out of town, to finish things off.

If all the dates hold, we’ll have two weeks between buying the new house and selling the old one. I’m already checking for recommendations for movers. Fortunately I have a good supply of boxes lined up from work - and now that we don’t have to keep the house looking immaculate, we can actually start packing, instead of saving it all for a mad dash at the end. And we can sleep in and relax tomorrow without worrying about clearing out every few hours for more showings!

Whiplash.

First showing was tonight, 6pm. So we went out to dinner. No idea what they thought of it, but they don’t seem to have stolen anything :)

Tomorrow we have one scheduled at 10am - I’ll be at work but Jeff will have to clear out, before we head up to see how the inspection of the new house has gone. And our agents are bringing another of their clients by on Friday morning at 11.

I have a feeling this weekend could be weird. Hope nobody wants to come before 9… or 10 would be nice…

There’s a For Sale sign in our front yard.

Eep!

The agent was coming over to take pictures to get everything ready for officially listing it later this week, we thought.  But he was impressed with how much we’ve gotten done to get the house ready, and said let’s do it tonight.  So there it is.  There won’t be a fancy flyer and such for a day or two, or pictures on the web listings, but the web listings are out there.

And there’s a sign in the yard.

In my excitement over having found a house, I skipped over two others we looked at in the week preceding.

#16 was on a pretty big lot, but very skinny and long. House was small, there was a pool right behind it which would get in the way of expansion (and not sure we want to maintain a pool at this phase of life).

#17 was also fairly small, on 2.7 acres that we could probably have split and built on the back half. But it wasn’t a very inspirational lot. Kinda flat. Horses next door, at least for the moment, but the whole area is expected to build up rapidly over the next few years.

So, back to #18, the one we are buying (knock on wood). Signed mortgage application paperwork today. Inspection is Thursday - and then the inspector comes over here to do a pre-inspection on our house. The agent is coming over tomorrow to take pictures and wants it on the market by the end of the week, so we are in frantic clean-up and fix-up mode. The local construction business is very busy so we’ve had a hard time finding anybody to do some inside painting and minor repairs for us, even the pressure washing for the deck was going to be next week until Jeff leaned on them. So Jeff is going to have to miss more time at the McColl Center in order to paint for the next few days.

Hopefully the agent is right that the house will sell pretty quickly, so we won’t have to maintain show-house conditions for too long. Neither of us is quite that tidy by nature!

We got it! Signed!

Not without last minute drama, of course. First offer was declined, with no counteroffer. Our agent called back to make a new offer - about 1/3 closer to the asking price from our original offer. At that time, the listing agent said there was another offer on the table, which he hadn’t mentioned before (but should have). Our agent was able to feel him out a bit and got the impression the other offer was between 5 and 10k less than the list price. So it was time for the best offer - which we decided was 5k below the list price, plus waiving the $4k allowance for fixing the root-lifted part of the driveway.

The seller accepted the offer, and our agent (with the listing agent’s permission) drove the contract up to the house to have the seller sign it right away - “not that we don’t trust you, but we’ve been burned on verbal agreements twice already”. So it is signed!

Our agent got to chat with the seller a bit as well - she was telling him all about how great the neighbors are, the history of the house, etc. He recommends that we meet her to hear it all in person. She also has some antiques that she won’t be able to take with her to her new smaller home, she’s going to make a list. 

Apparently we beat the other offer by $1k - not sure why they didn’t try to bid us up further, but we’re glad they didn’t. The other offer was from a couple moving here from New York who have never seen the house - they’re taking their agent’s word for it. I can’t imagine doing that! It would worry me a bit as a seller, what happens if they hate it when they see it - maybe that helped us.

The seller had a pre-inspection done and will go ahead and have those things repaired - damaged siding spots, repaint the concrete porch floor and power wash/re-stain the decks, fix a little bit of termite damage. Hopefully this means no surprises once we do our inspection. As long as it appraises, we should be set.

Eep!

 Today we went to see this house, in the same nice neighborhood as numbers 3, 11, and 15. The street is next to an elementary school - you can see the back of the school through the across-the-street houses’ back yards.

It has 9 windows on the front - 5 across the top, 4 on the bottom, 2 to either side of the front door.  Very symmetrical. Colonial is not really Jeff’s style. However, there are lots of other good things about it - which have led us to make an offer. (Exhaustion with the process may also be involved in the offer decision, but I don’t think it overruled any caution we should have had.)

Pros:

• 1.2 acre lot, at least half wooded (nice woods) with a stream at the back. Not a very active stream at the moment, but there’s water there. The back yard closest to the house is cleared and has garden potential. Room for a studio at the back of the cleared area or edge of the woods.
• 1,885 square feet, 3 bedrooms (plus a finished attic space that doesn’t count because the ceilings are low and it’s accessed via pulldown stairs, but it’s very attractive, I have called dibs for it to be “mine” if Jeff gets a whole studio building to be his!), 2.5 baths.
• 2 car garage with room around the edges for workshop. Also has stairs to access the unfinished attic area above - might be able to put a studio up there temporarily, if it was designed to carry weight (have to get a professional to check).
• Screened porch and two level deck at the back.
• Family room with fireplace, living room that’s a little odd because the only access is a door-sized door in the hallway right next to the front - might be a good office/study/quiet room away from the TV.
• Master bath only has one sink and is fairly small, but I like the way it’s laid out - door to room with closet and sink, then another door from there to the toilet and shower (no tub, but shower has a built in seat).

Cons:

• Kitchen is in OK shape but not to our tastes, and a little small, but space could be taken from the adjacent eat-in area.
• Family room is a bit dark due to panelled walls and screened porch outside its windows, but those could be painted or replaced.
• No windows at all on the ends of the house - might makes sense to add one or two at some point.
• Inside layout is somewhat chopped up - probably want to widen or add some doors to get larger spaces.
• Would need to improve access to the loft space - sacrifice some closet space to add a spiral staircase, perhaps.
• Looks like maintenance has been delayed in recent years, though the current owner is already having some repairs done to areas where the hardboard siding has been damaged and for some minor termite damage. Porch and deck would need repainting.
• It looks like a colonial. We’re assuming that the architect could help us with some simple changes (perhaps change the window style, get rid of the shutters, and add some sort of roof over the front stoop) that would mute that and update it a bit.
• Jeff doesn’t like any of the floor coverings. I could live with most of them for a while, though the floral burgundy carpet in the dining room might have to go.
• Not a lot of character overall (built 1980, so not really old, just older) - mostly the loft and the back yard. Presumably we can add some somehow…

OK, the con list looks longer than the pros, but I think that’s just how I grouped stuff.

So. There we are. Yet again waiting to hear back on an offer. Our initial offer was a little low (though within 10% of asking so hopefully not insulting) so we’re expecting a counteroffer, we’re not sure how high we want to go given the other costs we anticipate, but we can cross that bridge when/if we get there. Apparently the seller has a school-age son and would like to get this done and moved before school starts, so she has some incentive to come to a deal soon.

The agent has been telling other agents about our house, even though it isn’t really on the market yet. He’s getting a lot of interest. We really need to get on with the cleaning and tidying that will be required to show it - hopefully we won’t have to keep it that way long, but we do need to have it presentable for a few days at least! It will help with the eventual moving, too, whenever that might be. Too bad it’s also the craziest month for me at work! Moving simultaneously with that doesn’t sound like a ton of fun, but if I can quit having to skip out for a few hours to go look at houses, that will help!

Clearly I am not cut out to be a journal keeper. Of course, one could argue that I do have rather a lot going on right now…

Last Wednesday we saw numbers 14 and 15. Hey, it’s less than a week!

#14, House on the Corner - was, well, on a corner, fairly small lot, almost across the street from an elementary school, and had a good bit of traffic even though it’s not school time now. The house itself was somewhat interesting - good spaces in the basement for ceramics studio work, though the ceilings down there weren’t high enough for installation work. But the location, while undoubtedly attractive to many people, was fatal for us. Neither peace (privacy) nor quiet on the back deck.

#15, Good But Eh. We actually ended up looking at this one twice. It has potential for meeting our needs, it’s in a nice neighborhood (same area as #3 Bisected by Sewer Line and #11 Bring Your Own Horse, and not far from #13 Another Escaping Fish), but it just didn’t reach out and grab us.