It is a mystery

Awkward framed photo to cut my truck out of the photo lol

After tuesday's check panic, the closing went pretty smoothly. F did the walkthrough with our realtor just to make sure everything was out. The seller's pod was still in the driveway but they moved it by the time closing happened. I met up with F at the credit union to get the check and that was no problem and was done in ten minutes or less. The temporary debit card limit increase worked perfectly so if you ever need to do something like this, the other bank can take a debit card for large amounts so long as you get your bank to increase the limit.

I went and grabbed lunch at the new cafe in town that was started and is owned and run by trans and GNC folks and got chorizo tacos. Delicious and set my face on fire. I sat outside and brainstormed house things and it was lovely.

Then I went and picked up my PHF signed jersey that had been shipped to my old address because of a glitch in the auction companies website. I can't remember if I even posted about that here, but it got shipped to the wrong address back in April and I noticed last week. Thankfully, the maintenance people at the apartment complex had picked it up and I was able to get it!

Then to the closing! The closing office's AC was out, so we all went in a room, our attorney walked us through all the paperwork with probably more speed than usual but nothing was new or unusual and we got everything signed within an hour. Only hiccup was that we were told to make the certified check out to the seller but since the seller was closing on her new house today, her attorney wanted to handle the check. No big deal, there was a credit union location right around the corner and it was easy to get the check re-issued.

Then we owned a house! 

F and I zipped down to the house and started cleaning lol. She also had picked up new doorknobs that could be keyed somehow to the same key and replaced all the knobs. I did some general cleaning stuff, removing things from walls, moving shelves, poking at the carpet. Looks like there's plywood under the carpet layers so we should be good to lay new flooring over it although I need to make sure it's level and even.

Around 6:30, F's local family got there and we had dinner and cake (I made that monday night during crafting hangout) and sat on the porch and it was lovely. It was so quiet and perfect temperature and sitting on the porch was very nice. Apparently our little hill has some excellent wildflowers so I'm planning to keep that area clear for them. I need to remove some small trees that are growing.

(also not great womp womp, F and family were exposed to covid over the weekend, currently testing negative. we were so good about masks all day except we got too excited about the house and were in there without masks together so I'm being careful for the next few days and will plan to test monday/tuesday I think)

I don't think it's super sunk in but I've been thinking about it all day and we've been texting back and forth about plans and things. Work has gotten so busy so I won't make it down there again until this weekend. I'm taking a vacuum and cleaning supplies down and we are going to mop all the floors, vacuum everything, remove all the cobwebs, move the shelves the seller left out of the living room, rip up the carpet, tighten cabinet hinges, rasp down the pull out countertop thingy. Not too much for the weekend. Then we will start moving stuff in without putting anything in the living room. Order the plank flooring tomorrow night and it should be there within a week or so and we can lay it. I'm hoping to get my plants in the flower bed as well as some aggressively offered daffodil bulbs by A lol

Some more details about the house: it's built on a hill with the small porch leading on the first floor (porch visible in the picture), there is a second big porch on the far side of the hosue, first floor bedroom which will be mine, a bathroom with a shower and stacked laundry, the kitchen which has nice U counter with a three bowl sink (BRIGHT ORANGE), tons of cabinet space, and an antique stove that uses wood or propane in addition to a normal propane stove, dining area next to the kitchen, huge living room with lots of closet space, two bedrooms upstairs, one big and one small, full bathroom up there, and the half finished basement apartment. 14 acres total with most in woods. A shed that I can finally store things in and get them out of my truck.

House <3

We will be closing in a week.

Finally!

I already moved money from my savings to checkings account so I can write some really large checks. I will take at least that afternoon off work if not the whole day. We will do a walkthrough of the house that day (probably) or the day before.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa it's finally happening

We got the roof estimate yesterday and sent it to the attorney with our wants and finals and oh boy howdy things are getting weird.

a new roof is anywhere from 12k to 16k as quoted to us. Turns out the house had 3 layers of shingles what the heck. This house was not sold as-is so we could negotiate with the seller about a serious issue. The roof is a serious issue!

There was a list of other things that needed work including the windows which were also flagged as a major issue.

Our attorney sent the first offer to the seller's attorney of 12k credit to us.

Their attorney came back and said the seller just needed us to come down on that. uhhhh, that's not how negotiating works bud, even I know that.

Our attorney said we needed a firm number and their attorney said and I quote "I think she can do 1500"

shits getting weird! 

so F and I talked it over, we are willing to overlook all these other things wrong with the house if the seller is willing to credit back 6k, which is honestly, not a lot given when I talked over the list of fixes, we probably have 25k of stuff to be fixed with most of that being windows tbh, but a decent amount of other stuff to do. So for the seller to be so unwilling to work with us on 6k is just arg. it's a 290k sale! and yes, there's fees and commissions and other stuff. but come on

We'll see! we're waiting to hear back. If she isn't willing to do 6k, we're going to walk away. Yeah, we'll lose out on what we've paid out but come on. Work with us. I've got some fun adventures tomorrow so that will be a great distraction from thinking too much about this.

The home inspection was this afternoon with septic to come monday.

Overall, there a number of minor things and only two major things, one being the roof (expected) and the windows (not expected but not surprised). The minor things were things like, some outlets not having GFI protection, the bathrooms not having fans, things like that. The inspections talked us through what they thought were issues soon like the roof and some other stuff. They seemed impressed that we knew what we were talking about with regards to fixing things and had done research so that was nice. We've got some chinking to do, but it's a log home. I think the seller had someone sealing things up who didn't know what they were doing and they put spray foam insulation in, so we'll need to scrape that out and chink it. We got a sense of the maintenance that the seller does on a yearly basis which was awesome that she was there.

There was like 3 inches of rain yesterday so we got to see how wet the basement got and it was damp in one small corner, so that's good. We're still going to put in drain tile due to the hill+house meeting location but that's easy enough.

The two major things we need to get estimates for and then send those to the realtors and the attorneys and the attorneys fight it out, then we all agree on what that difference will be for closing. Should be a credit back by the seller or something but that's for the attorneys to handle. Then the bank can appraise the property. Then some other stuff, idek. We signed 1 zillion paperworks for the bank in the last week and I hadn't realized they sent things to the IRS to verify that we were telling the truth about our taxes. I was wondering why mortgages took so long and that's one reason. They also contact the Social Security admin to verify that we're real people too. 

F and I got to wander around the house and talk things over about what was going where. And poke at where the living room had been decreased to add in three very weird closets which was why the living room space connected oddly to the kitchen. Not bad, just weird.

We found a chimney in one of the weird closets and we eventually figured out that they had moved the wood burning stove from the center of the living room into the first floor bedroom where it had never been hooked up. When the seller had the brand new combo boiler/heater installed, they had installed it directly in front of the chimney cleanout. So that can't be used there. womp womp. We were discussing moving the wood stove to the living room anyway and sending the chimney out the side of the house. It doesn't make sense to have the wood stove in the most remote room in the house and also with the fancy new system, heating costs would be low anyway. So the stove would be for fun/backup. Removing the old chimney would probably be done as the roof gets replaced since it goes through two rooves somehow.

There was an old kitchen stove in the house, that the seller pointed out last time and this time she actually showed us that it was still a usable stove! I'll have to take a picture and do some research but it was both propane and wood fired. Neat stuff. There was also a generator hookup for the house so she's leaving the cord for that. We'll need to buy a generator but it should be an easy plug in and flip switch in basement.

There were some issues in the basement apartment but nothing major. We knew we'd need to clear that all out and do some work down there.

But nothing about these things made us run screaming into the woods, so that's cool.

We figured out where the piano is going and which bedroom will be an office/craft room and who gets what bedroom. It was a hilarious coin flip because neither of us cared, so I eventually just claimed the downstairs because I was more likely to be going out the door early and it was closer to the ktichen. Also turns out the one small bedroom (that will be crafting/office) has an open sound to the living room which is facilitated by the terrible sealing around the closet chimney so no one is sleeping in that room.

F approves of the future workshop yay, so long as we build her a garage bay or lean to for her car. We'd have to take down some trees and level a spot but the driveway is large enough that we can take a small bit of it. That's a long term thing. The shed that is on the property right now is actually in good condition other than it's location. It just needs to be jacked up and leveled and better placed but otherwise the actual construction is good for gardening/outdoor storage.

The seller is very motivated and has started packing and found herself a new place. So we're very happy about that too.

I got indian food takeout on the way home. Took 20 mins longer than expected for it to be done but so worth it because I got these fried dough balls on a whim and there's no way they are just lentil and rice flour but they were so good and they gave me so many of them. It was a grocery too so I grabbed a couple of snack type things.

We have the signed offer papers in hand and to the attorney and bank. We need to upload 1 zillion documents to the bank and do another application thingy which we will do tomorrow. Turns out we make ~1000 dollars over the limit for the first time homebuyer program. Possibly due to the increase in income I had in 2021 which was over 1k. Or to the fact that F makes not quite 2x what I do. Oh well, we can afford it conventionally so it's fine in the end.

Good faith check is being mailed monday.

Next: inspection arrangement

We will be submitting the formal offer tomorrow with all the paperwork and the seller has invited us to dinner??? because she liked us???

:D

We have a very good feeling about this

We've heard nothing about the farmhouse so we are moving on for real. This is getting silly. I get that there's three layers of communication but this really doesn't bode well for future working with the seller. 

We're seeing four houses this afternoon which are all pretty promising.  Two are closer but smaller lots, two are further but have some decent acreage.

I'm going to stop through my storage unit after and find the box with my misc papers and find that last checkbook that I know I have. I'm hoping it's really in the box I think it is. I'm pretty sure it was in one of the last boxes I packed and it should be on the top of a pile. I'm bringing my headlamp because I dropped my phone the last time I was in there and it was extremely difficult to pick up. 

The very first house we put an offer on, where it was us and one other offer and the buyer accepted the other one....it fell through. Apparently it was due to the fact that the buyers wanted to make some kind of big changes and wanted it grandfathered in and the town wouldn't accept it. We're trying to find out more details on what they were looking at changing but we're going to put in our offer again.

This is the old farmhouse on an acre with a great barn and the giant kitchen. It's so quiet. It will need some work and we need to see what an inspector says but.....we'll see.....

Meetings have all gone well, I've got one more tomorrow.

I donated blood this afternoon and somehow managed to bleed all over, I think right after I put my arm down, I didn't put enough pressure on the gauze. No big deal.

They aren't kidding about not doing strenuous activities though.

I walked up the hill and stairs into the apartment, took my shirt off (because it had blood on it) and had to lay down on my bed for a couple of minutes.

I think if I donate again, which I probably will, I'll ask about being able to sit up slightly so I can look around and also use my phone for something to do. Or bring earbuds because it was all made kinda uncomfortable by boredom.

Interestingly enough, a couple of Amish folks were there to donate blood. There was also at least three other queer people which was pretty cool. Being around other people? wild.

The houses we zipped out yesterday to see were both fine. Nothing amazing, we didn't love them so we passed on both of them. One was an old farmhouse that had been incredibly lovingly restored and improved, including putting out a photo album about the house that included wallpaper scraps and old photos. They also had a list of improvements they had made on the table. New windows, they had probably stripped it down to studs, insulated and sheetrocked, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately it was on a road that had not a ton of traffic but consistent traffic. The other was a very generic ranch house in the middle of nowhere. The property was beautiful and quiet but the house, I don't know. It was fine. Weirdly laid out.

I thought about doing sidejob work tonight but I'm not going to lol. I'll try and power through some of it this weekend because I've got a lot of requests. I think the company had two people leave who normally do those plans so suddenly I have a lot of work. It's nice because money, but I do have a social life and do other things after work. And the days when we house hunt, I definitely don't get any of the work done.

We'll probably look again this weekend but only briefly because F has a whole bunch of family stuff going on, so we might see one or two squeezed in.

The seller accepted the other offer :| Oh well. We knew there was a chance that would happen when we put the offer on. None of the other houses we saw were what we were looking for, so we're back to searching. We might go see a couple this weekend that have just popped up.

I drove to the nearest office to have my computer looked at. It would not find windows each time it booted, so I had to reset it to bios default each morning. It's been doing that for a while but I am finally not-busy enough that I could spare the time to get it looked at. Turns out there was just a checkbox on the setup utilities that got unchecked. I dropped it off around 9, ran over to the fiber mill and picked up my washed fleece. I also stopped by the gluten free bakery since it was on the way and got bread, bagels and a cinnamon bun.

Drove back to the office, read stuff on my phone for a bit, then finally went in and picked my computer up. Turns out the IT person installed some stuff but also wiped it? I don't know. They upped the security on it because of potential cybersecurity stuff but now I need to log into all the programs and stuff again.

Drove back in the snow since that started around noon. They were predicting 1-2 inches and as of our walk at 4:30, there was 4 inches and it was still snowing. Mara was having a great time.



I've been watching the Paralympics since it is on Peacock like the Olympics and I really feel for the Ukrainian athletes who I'm pretty sure left for China before Russia invaded. The announcers are talking around it but they aren't pretending like everything is normal so there's that.