House Hunting is Hard Work

[87Warrior]

Closing is set for tomorrow afternoon.... Septic system was to be replaced on Monday and knowing it wasn't completed yesterday, this evening I drove by and found this:

Image Not Found

Image Not Found

Called the realtor and asked why the septic system wasn't done. It boils down to a contractor who can't keep a time line. Even though the septic system is still under construction and still needs to be inspected once completed, he said we should close on time... Ugh, time will tell. I am getting anxious!

 

On a lighter note, I am looking forward to seeing this type of view everyday as I drive to or from town:

Image Not Found

Image Not Found

[terrawombat]

I wish you the best with the closing. I didn't think mine was going to go through on time as I drove by the night before closing (like you did) and saw the previous owners on their couch watching TV with all of the furniture in the living room. They were really cutting it close to the wire. During my final walk-through of the house, the wife was in the kitchen packing up the dishes and the husband was out in the garage loading up his truck. It was a little awkward, but we got through it. Closing was pretty painless since the sellers needed to leave by a certain time to get their kids from daycare and my title agent needed to get to another closing after mine so it went pretty quick. I also got all of the closing documents the night prior and read over them so there wasn't really any surprises.

 

I have basically moved the downstairs of the house in and got a ton of used furniture and garden equipment from my GF's father (good thing he doesn't throw anything away). Mower just needs a carb rebuild and engine cable which I've got on order and should be here Monday. Grass will be pretty tall by then...hope no one says anything.

 

Also met my neighbors and got the low down on my house and all of its owners. My one neighbor is an older lady in her 70's or 80's who has lived in her house since she was 10. She showed me where our property lines are and what belongs to me. Turn out I have a 10'x15' shed on the property that is mine. Agent told me it was the neighbors when we were looking at the house so I'm pretty stoked about that. My other neighbor is a younger couple with three little girls ranging in age from 1-6. They told me why my garage is the way it is. The previous previous owners were getting a divorce but couldn't afford to get their own places so the wife and kids lived in the house and the husband converted the garage into a living area. I started taking the drop ceiling panels down and found a few nice surprises - like a pair of garage door openers still in place. Still missing the horizontal section of the garage door tracks and I'm not having much luck tracking those down at a reasonable price, but keeping my eye on Craigslist for someone getting rid of an old garage door.

[87Warrior]

Home Sweet Home. It's time to crank Motley Crue! :rotf:

Image Not Found

[terrawombat]

Congrats man! I'm assuming you closed on time.

 

Now you get to spend the next few weeks packing, loading, unloading, unpacking. Don't think I've gotten a decent sleep in the last 14 days as its been late to bed early to rise so that I can get everything in its place and back to the way it was. Just did a 16 hour day yesterday driving up to NJ, getting a 16' moving van, packing it up with all of my stuff from my old place (and a few things from my shop) and driving back down to Maryland. About to close up my laptop and start unloading the thing. I estimate that I'll need at least one more 16' moving van to get the rest of the stuff from my shop and probably two trailer trips to get my vehicles...but that's for another day. I took enough tools with me during this trip to get me started on some small projects.

[87Warrior]

Thanks! I honestly don't know how we closed on time, but we did.

 

Luckily 85% of our stuff is already packed and sitting in a storage unit. We made the 100 mile move out of KC a month ago and put everything in storage while fussing with paperwork. One nice thing about living in rural KS is that everybody has a truck and trailer and are willing to help haul your stuff. I suspect we will have a garage full within the next 4 hours....

[terrawombat]

Ah, the joys of home ownership. I get a call today from the previous owner of the house. He tells me that the town I moved into has some law/rule/whatever that when a home inside of the town limits changes owners a home sewer & water inspection must be done. First I've heard of this, but the PO already scheduled a plumber to come in and do the work. Told him I could meet the plumber on a certain day at a certain time so he schedules the guy to come in then. Plumber shows up 30 minutes late and says the inspection will probably take 30 minutes. Call my boss and tell him I'll be about an hour late to work. One and a half hours go by and the plumber tells me he's finally done and that there is a small leak in my sewer line and then leaves. Huh? WTF? So, what now?

 

I receive an e-mail from the previous owner's real estate agent that says I need to contact my title insurance company because they guaranteed a clean title on the house and there is supposedly something wrong with my sewer line. I told her that my sewer line has nothing to do with the title, but I'd certainly look into it in the event that one of the many insurances I had to buy on the house will actually cover it (I certainly didn't expect to be putting in a new sewer line). Yay.

 

My day got even better when I checked my mailbox and saw a letter from the town saying my trees in the front yard were hanging on the telephone lines and I had to take care of it or else I would be fined. Guess I need to call up Verizon and hope they'll actually send someone out to take care of the branches...

[terrawombat]

Been working on my shop lately - ripped the drop ceiling out and replaced it with OSB. Somewhere down the line when I plan to put something over the OSB so brighten up the shop, but for now I'm house-poor and on a budget so oriented chip board will have to suffice. At least it smells nice. Apparently the previous, previous owner didn't believe in electrical junction boxes so I've been spending some time fixing his Mickey Mouse wiring job. Here's a couple of in process photos. Sorry for the poor quality but my nice digital camera is still at my old shop so I'm using my camera phone for now.

 

 

Rented a drywall lift from Home Depot. Talk about a time saver. Paid about what it would have cost to buy a new one on Amazon.com. Oh well, probably never need one again for another 10 years. You can also see the garage door opener that I found above the drop ceiling. Plugged it in and it still works

 

 

New, raised ceiling is up with plenty of clearance for jacking up vehicles and getting underneath. Still need to wire up a couple of the lights, but there is more electrical work that needs to be done prior to that happening. I have three lights working and that's plenty for now.

 

My next task is to actually get a working garage door. The horizontal tracks on one garage door were removed and disposed of (and apparently are a mutant track and hard to find). The other garage door was ripped down and replaced with a wall (see photo from my appraisal report):

 

 

I began dismantling the shelving that was built into the wall:

 

 

Then found out that the drywall was GLUED to the framework. Out came the sledgehammer. Unfortunately I had too much fun swinging the hammer and didn't get any pictures of the destruction. Got the wall down and found a lot of existing framework on the garage that needs to be replaced before I install the garage door I picked up on CL for $100. That will be my project for this week, if all of this rain ever stops...