Scheduling

Well, we're through Christmas and fast approaching the new year. It's been nice to have a bit of a break. Too bad we have to start packing up our stuff now. Oh well. It'll probably be sitting in boxes for at least a year, if not longer. We'll see. At least one of the bedrooms doesn't need too much work. It's going to be box-o-rama for us for a while.

In the meantime, our gutters are scheduled for the 4th, not the 6th. This means that we could have our money out in a week and can finally go to town. If, of course, we can get the appraiser out there to check our work and give the okay. We're crossing our fingers. Regardless, we're having a new electrical box put in on the 11th, which will be a good, good thing. We have to dig a hole underneath the meter 3 feet deep and 3 feet long so that we can run the wire underground at a later date. No problems there.

So, starting next week, we're going to pack and get our stuff ready to move over. Today someone came by and looked at the apartment. Hopefully he liked it and wants to live here starting February. If so, we're golden. It'll be really hard to leave this place- it was our first home together, and it has treated us well.

Upward and onward! Happy New Year!

We're Floored

So this week we've been priming and painting closet shelves and doors and the doors to the master bedroom. They cleaned up nicely, and today the carpet installers came. We bought our carpet at Carpet Liquidators. The service was good, the prices were good, and the installation seems pretty good, to me. Of course, I'm not a carpet snob, but it seems like they did the best they could with the uneven, pitted subflooring. And everybody we dealt with, from the sales guy to the installation guy, was very, very nice. Funny, getting the house was such a pain in the ass, and everybody we dealt with was so horrible, but so far all the contractors we've dealt with (carpet guys, plumbing guys, stove guy) have all been really great. It's nice to have some things go right.

Anyway, the entire house is now covered with nice, new, cheapo grey-blue carpet. I actually really like the color, and it goes well with the poorly painted walls in the rest of the house. The master bedroom looks very nice. If it had new windows, it'd look like a brand-new room. I feel good about moving in there in a couple of weeks. It's still going to be very, very difficult to leave our current apartment. It's so cozy and nice, and we love the view, but the new place will serve us well.

I think that having the carpet in gives us a much better idea of just how cute the little rat hole can be someday. I'm really looking forward to it. The carpet changes the whole look and feel of the house, and it's not even nice carpet. Imagine what wood floors will do...

The installation of the carpet also marks the beginning of our break from the rat hole. We're going to put doors back on tonight, and then we'll be too busy with the holidays to mess with it any more, not to mention we'll be out of town. So, we'll let the carpet off-gas while we're gone, and when we come back, we can focus on actually moving into our newly-floored place.

Flashing and fumes

The weekends just aren't long enough. This used to be because it didn't seem like a long enough break between work weeks. Now it's because we don't have enough time to get done what we need to get done. The rat hole takes up a lot of our time, and we still need to keep up with our chores around our current place. Funny how dishes and laundry sneak up on you. Oh well.

This weekend we did not end up showing our place. Oh well. It gave us a good excuse to clean up, I suppose. We did buy carpet, however. Hooray for remnants and discounts. We liked our carpet place. The service so far has been good, the price was right, and they're installing it on Wednesday. I think it's a blue-gray color. We'll see. The installer fella came out yesterday and measured everything. He seemed really nice and cared about his work. He appeared disappointed when he found out that we didn't really care how well he installed it, since we're basically just using it as a dropcloth until we do the electrical and the walls and install our hardwoods. So far so good with the carpeting, and then we'll only have the gutters to do before we can get our money out.

We also purchased flashing and slipped it under the edges of the shingles on the roof to protect the wood until we get the gutters in. I spent a good portion of the afternoon on the roof. I tried to sweep it while I was up there, but too many branches and leaves were actually frozen to the shingles. Stupid cold weather. It'll rain soon enough, I guess, and that'll take care of that.











Today we finished painting the master bedroom, so once the carpet's in, we could move in, except we won't. It seems like an actual, liveable room. It seems CLEAN, and I feel good about putting my clothes and furniture, and even sleeping, in there. We're pretty happy with it. We also primed several doors, which filled the house with fumes. Lovely. It's funny how toxic chemicals in the air, even through a respirator, can dehydrate you.

Week in review

This week was crazy. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. I can't even remember Monday. Seems like we fiddled with the stove, did some cleaning, some patching, and called it good. Tuesday we didn't get to go over there except for some patching and putting pellets in the stove, because we were helping a friend pick up furniture from another friend. Wednesday we cracked down and got the closets primered. They look sooooo different! They actually look clean and nice. I'm even almost comfortable about hanging clothes in there. Imagine that! Last night we were going to go over and actually start painting, but then we got a call from someone wanting to see the apartment. They wanted to come over last night, but we told them it wasn't a good time. They're coming over tonight instead. We decided to forgo painting in order to clean the place up. So, even though we didn't go over to the rat hole, we cleaned a-plenty. Our current place has been sort of neglected because we're never there. It's nice and tidy now, though, and we'll see if the people actually want to rent our place come February.

On the agenda for tonight: painting! And painting. And maybe even some more painting. We'll probably be doing that most of this weekend. We're also working on scheduling the gutter guys to come over and install that stuff. Once the painting is done, we'll schedule the carpet, and then we'll start moving in.

A Long Sunday

We had a full day on Sunday. A friend came over and helped, too. Big thanks to the K-bot! He and my wife primered the master bedroom (most of it). I had forgotten a few supplies, so they went and bought some. This exciting picture is of the same section of wall that I patched last week.

I spent all day in the crawl space directly below the master bedroom repairing a small leak in the cast iron drain line. I hate plumbing. This experience confirms my dislike. I had gotten an estimate for the repair a couple of weeks ago. The plumbing guy was really nice and told me I could easily do the repair myself and save some money. He suggested I get a cast iron pipe cutter/cracker, cut the pipe on both sides of the leak, and replace the section with ABS pipe using rubber couplers. That sounded easy enough.

I went to the equipment rental store and rented the cracker. The salesman walked me through how to use the tool. I crawled under the house, tried to use it, and successfully got the tool stuck on the pipe with no way to remove it. K-bot even came under the house to add his strength to the lever arm and all we did was bend the tool's arm! I just don't see how the cracker was supposed to be able to even crack the pipe! We bent the arm straight again, and I went and got a sawzall (which I should have gotten in the beginning) and tried to cut the pipe, thus freeing the pipe cracker and the leaky joint. The cut on the right side of the leak took forever and four blades. With only one blade left and one more cut to make, I went back to the rental store and got more blades. The guys at the store said it must have been one hard pipe (it was!). They offered the use of a sledge-hammer. The second cut went very quickly and I only went through 2 blades! The pipe on the left side of the leak must have been a different material, or my technique had vastly improved! I am also very thankful about not getting sprayed in the face by water from the drainline. I'd been trying to avoid this the entire time. I used a grinder to clean up the ends of the iron pipe(s) and remove some of the embossed lettering. I inserted the ABS pipe and tightened the collars. All done. I hope it doesn't leak! I'll go under and check later this week. The repair in the drain line is at a low point and I think that this is not good. When we redo the bathrooms (and probably connect to the sewer), this problem will be eliminated.

By the way, I returned the pipe cracker with the section of pipe still trapped in the tool. They said it was okay. I hope they don't charge me to remove the pipe. There was no way I could do it, though.

Oh, the pellet stove seems to be working well. It went out over Saturday night because we turned it down too far. We are trying a higher setting now. I feel like we own a real house now that it doesn't smell musty and is warm. I know this feeling will just continue to grow as the house slowly becomes a home.

We like it hot, hot, hot

Today we had the pellet stove guy over. He showed up two hours early, which worked out very well for us, and was a very nice guy. We had no experience with pellet stoves, and so he walked us through everything. He cleaned the stove, made it work, and explained everything as he did it. So now we have heat. Hooray! We could redo the pipe, if we wanted to, but since we're not going to use it past this winter, we're not going to put the money in it. He did say that we could rehab the paint job and probably get some money for it if we decided to sell, which was nice. We had also been led to believe that we wouldn't be able to find parts for it, but he set us straight. Now we feel like we're on the right page with our pellet stove, and it's been burning all day. The rat hole no longer smells like musty old house, but like warm, slightly musty house. It's great. it's going to be so nice not to have to wear six shirts whenever we go work over there. Yay.

We also did some more work with the mud and drywall. Tomorrow we fix the sewer pipe, begin priming and painting the master bedroom, and begin work on the gutters. Once we're done with the painting, we'll probably put the carpet in, finish the gutters, get our money out of escrow, and start working on the electrical.

Hole(s) in the wall

Last night we patched the holes in the master bedroom wall. I am not completely sure why the holes are there. At first, I thought they were opened up so the valves for the tub could be repaired (the full bath is on the other side of this wall), but I don't think so any more. They really just look like exploratory holes. Maybe a family pet disappeared into the walls and these holes are how the pet was removed. Who knows?

I decided to cut out one big piece of wall instead of patching the four holes separately. This way I could just use one big piece of drywall to make the patch and have even, regular seams to mud and tape. The piece I removed was 40"H x 34"W. I exposed half a stud on the left side and one in the middle which gave me something solid to attach to.



Here I am looking at crud inside the wall. Is it a shoelace? I'm glad we didn't find bones. (There are animal bones in the crawlspace under the house.) My spouse is filling nail holes around the room while I patch the big hole.

I used the old piece of drywall to size the new piece and locate the hole for the electrical outlet box. I used these nice little drywall brackets to attach the top and right side of the new piece to the existing wall. These brackets worked great! The front part of the clip breaks off so nothing shows after the install (except the screw heads, which get mudded).

So far I've only put on two layers of mud (joint compound) and one layer of drywall tape (paper, not the self-adhesive mesh). I don't know if I'll do more. The wall will likely get demolished when we start redoing the electrical. Right now, we're just trying to make a room habitable so we have some place to live. This is also the first time I've worked with drywall other than spackling holes. While this wasn't the best job, I learned a lot and future drywall work will go more easily. For one thing, I don't have to be quite so anal about my cuts and the fit. Mud covers all.

Aaaand...more windows

Window of opportunity

It was the night of the nasty windows. Nasty, mold-ridden, black windows. Not much to say. I think we used Tile-X with bleach. It kicked mold ass. Tile-X + grout brush = not-so-moldy windows. Good enough, until we get them replaced, which we will do, because they're aluminum, single-pane pieces of crap. So there. Walls were washed with TSP, trisodium phosphate, to clean and prep them for painting. Because boy, we will need to paint.

Tomorrow we patch drywall. Hooray! Once that's done, the master bedroom will be just about ready to live in. Putting the plastic stuff over the windows is also on the list, and a tech is coming to look at the pellet stove on Saturday. The stove we have is no longer made- the company went under a while back. So we can't really sell it, because whomever bought it wouldn't be able to get parts for it. Oh well. We'll use it this winter and try to unload it later.

Here's the improved window.

One down, two to go

The sink is officially in. It only leaked for a little while, but then we figured it out and fixed it. Now it's perfect. It's now an even tinier bathroom than before. I really like the sink, though, and it was satisfying to have put it in ourselves. It's a nice height, and it'll still look good when we redo the bathroom altogether.

The sink is done. Only the gutters and the floor coverings to go! We'll have to wait until this weekend to do the gutters, since we'll need daylight. We'll also hopefully be enlisting friends, some of which have installed gutters recently. The floor coverings can happen soon, whenever. We're just having carpet remnants installed until we put down hardwood floors someday.

In the meantime, we'll work on cleaning walls and prepping them for painting. There are also a few holes in the walls we'd like to patch. Plenty to do. We're also going to try to make sure the pellet stove is in good condition to use- it sure would be nice to have some heat in there.

That sinking feeling

Today was day one of the installation of the sink in the full bathroom. Installing the sink is one of the three things we need to do to pull our money out of escrow. It seemed like a nice, small step, and we were pretty excited, since it would be the first thing we did to actually try to improve the little rat hole. So far it's just been cleaning, which is necessary but more of an undoing of past sins against the house than actual improvements. We went to Home Depot, cruised the aisles for a while, and finally found a darling sink. It's a pedestal sink, which works out well, since that's what was in there before. There is NO space in this bathroom, so a vanity was out of the question. Fine by me. We pay a total $40 for the sink and pedestal and got a cute fixture, gather the rest of the equipment we'll need, and head to the rate hole. It's when we begin the installation that we realize just how low the original sink was. Seriously low. Like a foot lower than the new sink. Previous owners must have liked to sit on the pot and brush their teeth or something. That means that we get to drill through the tile, wallboard, and drywall to fasten the new sink to the wall. It also turns out that the drain pipe we got wasn't long enough because of the sink's new height. Great. Many trips home and to assorted hardware stores later, we finally get back to the hole and prepare to start drilling. This is when we find out that the batteries for our electric drill have died. Not just one, but both of them. So, we just went home. There is only so much Home Depot a person can stand in one day, and the little hardware store didn't carry them. Just as well. There are things that need to be done around our current abode to prepare for the week to come. We'll finish the sink tomorrow.

In the meantime, though, here're a couple pictures of our new little sink, even though it's not actually connected to anything yet.

Clean-fest

Today was the day we knocked out the rest of the cleaning. We got over there this morning and set to work. The master bathroom is now shiny with glory. Okay, not really, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was when I started. The drawers in the vanity were pulled out, and when I was dusting while the drawers were being cleaned, I discovered a poor little spider that had been mashed into oblivion when one of the drawers had been pushed in long, long ago. Oh well. But now that room's as clean as it'll ever be. I'm not sure I'd walk on the floor barefoot, though, even though subsequent passes with wet cloths showed it to be perfectly clean.

We got another few inches of snow in our neighborhood last night, but that did not deter our wonderful friends K&C. They showed up and many windows were washed, scraped free of tape, and the nook's floor actually looks like a real floor now and not a mud hole. It's great. Much was accomplished, like this cabinet door. The one on the right is coated with the original schmutz. The one on the left looks even better in person.











We're still trying to come up with a final plan of action. It's sort of down to doing the wiring before the carpeting or doing the carpeting, getting our money out of escrow, and then doing the wiring. We'll see. We need to talk it out a bit more. Tomorrow, at least, we're set- we're off to buy a bathroom sink and some cleanser that will get the mildew off the aluminum windows in the master bedroom, which are NASTY with the stuff. In the near future we'll assess the gutter situation.

In the meantime, though, it's back to jammies and tea and mulling over the floor plan, deciding where we want things to be, and we raise our cups to our lovely friends and the super job they did today. We couldn't have done it without them.

Bathroom mania

Yesterday evening was another fun-filled adventure into the realm of bathroom filth. Even though the master bath is smaller than the full bath, it took a lot longer to clean. So long, in fact, that I didn't finish it in my allotted two hours. The shower itself was well, shudder-ific. Actually, the tile and grout weren't so bad. Nor even the floor. It looked worse than it was. This is because there was caulking on TOP of dirt. So what looked dirty was actually sealed away, well out of reach of my scrubby. Once I got the tile cleaned, I thought, oh, what the hell, I'll get that cobweb up there in the corner of the ceiling, where it's painted. I reached up with my paper towel and swiped at the ceiling, only to recoil in horror as a black, tar-like substance comes away with the towel. Turns out the entire ceiling of the shower stall was coated with this nasty stuff, almost like someone was smoking something in there, but it wasn't the usual color of cigarette smoke. It was an entirely different black than the fungus growing on the bathroom window, some of which came off the aluminum when Mr. Bleachy Toothbrush came for a visit, some of which is just stuck in the paint and won't come out.

This is a "before" picture of the lovely vanity. Oh, what a fine tile job this is. I can only hope we can do a better job ourselves. I've never tiled before, but I'm pretty sure I can avoid caulking over dirt.

All this simply reaffirmed for us that we need to just get rid of that bathroom and make a new one. The full bath, on the other hand, is totally saveable. We just need to make more room for it. The tub might also be too damaged to repair- it seems the previous owner's workers liked to pour caustic chemicals in it. *sigh*

Here's an "after" shot. Oh, you gotta love the color choices. I don't think I will pick "salmon," but that's just me. I'm sure there are lots of people that love it. I don't know why- I'm not a fan of colored sinks. Give me shiny white any day of the week.

Tonight we return to the master bath and take a final crack at it. I have to get the crusties off the vanity drawers, and the walls need a serious scrubbing. No doubt I'll find more lovely black crap coating everything. At least the toilet cleaned up nicely. I need to do the floor, too. Fear the floor. I'm not sure I'll even be able to tell when it's clean. Oy. My only consolation is that so far, so good.

Scrub-o-rama

We've discovered that cleaning the house takes up ALL of our time, hence the lack of posts. We come home, eat, go to the rat hole, clean, come home, sleep. Every single day.

Monday we just looked the place over, documented what needed to be done, and went home. Tuesday we stocked up on cleaning supplies and bought a dehumidifier (which is working wonders, especially since the windows are single-pane and suck), and a friend of mine came over and graciously helped us clean. She gets a big, shiny, gold star, because she rocks. We worked on the kitchen and determined that vegetarian kitchens are much easier to clean because of the lack of meat-particulate grease coating every single surface. We actually spent most of the hour and a half on the stove alone, since it was gross. But it looks like a normal stove again, and once we buy an element to replace the one that's missing, we'll be able to use it. That's good, because the hot water heater doesn't work, and this way we'll be able to boil water on the stove and use that. Heh heh.

The reason the hot water heater doesn't work is because somebody cut the lines to it. Maybe the previous owner guy. Whatever.

So last night, Wednesday, we went back and cleaned some more. I tackled the full bathroom, which the previous guy had his workmen using as a dumping ground for all sorts of vile liquids. It was horrible. I scrubbed and scrubbed while my spouse dealt with the hot water heater, crawling around the house following wires. When he was done, he swept and dusted and took care of various other things going on.

Before


After several hours, we finally have a usable bathroom, even though it doesn't have a sink. Unfortunately, the pictures don't do it justice. The toilet in particular just looks like a normal toilet and not the creature from the Black Lagoon. Hooray.

Notice the brand-new shine on the tile in the photo below. Oh yeah. ^_^ The floor was also exceedingly disgusting, and many minutes were spent with a razor blade, scraping caulking off the tile. I don't know what we'll do with the wallpaper...


Tonight I tackle the other bathroom while he cleans windows, closets, and more floors. Whee hee.

After

Finally, we begin

The house is ours, and the first of the holidays that round out the year is over. Now it's time to settle down and begin work in earnest. Tonight we're simply going to go over to the rat hole and take a look around, deciding what needs to be explored, what needs to be done first, what can be done simultaneously. I guess it's a quick and dirty planning session. While we're figuring that out, we'll begin cleaning. Well, we'll probably start that tomorrow. The place definitely needs a good cleaning, especially the bathrooms. *shudder* We bought plenty of gloves and other supplies.

For a while we were considering putting in wood floors right away, since there's a sale on the flooring we want, but we just don't know enough yet to want to make that purchase. So, carpet it is, at least for the moment. That way we won't have to worry about ruining our floors as we work. We can also put off making some of the structural decisions, since the carpet will be temporary.

We decided that we'll scrape the money together to try and stay in our apartment through mid-January. It was just going to be too difficult to try and clean and repair the rat hole on top of packing up, moving, and cleaning the current place on top of the holiday preparations.

We'll start posting pictures again as work progresses.

The key to the situation

This morning we finally got the keys. Turns out the keys were outside the whole time, even though we had gone out on Wednesday and Friday and couldn't find them. Our agent did find them this morning and re-hid them so that we could find them. And find them we did. We went inside, walked around, and realized just how much crazy work we have ahead of us. We're going to have to come up with a schedule soon so we can figure out what we're doing when. We're in, though! We're finally in! I want to start today. I want to get in there, rip down crappy wood paneling, clean up filthy bathrooms, and start to make the place ours. All in good time, I suppose.

Where are the keys?

I guess everybody left town for Thanksgiving and the keys didn't get put in the place they were supposed to be. Very disappointing! Our real estate agent might take some time and retrieve them tomorrow (or Friday). We've paid for the ride but it hasn't started yet. Well, that's not true. This has been one hell of a ride!

Rat Hole, sweet Rat Hole

So that's that. The paperwork is supposed to be recorded today. When it does, our agent's going to give us a call and we'll go get our keys. This is the fun part- the keys are hidden somewhere on the property, and we have to find them. Apparently the selling agent isn't very local (local to Washington, just not local to Kenmore), and so he doesn't have time to actually hand our agent the keys or something. Sounds to me like neither of them ever want to see us again. Well, whatever. I guess I don't care so long as we get the keys. And then we'll give our friends the grand tour tomorrow when they all come visit us for Thanksgiving. Then the fun of trying to repair the place begins.

I'm actually very excited. I can't believe we own the house. I'm really looking forward to spending hundreds of hours fixing it up. At the very least, it'll be good stories to tell my grandkids when I'm older- "When I was young, your grandfather and I bought our first home, and let me tell you, it was a rat hole...."

Thanksgiving's just around the corner. Have a happy holiday!

Closed!

Well, we did it! Rather, it happened. We got to go down to the escrow office and sign a load of paperwork. We kept forgetting to sign with our middle initials, too! Had to go back and make a few corrections. The escrow lady looked really bored. I don't think I could handle that job. We will most likely get the keys on Wednesday evening!

And now the fun begins...

More on that later.

The end is near

So after all that drama and stress, we might close today. As with everything surrounding this house, nothing is certain. If we don't, it'll be because the lender couldn't get their crap together. Of course, that's pretty much been the story of this house. It's been the people surrounding it that have made the journey such a roller-coaster ride. Anyway, if we close today, we'll probably close around 4pm. If we don't close today, we have to close before noon tomorrow. If we don't close tomorrow by noon, that's the end of the road.

I would really, really like to close today. Even after all the garbage that's been going on, I would still love to have the property. We could really make it nice, I think, and it would be a great way for us to build equity. Plus it will keep us busy (because everyone knows we have problems keeping ourselves busy *grin*).

City Hall and Utilities

I finally had some time in my schedule to go down to city hall and do some research. I should have done this weeks ago. City Hall planning told me about sub-division. It may be possible to sub-divide the lot in half in five years. Maybe. It’s really close. There may not be quite enough square footage and access could be an issue (the resulting second lot couldn’t use the driveway and would have to access the private road that runs next to the house). The lady I spoke with said that things could change a lot in five years, though. For example, the private road could become public. Or the lot size requirements may change.

The water and sewer utility told me some very interesting stuff, too. We will have to move our water meter service. This will cost about $2000. This doesn’t include the trench or line from the meter to the house. Connection to the sewer is a big one. $7205 for the permit and connection fee. Another $3500 for a contractor to connect from the sewer to the house. The gas connection and line would be $842 (not including the trench). I’m still waiting for information on electricity.

Needless to say, we won’t be jumping into the sewer connection right away.

I also found out today that we will not be getting another extension. The 25th is do or die.

And the lender is kicking herself for not using her regular appraiser.

Extension

Just got an extension. That didn't seem to be too hard. Now the official closing date is the 25th. Since next week is Thanksgiving, we're not really getting that much extra time. Oh, well.

Hurry up & wait... and hurry up...

Our lender called this morning. She's having a new appraiser do his thing - deadline Thursday. She tells me we could close on Friday. She asks if I have the insurance arranged. I said no. She needs the name and contact info today (by 3:00)! I had gotten a quote a couple of weeks ago, she said it was high and that she'd get me the name of a guy to get a new quote from. She hadn't done that, yet. I talk to her new insurance guy today. He gives me a quote of $2549 a year! Gulp! The original was $900! Regualr houses have insurance policies between $400 and $600 a year. Her guy was not so good at finding a good deal. But he is across the hall from her. Location, location, location. Now the lender has the contact information of the insurance company so they can submit a binder request. The insurance guy said he can turn that around in 20 minutes. Why is some stuff so easy?

We have to keep our Friday open, though. We just may close.

See-saw

Up and down we go, back and forth...

So the appraiser wouldn't budge. The lender got on his case about being slow. He said it was too bad. So we're not using his appraisal. The lender's own appraiser (who we should have used in the first place - just my opinion) is going out on Thursday and thinks they'll be able to give us what we need. We could close on Friday, or we could need an extension. Our agent talked to the seller's agent about lowering the price. The seller's agent said that the seller was very difficult to work with.

Whew. Looks like we're back in rapid-fire land, possibly.

Well, okay

This morning we have a bit more clarity surrounding the situation, I guess. Turns out the appraiser DID appraise the property for what we offered for it. What he didn't do was appraise the property for what we offered for it PLUS the money that will go in the escrow account to make our whole financing scheme work. So, the lender is going to try and straighten that out today. If he won't do that, we can still have the lender's appraiser go do it. Our other option is have our agent go and ask the seller to lower his price. If he doesn't want to do that, I guess he can walk away. I don't want him to be able to walk away. I want to buy the house. Yargh.

Regardless, we're not closing on the 19th. The underwriter still has to do his or her thing, and bunches of other things need to happen as well. We're not sure what the new timeline will be, though. Hopefully we'll know soon. I feel like that's becoming our catch-phrase with all things surrounding the rat hole...

Maybe tomorrow

So the appraisal was turned into the lender today. Apparently she called the moment it crossed her desk.

Unfortunately, we still don't know what exactly that means. It's strange because this appraiser actually valued the property less than the asking price. Even though it was the seller's appraiser. Um, okay. The first appraisal we had with the first lender, the one that said absolutely don't lend on this unless it's fixed first, said it was easily worth what we offered for it, even in spite of the problems. So the lender's going to find out if the appraiser made a mistake. If he says he didn't, the lender's going to use their own appraiser.

And then we will wait some more. Although she says that her appraiser can turn it around pretty quickly.

Wonder why we didn't get to use that appraiser in the first place.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll find out. Oh, it would be so nice to find out. In spite of all the waiting and worrying and wondering, I would still like to get the little house.

Strange things afoot

This whole situation is strange. The appraiser thing is the most strange, although it gives us bargaining power at the end of the deal, should we decide we still even want the house. The conflict of interest created by using the seller's appraiser (which we didn't even find out until after the appraisal was already done- very shady) should give us some leverage, one way or another.

And, of course, when we tell our friends and family about the situation, all sorts of red flags go up. It's very strange that this is so difficult. People buy fixer-uppers all the time. The house isn't even in that bad of condition. It's structurally sound and really just needs cosmetic work and a lot of time put into it. Yet if a house could be treated like a leper, this house is certainly being dealt with in such a mannter. We don't really understand what the deal is.

After discussing it at length, we've decided that there must be something else funky going on with the house, something we don't know about. I'm not talking about dead bodies or vengeful spirits or anything, although that could be interesting. No, we suspect that there's something legal going on. We're going on a quest on Monday to try and figure out what's up with the house. Hello, county records. Here we go.

Gift Money

Here's my first post to the blog...

As the other half of the rat hole hopeful, it's been fun to watch the blog take form. Well, maybe not. There sure are a lot of hoops to jump through!

As you may have read, we've settled on a lender who came up with a pretty creative way to get us a loan. It requires 5% down and then we draw on the equity in the house to get that 5% back so we can repair the house. My father has been wonderful and given us most of that 5%. I deposited it into our bank account on Monday. Today I find that the bank has put a hold on the deposit! Not only that, the hold clears after our closing date!!! This really sucks!

I call the phone number on the hold notice letter. This person can't help me. Apparently banks use to be able to clear holds very easily. This person tells me it doesn't work that way anymore. She says to go to my bank in person and beg. I'm gonna go beg, but I might get pissy.

First, I shave. Haven't shaved in a couple of days. I think the bank might like me better if I shave. Plus, my other half likes it, too! Then I put on a nice sweater. The one I'm wearing is not so great. But it's warm!

I'm at the bank. I'm told by the "bank host" that a meeting with the manager will be a little while (half hour or more). Then he asks if he can help me. Apparently he's a vice president. Maybe everybody is a VP these days. I explain my situation. He says he'll take a look. A few taps on the keyboard and the funds are available. Sweet!!! I thank him, shake hands, and drive home.

It was a little anti-climactic. I really wanted to throw a stink, but he was really nice. It was far easier than the lady on the phone led me to believe. Maybe it's because I shaved.

At least it's not our fault

So after numerous calls to the lender, we find out that the appraiser is still dragging his feet. However, it turns out that he was not the lender's apprasier- he was the one the seller's agent advocated. So, it's the seller's fault he's so damn slow, not ours. If this prevents us from closing on time, we won't have to deal with any penalties. I guess having the appraiser be on the seller's side means that he'll be more inclined to be gentle with us, because the seller wants the property off his back.

In the meantime, we're still trying to get our financial ducks in a row and provide all the proper documentation. We're still waiting, but it's not quite as terrible as it was before, even though we still have no idea if we'll get the house or not.

Another helping of waiting, anyone?

So it's Tuesday. Not even early morning Tuesday, but not-so-far-away-from-close-of-business Tuesday. We still haven't heard a thing. Last week the appraiser had informed the lender that there were no problems meeting the purchase price. We already knew that from the first appraisal, but I guess it never hurts to hear it again. At least the rat-hole is worth what the seller said it was, even if most of the value is in the land.

However, what the appraiser was still trying to figure out was the dollar amount of the work that would have to go into the home. Basically that's the list of what we'd have to get finished to get the money released from the escrow account. If we got the house, that is. If. Big if.

We were supposed to find out yesterday, and there was no word. So we thought we'd find out today, and there's no word, and neither of us are in a good position today, time-wise, to carry out a long discussion with the lender.

I really hope we find out tomorrow. I don't like being stuck in limbo.

Monday

That's the day we should get our good faith estimates and find out what exactly is possible. The appraisal was done yesterday, but it didn't get back to the financing people. So, they'll take a look on Monday and get back to us with what's going on. We should know soon, but that's what we've been thinking all along. It would be nice to have something concrete to know and think, instead of being left to wonder all the time.

I realized that I haven't posted a picture in a while, so I'll do that now. This is the master bedroom. If we get the house, the plastic lamps are outta there.

Movement, maybe

So apparently the appraiser went to the rat hole at 10am this morning, and will probably be finished about 2. Maybe that will be enough time for the lender to chat with him, maybe not. Once the appraisal comes in, though, we'll be able to get some good faith estimates and look at some actual numbers, which would be nice. We'd love to lock in some rates. Oh, and find out if we can actually buy the house. That would be nicest of all. If we don't hear today, we'll probably hear on Monday.

Isn't this fun?

Riiiight. Waiting is a great time. We haven't heard anything yet, so we can only assume that the appraisal hasn't taken place yet. We know that numerous family members are checking this daily, wich is why I keep posting the same thing every day. The appraiser only has two days left this week, including today, so we can only asssume that we'll have some news soon. Hopefully it will be good. We're under the impression that the appraiser was asked to be gentle. Hopefully the waiting will pay off.

Still nothing

And we still haven't heard. We're hoping to by the end of the week. Not a whole lot of time left now, actually.

It's hard not to shop for stuff for the house while we're waiting. I was sent a ton of links for fun faucets, tile, etc., and it immediately sent me on a flight of fantasy. It would be so fun to pick out everything and install it ourselves, making the house truly ours. However, each time I think about the future of the rat hole, I feel a bit uneasy, because I'm still not convinced everything will work out.

But I guess it's still fun to put it all together in our heads.

More waiting

Makes for riveting reading, doesn't it? Blah blah, nothing new, blah blah. But there really isn't anything new. We found out yesterday that our new appraisal will be sometime this week. We'll see how kind or harsh it is, and then it's up to the appraiser, the insurance agent, and the lender to decide what's going on. Hopefully we'll know our chances by the end of the week. It's hard to believe that if everything goes poorly, it only took us a few weeks to come within inches of owning a home before plunging back into reality. Otherwise, it'll be hard to believe that we went from having no intentions of purchasing a home to actually owning one in such a short amount of time.

We're still trying, we're getting our money in order, and we settle in to wait, again.

Waiting game

Nothing new to report, really. Our agent went on vacation (so yes, she is fine after the wreck), and she said that while the seller didn't sign anything, the seller's agent thinks that it'll be just fine.

My other half's a bit more optimistic than I am, as I've mentioned before. He thinks there's a 95% chance we'll get the house. Now all we have to do is come up with the money to put down for this whole scheme. He has his portion covered, and I'm working on mine.

All we can do is wait and see.

Realignment

Our real estate agent got in a car wreck yesterday, I found out when I got home. She's apparently okay, which made me glad, but I hope she's still doing fine. I guess the seller's agent said that there was no problem with the new deal, which was good. However, the deal didn't get signed around because our agent couldn't check her email because she was busy dealing with the car wreck. Even though the indicators for that part of the process are good, we still don't have anything actually on paper.

The sticky parts will remain the insurance and the appraisal, since the insurance will probably rely a bit on the appraisal. We can insure the property, though. It'll just cost us almost twice as much as normal until we get the house fixed up and on par. Then we can get normal insurance. My spouse thinks that the new appraisal will go better than the last one, and so we'll see what the list is like. He thinks that there's a pretty good chance that the financing will go through.

If all goes well, we'll still close on the 19th.

Still trying

I guess the meeting with the lender yesterday was pretty interesting. When I went home and got to go over the numbers, it was very confusing, very convoluted, and it just might work. We still have yet to see a good faith estimate, but if it all works out, we shouldn't be paying any more per month than we would have with the first lender.

How it's probably going to work is we put an addendum into our purchase and sale agreement that the seller will put $15K+ into an escrow account. Our loan amount will bump up to cover that $15K+, and so the seller will immediately get their money back. So we get the house, with some conditions on it (basically a list of things to fix), and we don't get the money in the escrow account until the conditions are met (no receipts, etc. necessary, just a walk-through, visual inspection/appraisal thingey). In the meantime, we put about $15K down on our loan, which was the money we were going to use to fix up the house. Then we get a home equity loan for about $15K, do the work, and then we get our money back out of the escrow account, which we then use to pay off the home equity loan.

Um, yeah. Something like that.

It sounds like it will work. We signed the PSA addendum last night, so now today we have to wait and see if the seller will accept it. If he doesn't, then that's that, end of story, bye-bye house. We'll see how it goes. I'm not going to get my hopes up until we close and I actually have the keys to the house in my hand.

One more try

Yesterday did not turn out to be a great day. It really does seem that we're not going to get the house. It's funny - I, personally, now feel sort of stupid for getting all excited and starting up this blog. "Hey, everybody, read about what we're doing! Oh, wait, false alarm. Forget you ever read any of this!" That's what we get for putting all our eggs in one basket. It really did seem like we were good to go, though.

We're down, but not out. Our real estate agent was pretty surprised that the appraiser couldn't help the financing go through. We're wondering if he was actually from the lender, and they have specifics for the program that he had to adhere to. So, we're going to try again. My other half is driving to another town as I write this to meet a new lender face to face. We'll see what she has to offer us- she initially said she had found a program similar to the one we were going to take from our first broker. Our agent is trying to find another appraiser for us, too.

This way, if even after all this work, we aren't able to finance the house and have to withdraw our offer, we'll know that we did everything in our power and it just wasn't meant to be.

Not good

The only reason we decided to start this blog is because we felt fairly certain we'd get the house.

Oh, how quickly things can change.

The appraiser did his thing today. We got a call from the mortgage broker, saying that the house appraised for the value of the loan. No worries there. However, he wouldn't pass the house. It isn't habitable, apparently. This means there's the possibility of no house for us. It's a very real possibility.

We have two options. Option number one is to do all the things on the the appraiser's laundry list, like fixing the holes in the walls, painting, putting on gutters, getting the trash out of the yard, fix the baseboard heaters, and any number of other things. It's a rough list. And we can get a pretty long, detailed list from him. We can fix it ourselves before we own the house, but 1) the appraiser says that almost never flies, because people don't fix things up to snuff, and 2) there's the possibility that the seller could then yank the property out from underneath us.

Needless to say, we've put in a call to our real estate agent and intend to find out what we can do legally. Even if everything flies, there's still the issue of oh, say, actually having the money to do the repairs, not to mention the time to do them. We're still figuring out the ramifications of this option.

Option number two is to go with what's called a rehab loan. It's a loan for the amount of the future value of the house. We have to get our architectural drawings, permits, contractors, etc. lined up, and we get a loan for one year at a fixed percentage rate, interest only. We need 3% down. Then the bank's appraiser/inspector person checks up on us to make sure all the repairs go as necessary. I think after the year's over it converts to a 30-year fixed, which we've already determined we can't afford. This would be a lot of hassle and very expensive, since we use all our money for the down payment and don't have it for repairs.

I know it could be worse, since we actually do have a place to live right now, and a nice one at that, but I really had my heart set on this little house. I still really want it, and it's hard not to get frustrated and despair. However, we'll sit down tonight and talk about it, and hopefully we'll be able to talk to our agent. We just need to figure this out. We'll get through it, one way or another, and even if we don't get what we want, we'll certainly be wiser for it. That won't keep it from hurting.

And everyone who reads this will find out what happens next. ^_^

Insurance - not so fun

It's a given that we need to have some sort of homeowners insurance. It's required in order to have the loan - we all know this. What we didn't know, and certainly didn't expect, was to not be able to insure the rat hole. It seems that your run-of-the-mill homeowners insurance product doesn't cover situations like the rat hole's. You have to have a finished house, with modern plumbing and electrical. Durn new-fangled fancy-pants systems.

So, we were despairing for a while today. We didn't know where we could get insurance, and therefore we weren't sure if we'd be able to get a loan. Finally we were referred to a particular company, and they have a product that might meet our needs. It's not going to cost much more than a regular policy, but it's geared for fixer-upper properties like the rat hole. I think one of the increments was $50K for structure, $40K for belongings inside the house, liability, and a bunch of other things I can't remember for about $600 per year. Pretty reasonable. All we need to find out now is if the lender will accept that sort of insurance, and what coverage levels we need to have.

I can't help but feel that this is sort of a close shave. Then again, this entire experience has felt like one close shave after another. Now we're stuck waiting again for the appraisal, both to see if it's good enough that the lender will lend and to see if the insurer will insure. We should know by the end of the week. That's our new mantra - "end of the week, end of the week...."

The back room

This is a view of the back room. The carport and back yard are straight ahead, visible through the window. It's a dark little room. Maybe if we ever get enough money, we'll put in a skylight or something. There's a really cool vintage switch on the wall on the left- the kind with the brass plate and the two buttons for "on" and "off." We'll probably try to salvage that.

A note about the floors: It looks like the place used to have carpeting, with the exception of the kitchen, which is old, cruddy linoleum. Many of the rooms have been stripped down to the sub-flooring, with the exception of the main room and the hallway. Those have old, cruddy hardwood floors. We'll rip those floors out down the subfloor, too. The plan is to put down a few carpet remnants for our walking pleasure, and then eventually put down hardwood (linoleum tile in the kitchen, hexagonal porcelain tile in the bathrooms). Right now we're thinking about Weyerhaeuser's Lyptus engineered wood. So pretty, so durable, so sustainable.

The back room, in the meantime, has a lovely floor covering of ground-in newspaper, vinyl, and subfloor. The wood paneling throughout the main and back rooms is slated for immediate removal.

The main room

This picture shows me and the real estate agent in the main room. It gives you a sense of how low the ceilings are. My brother would get decapitated by the ceiling fan if he walked across the room, although he'd have to walk hunched over anyway, so maybe not. At any rate, we're not going to let that happen. The beam from the original roof line bisects the room, so we'll have to figure out what to do with that, since it's not likely we'll be able to raise it. The ceilings, however, might be false in the part of the room with the pellet stove. I guess they did that a lot in the 70's to improve heating and lower energy bills. Exploratory work is in order.

Financing ahoy!

This is the plat map for our lot. We own the driveway access, to that's good. It's such a nice piece of property.

So, we had a great meeting yesterday with our mortgage broker. She's a wonderful person, and made the tedious lending stuff pretty easy to understand and, well, far less tedious. We found out that our appraisal won't be until next week, but that the appraiser doesn't think there will be any problems. We might end up having to patch a couple of holes in the walls and install a sink in the main bathroom, but that's easy to do, and it's no big deal. It looks pretty much like a go, but that doesn't stop us from being a little nervous. We're very, very excited for the 19th, and we're already deciding what order we'll do things in.

Soon, soon...

So far, so good. We got our financing papers last night, signed them, and will take them down to the lender this afternoon. It works out very well, since I only have a half day at work (we're moving into a new office building). The new house's location will be great for my new commute, too. That's what I hope, at least.

Tonight we'll finally know for sure that everything has gone okay, and we'll actually be homeowners! Crazy.

Our offer was accepted!

We are SO excited. We just heard that our offer was accepted by the seller! We were so nervous all last night. I can't believe we potentially own property!! We love the little house so much. Now all that's left to do is wait and see what the appraiser says. If our financing goes through, we're good to go! I can't believe it. It's amazing, scary, and exciting all at once. Wonderful.

I so hope the appraisal goes well, or if there are issues, we can fix them and still get the loan.

If it all happens as we'd like it to, we close on November 19th.

How to buy a house in four days

Okay, so technically we don't have the house yet.

We just spent about two and a half hours with the inspector and agent, going over the house, looking at everything, and discussing what needed to be done. The good news: aside from the aesthetic things that are pretty obvious, like, oh, putting in floors, walls, and the like, not a whole lot needs to be done. We need to have our electrical fixed before we do anything else. You can track the progression of the house by the era of the different fuseboxes/breakers. Pretty crazy. There're also some plumbing issues we need to take care of as soon as we can, too. Only a couple of spots on the roof were iffy, and we need gutters, and a pipe needs a new flash footing put in, but it should last another five years. The foundation was cracked in one spot, but it can be easily repaired.

The bad news? We have to wait to hear if our offer was accepted. We have already heard that the selling agent liked the offer, and we might find out as soon as tonight. I really hope we do- I'd sleep a lot better. I just want to KNOW. I also want the house even more, having seen it three times now. Very exciting. Very scary to be signing ourselves away like that. We heard back from our lender today, too. Seems she's able to work out a new deal for us. Our monthly mortgage payment could be about two to three hundred dollars less a month than we thought it would be, if the house appraises for the amount of the loan. Considering the piece of land it's on, it should. We'll see, though, won't we?

We did find out quite a bit out about the house, aside from the crazy fuse box situation. Seems that one of the main beams in the attic is a log. An actual log. Peeled, and with canvas still stuck to it. How very rustic. I'm okay, though, with having a tree above us. I'm at home among peeled logs. We also found out that there's a stump underneath the pantry/utility room. A tree stump. Some sort of hardwood, I guess. We should remove it. I wonder if it's a relative of the log in the attic. It's definitely not related to the car jack in the crawl space that's holding up the floor joists in the laundry room.

Other than that, there's just some weird stuff buried out in the backyard. The ground's irregularly lumpy, and not settling-of-the-earth kind of lumpy. Not to mention the gigantic light pole. We need to clear out one of the crawl spaces (there are two, due to a later addition onto the house), and we need to find out where the septic drainfield is. All very reasonable projects. We'll find out about the septic soon, as the owner's required by law to get it pumped.

Bonuses: the current owner is putting up a fence between the front lot and our lot, so we don't have to do any labor there. Also, they'll probably have to give us underground electric and a new water supply, since the feeds to what I hope will soon be our house go directly through the front lot. We may have them hook us up to the sewer, since it's possible our septic drainfield is in the front lot. So we'll see. Might work out very well, in the end.

Now all that's left to do is hope that our offer wins, the appraisal goes through, and we get the house. Hope, hope. Hard to believe that we only discovered the house on Friday, and four days later, technically, we put in an offer, maybe even bought the thing. And all of it exactly three years after we basically moved in with one another. I have no complaints.

Setting Out

This is an interesting undertaking. Today we begin our first blog as we attempt to purchase our first home. The blog is far less daunting, obviously. We're going to try to record our progress as we take the little home from a rat hole, so named not because it's infested with rats but because it looks like a packrat's nest, to a habitable, comfortable home.

Of course, we have to actually GET the home first. We have an inspection today at 2pm, and if we like what we hear, we're all set to put in an offer. There's another offer already in, but chances are ours will be the winner. We can only hope.

There's always the chance that we will fail, though, and if that happens, there will be many tears. Housing's so expensive around here that this is really our only chance to get into a home period, rat hole or not. We'll see.

A bit of background about the property: the rat hole is currently about 1,030 square feet sitting on a 12,500 square-foot lot. The lot has plenty of nice big trees on it and tons of room for kids, dogs, woodshops, dojos, etc. We would also have the option to subdivide the lot in 5 years and sell it. There are just so many opportunties wrapped up in this thing.

I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. I anticipate and fear 2pm.