Tag Archives: selling a house

When we last left the gang…

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Bitchfest, I'm a Crafty Mo' Fo', On the Horizon, Party Hearty, The "Joy" of Parenting

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We were living in Ohio.

We had a baby that was less than a year old.

We were optimistic about the outcome of the sale of our house.

I never had reason to worry about sending Finn to school in a year and a half.

Now?  Yeah, not so much.  Lots has changed.  

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I’m afraid that the current contract on our house might not work out.  It might go back on the market.  I spent ten solid minutes dry-heaving over my mother’s kitchen sink as we received another piece of bad news about our house.  Its second appraisal was even lower than the first.  We are basically bent over a barrel, and we drastically cut the price of the house for the buyers.  One would think that would be a good thing – who wouldn’t want to have a house they are trying to buy drop in price by TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?  But, the buyers want money back at closing, and the prospect of losing another three grand on this whole ordeal is sickening.  Instead of having a nice, fat wad of cash to plunk into savings and get to pay off my school loan entirely, we have to miraculously produce five grand that we don’t have.  All the money is tied up in escrow with our prospective house out in Colorado.  Which, we will have to walk away from if this deal falls apart.

Shitty.

I’m feeling pretty hopeless about things at the moment.  And majorly guilty.  Because even though this is a pretty big doosey for our family, I still have two healthy kids.  At a time when twenty families in Connecticut are burying their six and seven-year-olds, I’m bitching about money.  My heart aches for the families of the lost in Newtown.  Since it is just me and the kids staying at my mom’s, I’ve taken to snuggling with Finny  at night.  Like just about every mommy-blogger, apparently.  Doing this makes me feel – feel better because I have him to snuggle with, – feel sad because I cannot fathom what it would ever be like to lose him.

On the sunnier side of the street, Alice is now a whole year old.  We celebrated last Friday; even though it was really low-key, it was nice.  A birthday party that was nearly free and exceptionally stress-free.  In four words, exactly what I needed.

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My mom and I printed out a little pennant banner.  I made a cake.  Decorated it with sprinkles.  Finn and I hung curly ribbons from the ceiling.  We got balloons and ordered pizza.  Sha-zam.

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We pick Nathan up from the airport tonight, as long as the weather cooperates.

There you have it; it is a bit of a mixed bag over here.  I hope things go up from here. Fingers crossed.

 

 

The Christmas Dress Legacy

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Bitchfest, I'm a Crafty Mo' Fo', The "Joy" of Parenting

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Side bar on the home selling front:  HOLY F BALLS.  Our appraisal came back short – way short.  Turns out our appraiser was from two hours away and totally blew it with the comps, comparing us to houses in a totally different area.  The buyers are fighting it and may switch banks if the appraiser can’t get his head out of his ass.  For now, we are just sitting at the kids’ table just waiting for the grownups to sort all this out.

In more delightful news….

Sewing Machine Fest 2012 is just wrapping up.  Alice is wearing my Christmas dress from when I was a wee babe.  Sure, that was 1982, but unless you haven’t heard, the eighties are back, baby!

When I made Finn’s baptism outfit three years ago, I was just starting to figure out how to sew and (true to form) had made two shirts since the first one was WAY too big.  I had an extra white linen shirt just collecting dust in the basement.  When I could not find a plain white blouse anywhere for Alice to wear underneath the dress, my mind went to the little extra shirt in the basement.  Only problem is the shirt is totally for a little boy.  I did a tiny bit of reconstruction…

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I rounded the corners of the collar and pleated the sleeves – not in the way anyone worth their salt would EVER do, but it is still just a tiny bit girlier.  She only has to wear it once, anyway.  And it is UNDER a dress.  She’s so darn cute that nobody will be looking at her dorkily pleated sleeves, anyway.

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Yes, I know it isn’t ironed.  Ironing is not my strong suit; I’m not going to win the Iron Chef Award anytime soon.  Really, I have accepted that.  But…  I am expecting a nomination for Best Use of Non-Ironing in a Mom Blog come award season. I’ll keep you posted of any developments.

Just in case you wanted to peer into the rest of my life, this is what Monday brought me.  Anyone who has ever had (or ever been) a kid knows that once the spaghetti pot makes its way into the bedroom, the carpet/sheets/pillows and/or jammies are already in the washing machine.  If I EVEN get the flu (or worse, if Alice gets it) when the movers are here, I’m gonna be seriously P.O.-ed.

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Tedium ad Nauseum

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Bitchfest, Grossology, My Two Cents, The "Joy" of Parenting, TMI

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Ohmygod. I feel like I just ran a month-long marathon. Without any clothes on. While trying to recite the first 415 digits of pi.

Lemme explain… No, lemme sum up.

This whole house-selling business is for the birds. Nathan and I were so unbelievably stressed getting the house completely remodeled and buttoned up. It went on the market. For two weeks, we I kept the house spotlessly clean and had dozens of complete strangers clomping their boots into my house, using my bathroom and drinking my coffee – most of whom I never laid eyes on. They peeked into the most private areas of our lives, then left, leaving only their scent. Our stress levels were through the roof.

Then we got a buyer! Yippee! But with that came more stresses; working out the dollars and cents of things, having a home inspector nitpick through every inch of our house, discover that we were living with (just barely) elevated radon levels for the last two years, calling insurance companies and roofing contractors because our new roof wasn’t up to code and doing ridiculous yet easy repairs that the buyers requested. They find tightening the bolts on one of the toilets above their pay grade, I guess.

When the appraiser came, we got a pretty good feeling from him that everything would be alright. No news is good news in that arena, and it has been a week.

Getting Nathan moved out was another major hurdle, but that went off without a hitch. His first day at his new job was today – he didn’t sleep in or wear the wrong shirt or step on any toes. Good news.

And now that our radon levels have been mitigated, our roof vented, and our toilets tightened, I have finally mentally exhaled for the first time in about a month. I’ve taken a hiatus from major house cleaning. Yesterday, I actually found myself with nothing left to worry about and nothing to do but laundry. And feed the kids. And wipe butts. And repeat exactly why you shouldn’t touch the tip of a hot glue gun. And explain why the following is a fashion faux pas. In short, same as every regular day.

The faux pas I am referring to is wearing Halloween underwear at the end of November.

What did I do with my time? I did the most mundane, brainless tasks I could think of. I am officially on a mental health holiday.

For starters, I took one of Finny’s old shirts and removed the embroidered crest off the front so it would look more girly for Alice. For what seemed like (and probably was) hours, I snipped and pulled roughly a bazillion little pieces of thread from a tiny white shirt. There is something liberating about turning your brain on auto-pilot, giving the kid an iPad and slouching on the living room floor while performing a task that a gorilla with really great fine motor skills could do.

Later, I decided to shave the dog. This is one of my least favorite things to do EVER, mostly because it takes forever and Violet hates being shaved, so I hate putting her through such an ordeal that she shakes like a leaf for two days after. And then pees on your bed. Nice.

If you have ever wondered what it is like to shave my dog (c’mon, I know you would have been too embarrassed to ask), it is kind of like shaving a chicken… In the sense that Violet is such a chicken-y scaredy-dog but also it’s akin to shaving actual poultry. Or so I would think. Imagine giving a buffalo wing a buzz cut… That’s about the gist of it.

Admit it. You’re jealous.

Shaving the dog was something that needed to be done, and it is a mindless chore that makes the time pass in the blink of an eye – before you know it its midnight, you’re covered in wispy white hair and your beloved family pet is aching to urinate on your down comforter.

How many of you are DYING to have a sleepover at my house right now, by the way?

At the end of the day, my head was clear, my bones ached and I slept like a baby – which is to say I woke up twice but didn’t have a care in the world. Other than smelling the distinct odor of dog pee.

SIDE NOTE: Alice took her first steps yesterday! And thankfully Nathan only missed it by a few days. He did get to see it on Facetime, though.

Love Letter to a House

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Being a Grownup, On the Horizon, The Good Ole Days

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Dear House,

Oh, you.

It seems like just yesterday we were tramping through here with slightly lower expectations than you deserved.  We came to see you, despite the fact that there weren’t any pictures of your interior on your listing.  We loved your backyard.  We came in on a whim, and ended up buying the place.  It wasn’t love at first sight or anything.  We hated your light fixtures.  We thought you had potential.  And you did.  And still do.

It’s not much, but it’s home.

Two and a half years later, we are leaving you.  This makes me sad; incomprehensibly sad considering we are trading Ohio for amazing mountain vistas and low humidity.  It is strange feeling this way…  You still have so far to go to be an amazing house; we never did get to turning your backyard into the woodland paradise you deserve.  And your kitchen cabinets still suck.  I still have ten pounds of baby weight to lose; aren’t I the pot calling the kettle black?

The thing I will miss most about you is what I loved about you from the start.  In this craptacular region of Ohio, you have your own little slice of heaven out back.  In June, we would turn all the lights out and stand in the backyard and watch the orchestra of fireflies twinkle before putting the littlins down.  We watched a newborn fawn take its first steps by the creek.  We watched a robin chick take his maiden fall flight in the spring.  It took us a week to identify exactly what kind of animal was being tortured in the backyard our first fall (a perfectly healthy barred owl; not a small mammal in its death throes as we first thought).  Finny and I would sit at his bedroom window for minutes (a big feat for an eighteen-month-old) being eye to eye with the squirrels as they flung themselves from branch to branch. Thanks to you, Finn can identify robins, blue jays and chickadees by their songs alone.

And now I’m crying.

This is the first place Alice ever called home.  Her room was the first room Nathan and I had ever painted in our fourteen years together.  I keep trying find a way to explain to Finn that another little boy will get his room after he picks out a new room in Colorado.  He protests, and all he can say is “No, but this is OUR house.”  It breaks my heart.

Nathan walked out the front door for the last time this weekend, and I’m hot on his heels.  The kids and I will be spending a few weeks at my mom’s house in Chicago until we are all safe and sound and calling Colorado Springs home.  I’m so excited – but I’m going to miss the little things about you, House.  We actually play basketball in our living room.  Will I be able to do that in Colorado?  What about walking around in my underwear with all the curtains open?  I don’t have any neighbors in sight from the back…  I think it is pretty ironic that I am trading a home with a precious little chunk of nature in lame-ass Ohio for a house with views of Pikes Peak – and twelve other houses in spitting distance.

Not a great shot, but it is our last one as a family here; Nathan left two minutes later.

I love everything that you’ve done for us.  I love everything that we have done for you.  But this is the end of our short journey together.  I’ve been trying to find something about you that I won’t miss at least a little, and the only thing I can come up with is your squeaky floors.  Oh… and that fucking maniacal one-eyed groundhog that I scared from setting up permanent residence under the porch.  Remember that?  After a five-minute Mexican standoff, I chased him down like a rabid dog, brandishing a fireplace poker in one hand and six-month-old Alice in the other?  Oh, good times, House.  Good times.

Here’s the deal, House.  If those new owners don’t treat you with the love and respect that we did, you give me a call.  There won’t be much I will be able to do, but I’ll be a shoulder for you to cry on.  And we can reminisce about that one time where you decided to spring a leak and ruin our brand new bathroom!

I kid, I kid.  Even despite that, I still love you.

Happy Trails,

Lisa

Oh, and for anyone thinking of pulling any funny business; Nathan left me with the shotgun…  It’s loaded (easily accessable to me; impossible for Finn to get to – don’t worry), and even though I’ve never shot it before, I’ve been told the first shot is bird shot and will hit anything in front of me.  The second and remaining shots are buck shot.  And three and a half years of dealing with children that STILL don’t sleep through the night has made me a very light sleeper.  Just so you know.  Cheers!! 🙂

Pins and Needles

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Being a Grownup, Bitchfest, My Two Cents, TMI

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I’m still wary about coming back from my little blog siesta…  I guess this is a bit of a “soft opening;”  I’m just going to ease back into things, I suppose.

But, on a related note; this is my 100th post!  It seems a little weird, having written 100 mini articles for the Internet Black Hole; but I do feel that a little confetti is in order…

Who thinks i should put this on my new living room wall, btw? I don’t think it will scare the kids AT ALL. via tim baldini

Speaking on celebrating, there is a little piece of news that I want to share, even though I feel like I am risking a big old fat jinx if I do.  Ah, what the hell…

We are under contract on the house!  For those of you lucky enough never to sell (or buy) a house, that means we have a buyer.  They had a home inspector come by yesterday and are conducting a radon test in the basement at the moment.  In a few days, the test will show that we have or have not been living with a poisonous, radioactive, lung-cancer-causing gas eeking up through the basement for the last two years.  Why the hell we didn’t want to spring the extra Benjamin to know this before we moved into the house is anyone’s guess.  You’d think we would have been super concerned with such things, but no.  I can only assume that we figured luck would be on our side and that extra hundred bucks would have been better wasted on another tech gadget.  #Sigh.  Lesson learned.

So, what that means for us is we are over one of the three obstacles in the way of us and a (temporary) mortgage-free existence.

  1. Find a buyer – DONE
  2. Pass the home inspection – IN PROGRESS; hoping they won’t find the giant, man-eating chupacabras in the basement that we failed to list on our property disclosure form.
  3. Have the appraiser wave his magic wand and decide to bless us with a favorable appraisal – COMING SOON

We actually had two people place offers on the house within a few days of each other.  Our house had been on the market for two or three weeks, and we had a ton of showings.  Before the offers came in, I was close to actually pulling out my hair; I was a MESS.  We had two potential buyers come to the house at the wrong time, and the second one happened to be the folks that put the first offer on the house.  We had walked back into the house twenty minutes prior and I was in the middle of a fit.  I had put on coffee, packed up the kids and the dogs, carted them out into the cold and was pissssed when we came back ninety minutes later to a house that no one had come to see.  I was angrily pulling out all the crap to make dinner, slamming cabinet doors, dumping wasted coffee down the drain and probably frightening the children.

Then the dogs started barking maniacally; signaling a visitor at the front door.  It was the folks that were supposed to come two hours ago.  I tried to pull it together, but I was a spaz and a half, apologizing like a lunatic; frazzled and barefoot with a baby on hip out on the chilly font porch.  I told them we would pop our shoes back on and hightail it out of there and to please excuse the toys that had been pulled out.  I dumped everything back in the fridge, wrestled the kids back into their coats and promised them ice cream if they would puh-leaase cooperate.

On my way out, I noticed that the couple had a little boy, about two, and the woman was pregnant.  My heart sank a little since our backyard is wooded and sloped; something that our real estate agent warned us might scare off buyers with small kids.  They also had a set of grandparents in tow, which I thought was odd.  The last thing I would have wanted was to drag two more folks from house to house in the name of finding a home.

A few days later, they put an offer on the house.  It was an okay first offer, price wise, but they were also asking for all the appliances.  And one other thing…

Every stick of furniture in the entire house.

What?  Who would want my crappy furniture?  We don’t have super nice things; there are my reupholstered chairs, my mom’s childhood nightstand encrusted with twelve layers of lead-based paint and my mattress?  That damn thing has been peed on by two dogs, two children and one pregnant lady who was dreaming she was whitewater rafting at the time of the incident.  (Yep, the secret is out.  I no longer have any skeletons in my closet.  Just keeping it real, folks.)  What person in their right mind wants to buy someone else’s mattress?

Then it started to sink in that they were basically asking for everything I owned for free, and I was kind of insulted.  You are offering my ten grand less than I am asking for this house, and you somehow expect me to buy a new washer and dryer and ALL NEW FURNITURE?  With what money?  Nathan told the realtor we would sell them the furniture for thirty grand, no questions asked.  I’d even throw in my beloved Prada boots for that price.  We chuckled.  But deep down, we knew something was off about them.

We counter offered, politely noting that our personal items were NOT FOR SALE, (and neither was our firstborn son), and that they could have the damned washer and dryer.

Their next offer came in still asking for the furniture, but they’d give us another $1,000.  To this I replied (to myself) – You can take that offer, pound salt up your ass and visit the deer park, people.  Their realtor dropped a bombshell; they were rebuilding their credit.  Even if we hadn’t had a perfectly reasonable offer waiting in the wings, we would have told them we were done at that point.  I’m not about ready to have some fly by night bank preapproval letter hang over my head only to have their financing fall through at the last-minute while my livelihood in Colorado hangs in the balance.

We accepted the second offer, and are now in the midst of a waiting game, just hoping everything falls into place.  Which is why I am on pins and needles.

By the way, I am totally stoked to be able to take that mattress with me to Colorado, har, har.  I just had an awful realization…  Oh my god, I am dreading the moment the movers take off the mattress pad and discover a family’s worth of accidents underneath.