Then we had a showing with the heat actually on. Then we answered a bunch of questions about the roof, the insulation, the furnace, the next door neighbor's dogs, etc. Then they made us an offer. We countered with a few things. They countered with a few less things. We signed, they signed. Hooray!
The offer that they made us was contingent on the sale of their house. Considering that we have been on the market for seven months without an offer and still have plenty of work to do on the new house, we didn't have any problem with that. Our realtor reviewed the listing and felt that they were serious about getting it sold.
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| The maple tree next door |
Then a day later they got an offer on their house! There was much rejoicing.
Then we heard that their buyers want to close in THREE WEEKS. That would mean that we would close in FIVE WEEKS.
Then there was much panicking.
Naturally, any of these things may fall apart or not work out or whatever. But as someone told me today, you know that it's real because it's so inconvenient. If it were convenient it wouldn't work out.
Before this all started to go down, I had to put it any requests for time off in December. I took a look at the calendar and said, I think that I will take off a day just in case we are able to move, so we have something to work towards. And if we don't move, oh well, who doesn't need a day off two weeks before Christmas?
At the time everyone was rolling their eyes at me, like, yeah, you are never going to move on that day and it's so premature of you to be taking time off work and blah blah blah. I'm not going to lie, I kind of feel like a genius right now.
A very stressed, tired genius.
So the list of things that needs to be done before we can really live in the house looks like this:
- Finish wiring (ceiling fans/new lights have been mostly installed in two bedrooms and the landing)
- Finish plumbing, including installing the water heater and water softener, which has to be contracted out
- Ceilings and insulation. Ceilings need to be placed in the two upstairs bathrooms, the mudroom and the kitchen, and new pieces of the dining room ceiling are falling all the time. (Most recently due to someone dropping a hammer through the joists, I think?)
- Drywall in the mudroom, kitchen and dining room, upstairs bathrooms and laundry room
- Floor patching/leveling and vinyl installation in the kitchen/mudroom
- Plaster patching after wiring is finished
- Scrubbing wallpaper glue, priming and painting in just about the entire house
- Sealing bedroom floors and moving quarter round down to the hardwood
- Installing the downstairs sink and upstairs bathroom (toilet, sink, tub, tile, lights and fans)
- Installing new appliances and rehanging all the cabinets
- Painting the cabinets in their new configuration
- Temporary counter tops, kitchen sink, kitchen faucet, trim around the new window
So we are in the process of figuring out what to hire out, what to keep, what to do first and how quickly we can realistically get it all done. We might end up in a situation where we move our stuff to the new house and stay somewhere else for a little bit. This list is roughly in order of priority, but some of it is also happening concurrently. I had a great day with one of my girlfriends scrubbing walls yesterday, which made the whole thing so much faster and more fun. We're hoping to get a few more volunteer days in for cleaning and painting, and then my sister will be flying in for the holidays so I'll have an experienced unpacker on site.
In other news, the two trees in front are getting cut down next week, and we have a 'wood rack' in the garage for firewood. Firepit here we come!
The Kid selected colored Icicle lights for our first Christmas decorations. We hung them up because we do what we can to eat our pizza festively and also it's hard to eat pizza in the dark. I actually kind of like them on the inside. We will see if the weather supports our efforts to hang them outside.
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