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My, what a big cabbage you have!

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Zeph "carving" her pumpkin

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Photo dump

So I'm at a conference for work, so needless to say I am BORED. But I thought ahead and since there is wireless internet here (still none at the house) I can post some updates from the house. I need to take some new pics now though...haha

so enjoy these pics and in tomorrow's boring seminar I'll hopefully update some more :)


The kitchen--this is before my painting of the walls and cabinets....and yes that pink really IS that bad in person...

View of the right side of the living room...I've since rearranged the room and furniture -and added some pictures to the walls- so I will need to update this pic

View of entertainment center in living room...

Our lovely (by lovely I mean awful) bathroom with CARPET! ewww


Our dining...er I mean bedroom :) The bedrooms are not big enough to accomodate the furniture, so we've temporarily made the dining room our bedroom! That is until our remodeling begins...


Our first flood....yikes. Luckily it wasn't TOO bad


Danny's trench for the water pouring out of the basement thanks to the sump pump....since then he's put an underground pipe running out :)

home sweet home....

Zeph and her new doxie friend

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bad news....

So there are some MAJOR issues going on with the house right now... (cue sad music)


Again, there's still no internet at home so I haven't been able to really post much. Once I am really able to talk about whats going on, I will update this with all the news....



sigh.

No internet at the house yet so my updates are WAY behind. But thought i'm update on our flooded basement this morning....sigh.

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FINALLY!

We're homeowners!!

After a stressful drawn out closing yesterday, we are finally homeowners!!

After settlement, we hooked up the trailer with about 90% of the contents of the condo and drove over to the house. I made Danny take hokie (is that how it's spelled?) cliche pictures of taking down the real estate agent's for sale signs, only to have hornets start swarming him. Haha! We didn't get stung, but he didn't want to stand there and pose for pics any longer. I will post the ones I got before the attack later :)

So this weekend will be filled with moving. Hopefully Danny, the Hurricane/Tropcial Storm that is, will be gentle and will at least allow some windows of no rain so we can move things into the house.

On the list of to do's:
1. Change the locks...who knows how many keys are out there....
2. Pull up nasty shag carpet and refinish the hard wood floors underneath.
3. Build a dog fence so the beasts can run freely.
4. Get a washer and dryer!!!
5. Clean clean clean (i.e. get Sarah down here ASAP)
6. Set up pool so we can cool off after all that work!

I will be sure to post pics all along the way!!

Packing :)

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NEXT THURSDAY IS CLOSING DAY!!!

Soooo....

we had the final inspection today for the repairs and everything passed!

Since everything else is in place, we have bumped up closing day to next Thursday, Aug. 27th!!
In 7 days and 1 hour from now...Danny and I will be homeowners! YAY!!!

FWD:

The house :)

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Well has been drilled! Getting closer :)

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Scrapey scrapey

Doing some paint scraping and other repairs to get the house ready for closing on Sept. 1!

29 days!

Surprise appraisal

So, on Wednesday morning, I got an email from the lender letting me know the name and phone number of our appraiser so I could call to find out when he was going to be going to the house for his appraisal/inspection. I didn't hear from him but was expecting it to be next week. Well a few hours later, my real estate agent called me and said that he was on the way over to the house! Sooo...I called Danny and luckily both of us were able to leave work and head right over. And we are so glad we did. It allowed us to see first hand the repairs that will need to be done.

Most are not major, some peeling paint (the house was built in 1930 so it's assumed to be lead based) that will need to be scrapped and repainted. A glass pane or two to be replaced, some caulking, sash cords to be repaired (just learned what those are!), replacement of hot water heater (no biggie-to be expected)...all of this we can do ourselves or within our lovely little network of skilled tradesman :)

However, there is the whole well and septic thing. We were hoping it would slide right through, but alas, the appraiser noted it. The distance between the existing well and suspected area of the septic tank/drain field is too close to meet the lender requirements. So....we have to have a new well dug before closing. We were expecting this might be the case and have gotten an estimate to do it, so that's the next step. We're waiting to hear back on the appraisal value before preceeding, and hopefully that will be in next week.

So, along we plug in this whole home-owning process. Everything still seems on track for Sept. 1st...

And just for good measure, here's a cute pic of Brownie. Side note: he has been suffering from major allegeries and has been scratching so badly, he has a bald spot and is on Benadryl--poor little boy.

49 days....

We are now currently 49 days away from our closing date for the house. We have our home inspection on Monday, and hopefully the appraisal next week as well.
We went over to the house today to take some pictures and get some measurements, as well as take a look around again and take note of things we might have previously missed.
Although the house does need work and updating, we're definitely going in with our eyes open and know what we're getting into and we really couldn't be happier. Going by there today made we want to move in soon and start making it our place. The first thing we plan to do is build a fenced in area for the dogs.

Here is a picture of the house...


.

Those bushes need a good trim and that awning needs to go, but we love it.

Sooo...the sellers have FINALLY signed the contract on the house. YAY!

Since our agent has been out of town since Monday, we are meeting with her tomorrow night after she gets back into town to sign the offer and get moving on getting the house ready to close..i.e. inspections, appraisals, etc.

Still keeping my fingers crossed and my hopes in check....don't want to get too excited yet.

Our offer was accepted! One step closer to being home owners! :)

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So we heard the counter offer from the sellers...
They want:
1.Higher sales price
2. Not responsible for any repairs to get the house approved for closing
3. a kick-out clause (which is basically-the house can stay on the market until closing, and if they get another offer they like better, they can kick us out of our contract)

The first two was expected and not a big deal, the kick out clause however is going to have us just walk away.--it's not a risk we are willing to take.

So....we countered back meeting in between on the price, a set amount of repairs we will be responsible for, and NO kick out clause.

Now we get to wait some more to see if they agree or counter again.... sigh.
We're going to still take a look at what other houses are available, as we are thinking the sellers won't budge on the kick-out clause and will have us walking away from this one.

Other news--we're going down to Deal tomorrow for some crabs (yum!) and beer (double yum).
We'll see how the 4 dogs do down there--hopefully we won't have to keep them separated the ENTIRE time. Maybe they'll all just be too hot to worry about each other. Wishful thinking!

Zeph in the jungle...

I eat boxes for dinner

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Sigh....so the wait continues to hear back on our offer on the house. Hopefully we'll know something today or tomorrow.
We are going to continue to look at some other houses just in case this one doesn't go through.

Otherwise, things are pretty uneventful. I really need to do some organizing and have actually been feeling a bit DIY-ish/crafty lately...but really holding out until we know about the house because:
1. No room in the apartment right now...2 dogs + 3 people + one tiny apt. = no space!
2. We're trying to really watch all expenses so we can save up as much as possible for the potential work on the new house
3. I'd rather make something cool for the new house anyways, since the last thing I need is more shit in the apartment.

I keep obsessively checking my email in the hopes to hear something...



UPDATE!!!! Counter offer will be submitted to us by tomorrow! Keeping my fingers crossed!!

Danny's "we just made an offer" face

hahaha

Putting in the offer on the house today! Trying not to get our hopes up but we're definitely excited!! Keep your fingers crossed!

FWD:

Testing for mobile uploads :)

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Oh Brown Brown

Since I showed Zeph and her new chew toy...I figured it would only be fair to post a picture of Brownington...

Industrial Strength

Zeph's chew toys have been upgraded to industrial grade

On a plus note we haven't heard anything from the vet yet on Zeph's blood work so that seems to mean there's no big problem so far


Now time to figure out how to get this PVC pipe away from Zeph-good thing I have yummy cookies!!




Picture of Zeph's snout through the pipe :)