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OT Finally! Actively house shopping



 
 
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  #11  
Old July 30th 17, 03:32 AM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
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Posts: 32
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping

I'm really trying not to laugh. Really. Except it is not working too well.

House hunting can be such an adventure. When my ex and I decided a general area where we wanted to look for some property, we located an agent. Gave a list of must-haves, and would-like-to-have. Oh, goodness, it was amazing what we looked at! Now, cluing you in that it was a 6 hour drive from where we lived, every month or so we would do a whirlwind trip up on a weekend [leave 0 dark thirty on a Saturday] to look at what was available.

Goodness, the descriptions on a flyer rarely matched the actual property! We never found the right-for-us one, although I found two that met my separate quilt/crafting area. Good thing. That divorce was final 10 years ago....

Ginger in CA
[real email is ]

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 9:34:01 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
We have been looking, discarding wet basements, dubious roofs, hodge podge electrical wiring and etc.

Found one place that was a little small but very nice indeed, except you could fit the bathroom in a teaspoon and the 4 bedrooms were on the second floor with an open floor plan. An open floor plan for the bedrooms?! We might be a little kinky, but even we were all saying Who does that! The place was more or less a hunting lodge for rich weirdos. Getting out there was an experience. I was going to print out a map, but DH and kiri were insistent that we didn't need to because she has GPS on her phone. You all might recall how impressed I am by GPS. So we went up the road and over the hill and then we ran out of pavement and were on gravel. kiri was mightily unimpressed by that. we turned up another hill and went a few more miles and the gravel road gave way to dirt, and kiri stated to growl. After anther 5 miles the phone said your have now reached your destination and lost signal. We had not reached our destination, and kiri pulled over as best she could since the road was down to one lane, and let the estate agent pull up along side. He had never been to the place either, and took the lead. after another half mile or so we found the place. With a repeal the SAFE act sign out front and a This Property is Protected by a Gun sign in the front window. The only other domiciles we had seen since the road became dirt were log cabins and rusty trailers. When we got up to the front porch we found iron bars on the front windows. I was feeling pretty comfortable because I was out in the woods and back among my people of origin, then I remembered that my people of origin were pretty much a**holes. Even today my siblings lean to the paranoid gun nut lifestyle. I had a brief flash of memory involving peeing in the woods and musket fire (my family were civil war reenactors). After we had determined that the bedroom floor plan was not acceptable, and kiri would likely strangle us in our sleep if we even gave the place passing consideration, we started home. Only instead of going back the way we had come kiri and the estate agent agreed that the lure of visible pavement 50 yards or so down the road was too tempting. We went thataway, came to a T and decided left seemed to be a likely direction. Wrong. So again we were going over hill and dale, and found ourselves headed into Pennsylvania. Then through part of the Alleghany forest, after about 45 minutes of driving the cellphones came back to life. It took us considerably longer to get home than it did to get there. It also left us with the question of why on earth were there three golf courses scattered across next to nowhere Pennsyltucky hard by an obscure corner of a state forest.

NightMist


On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 6:44:27 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking


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  #12  
Old July 30th 17, 06:46 PM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
Night Mist
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Posts: 44
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping

On the plus side, after this experience kiri has given up calling places 20 minutes out of town "Bum Frak Egypt", and now asks only that we look at places that will be plowed promptly in the case of a blizzard. I don't think she gets how variable the word promptly is in such cases, or that if we have such a storm that it can last for days.
I'm still trying to figure out why driving thirty miles in a big city is not the same as driving 30 miles outside of one. Down to Columbus she thinks nothing of driving half an hour or 45 minutes to get somewhere. Yet there is an awesome house (on paper) about 45 minutes from town that is big enough, has a monster garage, a small barn, a small guest house, a gas well, is on 5 acres surrounded by vineyards, and has affordable taxes, and she says it is too far away from town to even go look.
Maybe after this recent experience out in the wilds she will reconsider.

NightMist

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 10:32:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:
I'm really trying not to laugh. Really. Except it is not working too well..

House hunting can be such an adventure. When my ex and I decided a general area where we wanted to look for some property, we located an agent. Gave a list of must-haves, and would-like-to-have. Oh, goodness, it was amazing what we looked at! Now, cluing you in that it was a 6 hour drive from where we lived, every month or so we would do a whirlwind trip up on a weekend [leave 0 dark thirty on a Saturday] to look at what was available.

Goodness, the descriptions on a flyer rarely matched the actual property! We never found the right-for-us one, although I found two that met my separate quilt/crafting area. Good thing. That divorce was final 10 years ago.....

Ginger in CA
[real email is ]

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 9:34:01 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
We have been looking, discarding wet basements, dubious roofs, hodge podge electrical wiring and etc.

Found one place that was a little small but very nice indeed, except you could fit the bathroom in a teaspoon and the 4 bedrooms were on the second floor with an open floor plan. An open floor plan for the bedrooms?! We might be a little kinky, but even we were all saying Who does that! The place was more or less a hunting lodge for rich weirdos. Getting out there was an experience. I was going to print out a map, but DH and kiri were insistent that we didn't need to because she has GPS on her phone. You all might recall how impressed I am by GPS. So we went up the road and over the hill and then we ran out of pavement and were on gravel. kiri was mightily unimpressed by that. we turned up another hill and went a few more miles and the gravel road gave way to dirt, and kiri stated to growl. After anther 5 miles the phone said your have now reached your destination and lost signal. We had not reached our destination, and kiri pulled over as best she could since the road was down to one lane, and let the estate agent pull up along side. He had never been to the place either, and took the lead. after another half mile or so we found the place. With a repeal the SAFE act sign out front and a This Property is Protected by a Gun sign in the front window. The only other domiciles we had seen since the road became dirt were log cabins and rusty trailers. When we got up to the front porch we found iron bars on the front windows. I was feeling pretty comfortable because I was out in the woods and back among my people of origin, then I remembered that my people of origin were pretty much a**holes. Even today my siblings lean to the paranoid gun nut lifestyle. I had a brief flash of memory involving peeing in the woods and musket fire (my family were civil war reenactors). After we had determined that the bedroom floor plan was not acceptable, and kiri would likely strangle us in our sleep if we even gave the place passing consideration, we started home. Only instead of going back the way we had come kiri and the estate agent agreed that the lure of visible pavement 50 yards or so down the road was too tempting. We went thataway, came to a T and decided left seemed to be a likely direction. Wrong. So again we were going over hill and dale, and found ourselves headed into Pennsylvania. Then through part of the Alleghany forest, after about 45 minutes of driving the cellphones came back to life. It took us considerably longer to get home than it did to get there. It also left us with the question of why on earth were there three golf courses scattered across next to nowhere Pennsyltucky hard by an obscure corner of a state forest.

NightMist


On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 6:44:27 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking


  #13  
Old August 24th 17, 04:37 PM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
Night Mist
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Posts: 44
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping

Well then, after looking at some horror shows, some foreclosures, and finding that there was darn little that came close to our requirements out of town, we huddled, decided, and made an offer on that first place we looked at.. The one with the mangled second floor. We are not wild about essential remodeling on a house we are living in, but it is structurally sound, dry, well insulated, and 23 acres. Thus several steps above anything else we have seen. Plus the mold issue in our current bathroom is making me sicker ever day and the DDs are totally freaking out about it.

So we offered, they didn't even counter, just said too low, we offered again, they came down $5K, my middle DD said offer $2K more and I will make up the difference. So we did that. They said we need at least $3K more, and I drew the line. We kept looking. 3 weeks along now and they called back and said OK we will take your offer.

So, earnest money has been given over, and the fussing about with papers and bankers and inspections and all commences. We are expected to finalize around the end of October.

DD3 says she is never doing this again _ever_. Unless the publishers Clearing house people come a knocking and hand her a check for a bajillion dollars and she is able to buy total awesomeness without fretting and fussing. I told her heck with that, if we suddenly and unexpectedly become rich, we will buy a piece of land and build a castle on top of The Hive (the Raccoon City Facility from Resident Evil movies and games). Or maybe just build The Hive and stick an old trailer on top. You only pay taxes on what they can see from the road after all.

NightMist

  #14  
Old August 25th 17, 04:36 PM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
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Posts: 32
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping

Yeah!
Can you send me your address for a little giftee to head your way for the new house?

Use for email
Ginger in CA

On Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 8:37:34 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
Well then, after looking at some horror shows, some foreclosures, and finding that there was darn little that came close to our requirements out of town, we huddled, decided, and made an offer on that first place we looked at. The one with the mangled second floor. We are not wild about essential remodeling on a house we are living in, but it is structurally sound, dry, well insulated, and 23 acres. Thus several steps above anything else we have seen. Plus the mold issue in our current bathroom is making me sicker ever day and the DDs are totally freaking out about it.

So we offered, they didn't even counter, just said too low, we offered again, they came down $5K, my middle DD said offer $2K more and I will make up the difference. So we did that. They said we need at least $3K more, and I drew the line. We kept looking. 3 weeks along now and they called back and said OK we will take your offer.

So, earnest money has been given over, and the fussing about with papers and bankers and inspections and all commences. We are expected to finalize around the end of October.

DD3 says she is never doing this again _ever_. Unless the publishers Clearing house people come a knocking and hand her a check for a bajillion dollars and she is able to buy total awesomeness without fretting and fussing. I told her heck with that, if we suddenly and unexpectedly become rich, we will buy a piece of land and build a castle on top of The Hive (the Raccoon City Facility from Resident Evil movies and games). Or maybe just build The Hive and stick an old trailer on top. You only pay taxes on what they can see from the road after all.

NightMist


  #15  
Old September 16th 17, 02:43 PM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
Night Mist
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Posts: 44
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping


Well the assessment has been done, we've gotten the report, and in a number of ways it is a hoot!

The best example is she keeps referencing the place as "in the extremely rural township of".
OK, so it is 20 minutes to the nearest Starbucks via the expressway, but it is only 20 minutes and the on ramp is less than a mile from the house. Driving the regular roads it is less than 10 miles to town, and that is passing through one of the larger villages on the way. I don't imagine that she counts that the biggest organic herb farm in the county is an easy walk in one direction, and the biggest organic fruit farm is a slightly longer walk in the other.
I think the cats subtly exerted telepathic influence towards our decision because it is so close to their dealer. They really really enjoy the organic catnip from the herb farm.
Anyway, 10 miles from town is so _not_ extremely rural!
Lady is from Buffalo, so maybe the cows next door influenced her notion of rural.

Oh, and I spied a couple of alpacas in a field on the way out there. Gonna have to track down who owns them and find out if they are a hobby or part of a commercial enterprise.

NightMist
dazzled by the prospect of locally sourced alpaca

  #16  
Old October 20th 17, 04:40 PM posted to rec.crafts.textiles.quilting
Night Mist
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Posts: 44
Default OT Finally! Actively house shopping

On Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 12:12:12 PM UTC-4, Night Mist wrote:
As most of you may grok based on my posting history, the house I live in has been going all to heckies for better than a decade.

I have finally gotten my family to agree that we must move. What is more I have convinced them at long last that it will be more economically sensible to buy.



We are progressing!

Since we did not have credit cards or loans or any such long term debt, we had no credit rating.
Therefor the bank has had to go seriously old school in writing this mortgage.
This has resulted in mass confusion among the underwriters for the last couple of months.
You would not believe how many times I have had to say, "Check the papers, you already have that." because they are dealing with a whole bunch of pdfs of scanned documentation. I had coffee with the vice president of our branch when he had to scan in around half a ream of papers we brought in for him. Then eventually he had to drive down to Pennsylvania to have words with the supervisor in charge to get them on track and to quit asking for things they would know they could not have if they had gone through the files as they were supposed to. We went through three different household members on the mortgage because they kept making assumptions without looking at the paperwork. They said put the person with the largest income on, we did that.
Then they had to take her off because she had no credit rating and was not on any of the bills. Then they wanted me on, because I am telephone woman and they talked to me the most. Then they discovered I was one bill shy of the number they wanted. Finally we got DH on it because he has that extra bill (because gas company policy was outdated and they wouldn't put it in my name without DH's "permission", and we couldn't get both of us there at the same time because somebody had to watch the kids. Yes that _still_ burns my butt!)

We have finally got everything situated to the mortgage underwriters satisfaction. Now we are waiting for that last letter that means the lawyers run with it for a bit (title search and all that), and then set the closing date.
Our consumer contact guy keeps saying how "unique" this mortgage is to write. I keep telling him, not unique, retro. This is how it was done 20-30 years ago, before it was considered "normal" to live with crazy amounts of debt. Maybe I am weird, but I really really hate debt of any kind, and work intently to pay off any that I fall into as quick as I can.

Yeah, I am having to adjust to the idea of having a couple three decades of debt. Buying a house is not something you can do out of pocket though, unless you are really really rich or have some pretty unusual circumstances going on. I just keep reminding myself of all the money we will actually save, and the freedom we will have to do what we want with the place.
The fact that we will be warm and dry this winter, and can make sure we stay that way every winter hence forward, also helps a lot with my attitude adjustment.

NightMist
 




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