For just over the past two years I've been living with my brother in a duplex at the edge of downtown Minneapolis, and life has been very good. My fiancé moved in with us a little over a year ago, and while I know that the situation wasn't ideal for either of them, it was great for me. I got to live with two of my favorite people and while it often meant I didn't get any alone time in the house, I always had someone to joke with and that was wonderful.
Andrew moves into his new apartment this weekend. He's had it for the past month, and has spent that time painting and cleaning, buying new furniture and setting things up. He's slowly been moving things over, and this weekend is just the final, official move. Justin and I have another month in our current place while we try to finalize the house situation, so all of our stuff is still out and about, but slowly Andrew's things have been packed up and moved out, and it's been rather surreal. Last night was the hardest bit, when he took some artwork that I had painted for him down off the living room wall. Now there's just this big blank wall and it finally feels real that he won't be living there anymore. And it's good, life needs to keep progressing, but it's sad, too.
I know I'll still see Andrew lots, but I'm such a hobbit that when my home life gets disrupted I have a hard time dealing with it. I've been struggling a bit with Justin, too, since when I'm sad he tries to cheer me up, which can often feel like he's pushing me to just get over something. It's particularly hard in this instance since I know that I'll stop being sad once my new routine is established and I can start looking forward to the new home I'm getting and stop being sad about the home I'm losing. I know that's not his intent, but that rarely helps in the moment.
It was a good time, and now it's at it's end. And it's okay to be sad. I just have to remember to be excited about what's to come as well.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien
The best is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire
I have been reading lots of wedding blogs and came across this quote and was immediately drawn to it. I think it's application to weddings in particular is appropriate, in that so many people make themselves crazy trying to make everything "perfect". We've created a culture where first we tell women that "it's your day" and that they should make everything perfect and if anything isn't perfect, then the whole day is ruined, and then demonize those women when they turn into the bridezillas who scream and cry and accuse anyone and everyone of trying to ruin "their day".
So I've been working on figuring out my priorities for our wedding (and will soon make sure that Justin is doing this as well, since it should be "our" day, not just mine) and this is what I've come up with so far, in no particular order.
1) Attended by people I love - there are a few key people who I want to have there in order for it to feel right and complete. This means making sure to accommodate some schedules, or at least try to make things as easy as possible for those people to ensure they can be there.
2) Sincerity - There's a lot of things that get rolled up into this one thing, but I think what it really comes down to is wanting the day to be about getting married to Justin and celebrating that event with friends and family. As much as I love putting on a play, I don't want our wedding to turn into a 'show' and I don't want to do things that seem false to me just to make anyone else happy.
3) Practical - There's a nifty blog about a couple that set out to have a wedding for $2,000. While I don't think I'll be able to have a budget that low, keeping costs down and stress low is important to me. I want it to be a great celebration, yes, but I also want to keep some perspective on the whole thing.
That's all I've got so far. I think the real thing to keep in mind is that there is no perfect day, and that if I keep looking for the "best" option then I'll never be happy with the "good" ones. I already have the best person to marry and that's plenty good enough.
I have been reading lots of wedding blogs and came across this quote and was immediately drawn to it. I think it's application to weddings in particular is appropriate, in that so many people make themselves crazy trying to make everything "perfect". We've created a culture where first we tell women that "it's your day" and that they should make everything perfect and if anything isn't perfect, then the whole day is ruined, and then demonize those women when they turn into the bridezillas who scream and cry and accuse anyone and everyone of trying to ruin "their day".
So I've been working on figuring out my priorities for our wedding (and will soon make sure that Justin is doing this as well, since it should be "our" day, not just mine) and this is what I've come up with so far, in no particular order.
1) Attended by people I love - there are a few key people who I want to have there in order for it to feel right and complete. This means making sure to accommodate some schedules, or at least try to make things as easy as possible for those people to ensure they can be there.
2) Sincerity - There's a lot of things that get rolled up into this one thing, but I think what it really comes down to is wanting the day to be about getting married to Justin and celebrating that event with friends and family. As much as I love putting on a play, I don't want our wedding to turn into a 'show' and I don't want to do things that seem false to me just to make anyone else happy.
3) Practical - There's a nifty blog about a couple that set out to have a wedding for $2,000. While I don't think I'll be able to have a budget that low, keeping costs down and stress low is important to me. I want it to be a great celebration, yes, but I also want to keep some perspective on the whole thing.
That's all I've got so far. I think the real thing to keep in mind is that there is no perfect day, and that if I keep looking for the "best" option then I'll never be happy with the "good" ones. I already have the best person to marry and that's plenty good enough.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The American Dream
The son of a friend of mine has an assignment at school to have two people from different age ranges answer a series of questions regarding the American Dream, and since I turned 30 this year, I just barely squeak into one of the ranges.
I'm going to give this some thought and probably post my answers later, but I thought I'd start with just putting the questions out here and see if anyone has any opinions they'd like to share. Please note - I did not come up with these questions, so when some of them seem redundant or poorly written, blame it on the teacher (which isn't really so great, either).
1) Define the American Dream
2) What is it?
3) Where did it come from?
4) How has it shaped our society in America?
5) Is it a realistic dream to hold onto, why?
6) What are the obstacles to the American dream?
7) Have you obtained the American dream? In what way or do you still want to?
8) How do you think young people define the American dream today?
I'm going to give this some thought and probably post my answers later, but I thought I'd start with just putting the questions out here and see if anyone has any opinions they'd like to share. Please note - I did not come up with these questions, so when some of them seem redundant or poorly written, blame it on the teacher (which isn't really so great, either).
1) Define the American Dream
2) What is it?
3) Where did it come from?
4) How has it shaped our society in America?
5) Is it a realistic dream to hold onto, why?
6) What are the obstacles to the American dream?
7) Have you obtained the American dream? In what way or do you still want to?
8) How do you think young people define the American dream today?
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Name Game
We haven't even set a date and I'm already stressed about "the name thing". What can I say, I'm a champion stresser.
The thing is...I love my name. Sarah Catherine Holmberg - means Princess Pure of the River City, and if I were ever going to be a superhero, that would be my moniker. I love that I, my mother and my grandmother all have the same middle name. I love that Holmberg means River City, since I live in Minneapolis (which means Water City - the water in this case being the Mississippi River) and that Holmberg ties me to my Scandinavian heritage. I love sharing a last name with my brother, and that "don't be a Holmberg" has become a way of saying "don't be a smartass" with our group of friends. I've even grown to love Sarah, though I hated it as a kid. Too many people with that name, too little individuality to it. But now...30 years of having that name, I just don't see how I can give it up.
And Justin supports my desire to not change my name. He told me not to change it, though I don't know how much of that was simply him supporting me and how much of it is that even for him my name *is* my name, and changing it now would take a lot of getting used to. If only he were keeping his last name of Bacon it wouldn't be an issue at all (because no way am I going to have my moniker turn into "Princess Pure Pork") but as he's planning on dropping his last name and going by Justin Alexander (a name he's been using professional for writing and acting for a couple years now) it makes it a little more difficult, as Alexander isn't such a bad last name. It's just not my name.
So I'll be Sarah Holmberg, and he'll be Justin Alexander, and there's no problems with that. That is great. But when we have kids (and yes, at this point it's a when, not an if - hence the stressing) what name do they get?
The options I've thought about/found -
1) they get his last name
2) they get my last name
3) they get a hyphenated version of our last names
4) we make up a new last name for our kids - either combining our last names into a new name or just making one up out of whole cloth
5) if we have girls, they get my last name, and boys get his last name (or vice versa)
6) we say fuck it and don't give them last names
The problem with options 1 and 2 are that it leaves one of us with a different name from the rest of the family. When I presented the idea of our kids having the FirstName Alexander Holmberg, Justin replied that he didn't want to go into Parent-Teacher meetings and have people assume he wasn't the birth father just because he didn't have the same name as the kid, which I totally understand. I feel the same way. I don't want people assuming I'm a step-mom because I have a different name, which I think they would.
3 is problematic in that I don't even want to be burdened with a last name of Holmberg-Alexander (or Alexander-Holmberg), so why would I put that kind of bulk on our kids? Though I wonder if we didn't give our kids middle names so that it became FirstName Alexander-Holmberg, would Justin respond better to the idea? I'll have to ask him about that.
4 sounds like it could work if Holmberg and Alexander blended together better. Holmander and Alexaberg aren't great last names.
With 5 I worry that our kids would feel like we were playing favorites or some weird disconnect by having different connections to their parents. And of course if we pick this option we'll totally have two boys and I'll end up being the odd-one out anyway.
6 is something my brother and I joked about - dropping our last names altogether. When we realized that we had 4 parents, each with a different last name, we joked that we should either take all 4 names or have none at all. I liked the idea, as I think Sarah Catherine is a good name on it's own, but poor Andrew Clayton didn't think it was so great. Not that Sarah Catherine Holmberg-Hines-Iverson-Uselman rolls off the tongue. Maybe if I add Alexander to the end?
I think at the heart of the issue is a conflict between my desire to keep a name I love and a desire to share a family name. The sharing of a family name is made up of two parts - there's the emotional part of liking how names and traditions connect families together, and the more practical part of not wanting to be thought of as the step-mom. I understand all of my mother's reasons for changing her name back to Hines after the divorce, and think it suits her very well, but it wasn't easy having a different name from her, especially when I was younger and she was the one who did most of the parenting. Certainly Justin's reasoning indicates that he intends to be an active parent, not just a "this is how it's done" response, and that's fantastic, but it doesn't really help my dilemma any.
As awful as it feels to think about being the one with the odd name, I don't want either of us to feel that way. But I don't think I should be the one to have to go through it just because of tradition.
One thing we talked about was them taking his last name and finding a way to have a tie to my family through names in another way - if we have a girl, they get the middle name Catherine, and with boys they get the middle name Clayton (which is both Andrew's middle name and my father's middle name). Of course, I really dislike the name Clayton, so that doesn't seem like a real great solution.
I think I keep returning to FirstName Alexander Holmberg because Alexander can work as a middle name, but maybe FirstName Holmberg Alexander is an option. It solves the emotional part of the problem, if not the practical part, though with Holmberg being clearly more appropriate as a last name, teachers and doctors would hopefully make the connection.
And of course we're years away from all this. But I feel like it's important to think about it, and to make choices based on what makes sense, what feels right, not just tradition. I have a lot of issues with the social conventions in our society, and I feel that the way to improve things is not to reject things completely out of hand, but to analyze them, break them down, and think about them, and to make deliberate choices. The more blogs I read, the more women I find who think it's the law that they take their husbands name, or that there isn't any other options out there, and it just frustrates me to no end.
*Edited to add:
I just found this blog posting about naming children that made a point I haven't seen made anywhere else - "Given that maternity is never in doubt, paternal surnames function, socially, as a man's acknowledgement of his paternal responsibility. Using the man's name amounts to a public signal that the man believes this is his child, and accepts his parental role." The whole post is really excellent, and again points to something that I think is at the heart of my struggle with this - I don't want to just do something just because "that's the way it's done".
The thing is...I love my name. Sarah Catherine Holmberg - means Princess Pure of the River City, and if I were ever going to be a superhero, that would be my moniker. I love that I, my mother and my grandmother all have the same middle name. I love that Holmberg means River City, since I live in Minneapolis (which means Water City - the water in this case being the Mississippi River) and that Holmberg ties me to my Scandinavian heritage. I love sharing a last name with my brother, and that "don't be a Holmberg" has become a way of saying "don't be a smartass" with our group of friends. I've even grown to love Sarah, though I hated it as a kid. Too many people with that name, too little individuality to it. But now...30 years of having that name, I just don't see how I can give it up.
And Justin supports my desire to not change my name. He told me not to change it, though I don't know how much of that was simply him supporting me and how much of it is that even for him my name *is* my name, and changing it now would take a lot of getting used to. If only he were keeping his last name of Bacon it wouldn't be an issue at all (because no way am I going to have my moniker turn into "Princess Pure Pork") but as he's planning on dropping his last name and going by Justin Alexander (a name he's been using professional for writing and acting for a couple years now) it makes it a little more difficult, as Alexander isn't such a bad last name. It's just not my name.
So I'll be Sarah Holmberg, and he'll be Justin Alexander, and there's no problems with that. That is great. But when we have kids (and yes, at this point it's a when, not an if - hence the stressing) what name do they get?
The options I've thought about/found -
1) they get his last name
2) they get my last name
3) they get a hyphenated version of our last names
4) we make up a new last name for our kids - either combining our last names into a new name or just making one up out of whole cloth
5) if we have girls, they get my last name, and boys get his last name (or vice versa)
6) we say fuck it and don't give them last names
The problem with options 1 and 2 are that it leaves one of us with a different name from the rest of the family. When I presented the idea of our kids having the FirstName Alexander Holmberg, Justin replied that he didn't want to go into Parent-Teacher meetings and have people assume he wasn't the birth father just because he didn't have the same name as the kid, which I totally understand. I feel the same way. I don't want people assuming I'm a step-mom because I have a different name, which I think they would.
3 is problematic in that I don't even want to be burdened with a last name of Holmberg-Alexander (or Alexander-Holmberg), so why would I put that kind of bulk on our kids? Though I wonder if we didn't give our kids middle names so that it became FirstName Alexander-Holmberg, would Justin respond better to the idea? I'll have to ask him about that.
4 sounds like it could work if Holmberg and Alexander blended together better. Holmander and Alexaberg aren't great last names.
With 5 I worry that our kids would feel like we were playing favorites or some weird disconnect by having different connections to their parents. And of course if we pick this option we'll totally have two boys and I'll end up being the odd-one out anyway.
6 is something my brother and I joked about - dropping our last names altogether. When we realized that we had 4 parents, each with a different last name, we joked that we should either take all 4 names or have none at all. I liked the idea, as I think Sarah Catherine is a good name on it's own, but poor Andrew Clayton didn't think it was so great. Not that Sarah Catherine Holmberg-Hines-Iverson-Uselman rolls off the tongue. Maybe if I add Alexander to the end?
I think at the heart of the issue is a conflict between my desire to keep a name I love and a desire to share a family name. The sharing of a family name is made up of two parts - there's the emotional part of liking how names and traditions connect families together, and the more practical part of not wanting to be thought of as the step-mom. I understand all of my mother's reasons for changing her name back to Hines after the divorce, and think it suits her very well, but it wasn't easy having a different name from her, especially when I was younger and she was the one who did most of the parenting. Certainly Justin's reasoning indicates that he intends to be an active parent, not just a "this is how it's done" response, and that's fantastic, but it doesn't really help my dilemma any.
As awful as it feels to think about being the one with the odd name, I don't want either of us to feel that way. But I don't think I should be the one to have to go through it just because of tradition.
One thing we talked about was them taking his last name and finding a way to have a tie to my family through names in another way - if we have a girl, they get the middle name Catherine, and with boys they get the middle name Clayton (which is both Andrew's middle name and my father's middle name). Of course, I really dislike the name Clayton, so that doesn't seem like a real great solution.
I think I keep returning to FirstName Alexander Holmberg because Alexander can work as a middle name, but maybe FirstName Holmberg Alexander is an option. It solves the emotional part of the problem, if not the practical part, though with Holmberg being clearly more appropriate as a last name, teachers and doctors would hopefully make the connection.
And of course we're years away from all this. But I feel like it's important to think about it, and to make choices based on what makes sense, what feels right, not just tradition. I have a lot of issues with the social conventions in our society, and I feel that the way to improve things is not to reject things completely out of hand, but to analyze them, break them down, and think about them, and to make deliberate choices. The more blogs I read, the more women I find who think it's the law that they take their husbands name, or that there isn't any other options out there, and it just frustrates me to no end.
*Edited to add:
I just found this blog posting about naming children that made a point I haven't seen made anywhere else - "Given that maternity is never in doubt, paternal surnames function, socially, as a man's acknowledgement of his paternal responsibility. Using the man's name amounts to a public signal that the man believes this is his child, and accepts his parental role." The whole post is really excellent, and again points to something that I think is at the heart of my struggle with this - I don't want to just do something just because "that's the way it's done".
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
House Hunting - Part 3
We headed back out and started looking at houses. We even found one that we loved - it was an amazing house, gorgeous woodwork, huge, lovely, priced too good to be true...and it was. The listing agent listed it well below asking price to generate multiple bids, which it did. In one day it had six bids on it, and ours just couldn't compete. So we kept looking.
What we eventually decided to do was sit down with our laptops and look at every listing that was in our price range, was reasonably big enough to house us and our stuff, and was in a location that we were comfortable with. Then we looked up the Truth in Sale of Housing reports for each of those houses (thanks, Minneapolis!) and if there were any signs of major repair work to be done we crossed them off the list. We were running out of time to do a rehab loan, and I was okay with that, to be frank.
We ended up with a list of 20 to 30 some houses, which was a bit overwhelming, especially since we had already seen so many. What we decided to do was have Justin go out with our Realtor and look at all the houses without me, and then have all three of us go out and look at the houses that had real potential to fit our needs. This ended up working out really well, and after they had seen about 10 or 15, we made plans for me to see the top 3 of that batch. It all gets rather complicated around this time, since I was in rehearsals for my Fringe show, and Justin was in performances with Shakespeare and Company, and was also busy getting Lyme Disease (he caught it super early, has been taking antibiotics and seems to be on the road to a full recovery). But we found the time to go and look at the top picks and it just so happens that one of them turned out to be perfect.
It's a two story house, just down the street from the Victorian, so it was a location that we were okay with. It has three bedrooms, high ceilings, a formal dining room, a sun room, a beautiful backyard and a clean TISH report. Nice hardwood floors, Central a/c, a screened in front porch and enough room for us to live there comfortably for many years to come. The one hitch? It's a short sale.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a short sale is (as were we) a brief description. When a homeowner is having trouble making mortgage payments, and thinks that they are headed towards foreclosure, but will be unable to sell the house for the amount that they still owe on it, they can go to their lender and propose a short sale. The lender has to agree to it, since they'll be losing money, but in general can be in the lenders best interest, because if they have to foreclose on the house, that means a lot of problems for them.
Ultimately what it comes down to is that at this point, the person selling the house doesn't really decide if they want to sell it to someone, their lender does. So we wrote up our purchase agreement and sent our offer in. And were then told that the seller's bank would take a minimum of 30 days to respond to our offer. Which...still floors me. That's 30 days to just say if they will agree to our purchase price or not, we still then have to go through the process of securing our loan which usually takes another 30 days. We think we'll be able to close our loan in less than 30 days, but the real problem at this point is the wait to hear back on our purchase agreement. Banks are such weird entities to deal with in this regard, and while our offer is strong (and the only one they have) we're still nervous that they might not accept it. Which puts us in a bad spot, if only because we'll be out of time to find a new house to purchase. But we remain hopeful. Struggling to be patient, but hopeful.
It's so hard mainly because I want this house so much. It really is a wonderful house and while I have had some uncertainty about whether homeownership was for me in the past few years, now that I'm so close to it I *really* want it. To be able to paint the walls whatever color I (and I suppose Justin) want, to fix things and change things as I see fit, to not have to deal with a landlord. To have the space for storing power tools and a garage to keep my moped in. To settle someplace and not have to worry about moving for a very long time.
Hopefully August 25th will roll around we'll we hear back from the bank that it's a go and we'll get everything else started. Otherwise...part 4, I guess.
What we eventually decided to do was sit down with our laptops and look at every listing that was in our price range, was reasonably big enough to house us and our stuff, and was in a location that we were comfortable with. Then we looked up the Truth in Sale of Housing reports for each of those houses (thanks, Minneapolis!) and if there were any signs of major repair work to be done we crossed them off the list. We were running out of time to do a rehab loan, and I was okay with that, to be frank.
We ended up with a list of 20 to 30 some houses, which was a bit overwhelming, especially since we had already seen so many. What we decided to do was have Justin go out with our Realtor and look at all the houses without me, and then have all three of us go out and look at the houses that had real potential to fit our needs. This ended up working out really well, and after they had seen about 10 or 15, we made plans for me to see the top 3 of that batch. It all gets rather complicated around this time, since I was in rehearsals for my Fringe show, and Justin was in performances with Shakespeare and Company, and was also busy getting Lyme Disease (he caught it super early, has been taking antibiotics and seems to be on the road to a full recovery). But we found the time to go and look at the top picks and it just so happens that one of them turned out to be perfect.
It's a two story house, just down the street from the Victorian, so it was a location that we were okay with. It has three bedrooms, high ceilings, a formal dining room, a sun room, a beautiful backyard and a clean TISH report. Nice hardwood floors, Central a/c, a screened in front porch and enough room for us to live there comfortably for many years to come. The one hitch? It's a short sale.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a short sale is (as were we) a brief description. When a homeowner is having trouble making mortgage payments, and thinks that they are headed towards foreclosure, but will be unable to sell the house for the amount that they still owe on it, they can go to their lender and propose a short sale. The lender has to agree to it, since they'll be losing money, but in general can be in the lenders best interest, because if they have to foreclose on the house, that means a lot of problems for them.
Ultimately what it comes down to is that at this point, the person selling the house doesn't really decide if they want to sell it to someone, their lender does. So we wrote up our purchase agreement and sent our offer in. And were then told that the seller's bank would take a minimum of 30 days to respond to our offer. Which...still floors me. That's 30 days to just say if they will agree to our purchase price or not, we still then have to go through the process of securing our loan which usually takes another 30 days. We think we'll be able to close our loan in less than 30 days, but the real problem at this point is the wait to hear back on our purchase agreement. Banks are such weird entities to deal with in this regard, and while our offer is strong (and the only one they have) we're still nervous that they might not accept it. Which puts us in a bad spot, if only because we'll be out of time to find a new house to purchase. But we remain hopeful. Struggling to be patient, but hopeful.
It's so hard mainly because I want this house so much. It really is a wonderful house and while I have had some uncertainty about whether homeownership was for me in the past few years, now that I'm so close to it I *really* want it. To be able to paint the walls whatever color I (and I suppose Justin) want, to fix things and change things as I see fit, to not have to deal with a landlord. To have the space for storing power tools and a garage to keep my moped in. To settle someplace and not have to worry about moving for a very long time.
Hopefully August 25th will roll around we'll we hear back from the bank that it's a go and we'll get everything else started. Otherwise...part 4, I guess.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Fringe-y
Another Fringe Festival, come and gone...and I missed almost all of it. *sigh*
This was my second Fringe Festival. I stage managed for New Theatre Group's American Sexy, which was awesome and you all should have seen it. It was thought-provoking and uncomfortable at times and a blast to work on. I really enjoyed working with Brian Balcom, who I've known since high school, and being part of such a different process of developing a play. And my cast was wonderful - both in their roles and to work with. I am going to miss them.
So working on that show was great, but the rest of the Fringe? Who knows, I was stuck with a monster head cold that made most of the past two weeks a blur. I did manage to see a few shows, all of which were really great, but I had hoped to go and see a bunch more. Instead I used the PTO I had set aside for Fringe on being sick. What a waste.
But the thing about Fringe...there's always next year. We'll see how that works out.
This was my second Fringe Festival. I stage managed for New Theatre Group's American Sexy, which was awesome and you all should have seen it. It was thought-provoking and uncomfortable at times and a blast to work on. I really enjoyed working with Brian Balcom, who I've known since high school, and being part of such a different process of developing a play. And my cast was wonderful - both in their roles and to work with. I am going to miss them.
So working on that show was great, but the rest of the Fringe? Who knows, I was stuck with a monster head cold that made most of the past two weeks a blur. I did manage to see a few shows, all of which were really great, but I had hoped to go and see a bunch more. Instead I used the PTO I had set aside for Fringe on being sick. What a waste.
But the thing about Fringe...there's always next year. We'll see how that works out.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
House Hunting - Part 2
We decide to put an offer on the Victorian, and go ahead with a renovation loan. It meant changing loan officers, since the one I had gone to wasn't trained for that type of loan program, but that ended up being a good thing in the long run anyway. We sat down with John, our Realtor, and started signing papers. And more papers. And just a few more papers. I knew that there would be lots of paperwork, but it is still sort of daunting to have to initial here and date there so many times.
We finished that off, I wrote out a check for our earnest money and we sent it off, knowing that since we were dealing with a bank as a seller, it might take awhile to hear back. Luckily, our wait was not long, and we had a signed purchase agreement within just a few days! We were so excited, and couldn't wait to get in and start having contractors in for bids and all that insanity. But first...the home inspection.
I called up the home inspector who had talked to my first time homebuyers class and made an appointment. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that while it was just a little over a month ago, it feels like eons since then. Anyway, he met Justin and I at the house and we got started. Now, we knew the house needed work. It was missing copper from the heating system, so the baseboard radiators would need to be replaced, and there was certainly lots of cosmetic work that needed to be done, but as we were going along, it just seemed to get worse and worse. With the kind of money we had to work with, and the amount of damage that the house had, it eventually came to the point where we had to go ahead and use the inspection contingency clause on our purchase agreement and pull out. It turns out that there was damage to the plumbing system as well as the heating, the electrical needed a lot of work, the windows all needed to be replaced, and on top of that there was new damage being done. It looked like people were continuing to break in to try and steal more copper piping and had started to poke around the gorgeous woodwork in the downstairs, which was one of the major selling points of the house to begin with.
So we canceled our agreement, which was disappointing. But we decided to go back in
with a new offer, one that was considerably lower and would give us more money to rehab the house. Considering the listing agent denied any ongoing damage to the house, we knew it was a long shot that our offer would be accepted, but we wanted to try. At the end of the day, our new offer was rejected, but at least we could walkaway knowing we had tried everything we could to buy that house. It just wasn't meant to be. We were back to square one.
(to be continued...)
We finished that off, I wrote out a check for our earnest money and we sent it off, knowing that since we were dealing with a bank as a seller, it might take awhile to hear back. Luckily, our wait was not long, and we had a signed purchase agreement within just a few days! We were so excited, and couldn't wait to get in and start having contractors in for bids and all that insanity. But first...the home inspection.
I called up the home inspector who had talked to my first time homebuyers class and made an appointment. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that while it was just a little over a month ago, it feels like eons since then. Anyway, he met Justin and I at the house and we got started. Now, we knew the house needed work. It was missing copper from the heating system, so the baseboard radiators would need to be replaced, and there was certainly lots of cosmetic work that needed to be done, but as we were going along, it just seemed to get worse and worse. With the kind of money we had to work with, and the amount of damage that the house had, it eventually came to the point where we had to go ahead and use the inspection contingency clause on our purchase agreement and pull out. It turns out that there was damage to the plumbing system as well as the heating, the electrical needed a lot of work, the windows all needed to be replaced, and on top of that there was new damage being done. It looked like people were continuing to break in to try and steal more copper piping and had started to poke around the gorgeous woodwork in the downstairs, which was one of the major selling points of the house to begin with.
So we canceled our agreement, which was disappointing. But we decided to go back in
with a new offer, one that was considerably lower and would give us more money to rehab the house. Considering the listing agent denied any ongoing damage to the house, we knew it was a long shot that our offer would be accepted, but we wanted to try. At the end of the day, our new offer was rejected, but at least we could walkaway knowing we had tried everything we could to buy that house. It just wasn't meant to be. We were back to square one.
(to be continued...)
Ugh
I'm sick. Have been for 9 days now. It just won't stop. Been to the clinic, confirmed it's just a head cold, nothing they can do for me. Head cold from hell!
Will get back to blogging once my head clears.
Will get back to blogging once my head clears.
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