Inspection Results

It's always interesting when someone evaluates your home.  We've been living in it for 6 years and never had a problem.  The house is only 6yrs old so what could possibly be wrong??  They came up with 7 things.

1)  Radon.  I expected that there would be radon b/c all the neighbors had it.  We've never had it tested b/c we never go in our basement.  Apparently on a Radon test 0-4 is "safe".  Our score was.... drum roll please.... 14.  The opposite of safe.

2) Sump Pump.  One of the disadvantages of our current back yard is that it is completely sloped which means you can't put a big patio or a swing set.  At the bottom corner of our yard is a drain (think grate where you don't want to know what weirdo things are dwelling down there).  Because of our elevation and the grate, we would never get water in our basement.  Most of our basement is probably above the grate.  As such, in 6 yrs I have NEVER heard the sump pump go on.  According the the inspector that is because the sump pump doesn't work.  Huh.  I guess you have to periodically put water in the hole in the ground. 

3)  Squishy wood.  The wood trim around the window in the front of the house was squishy in one spot.  They asked us to caulk around the window.  I went out there to inspect the squishyness and when I pressed on it the thing practically caved in.  So now it looks worse than when it was inspected. Awesome.

4)  Pipe caps.  On the roof of your house there are pipes that let the sewage smells escape your house.  Ours still had the caps on them as if they had just come out of the factory (6 yrs ago).  For 6 yrs we have been trying to find out why the jacuzzi tub smells like sewer after you take a shower.  Now we know.  Thanks MI Homes... you are going to get your asses out here and fix that.

Those 4 are the ones we agreed to.  4 out of the 7.  The next three were ridiculous and we said no way Jose.  As a testament to how stupid these requests were, when we responded with "no way Jose" the buyers just signed it.  No ifs ands or buts.

5)  Slanty AC.  The air conditioner is not level and that MAY decrease the life of the a/c.  You should have someone come out and inspect it and make it level and possibly replace it.  Um, no.  It works fine. If you want it level, stick a brick under it when you move in. 

6)  Heater.  The heater "turns off before it reaches the correct heat."  What?  Um, no.  It works fine.  Plus we had it inspected in October - here's the invoice suckers! - and we already bought you a 1yr warranty on all appliances.  

7)  Lightening.  If your house got struck by lightening, it would probably catch fire because of "blah blah blah".  No shit Sherlock.  If the house got struck by lightening that would not be cool.  However, all those "blah blah blah"s you speak of were built like that 6 yrs ago and are up to code.  If you are worried about lightening striking then YOU can pay to get it inspected.

I'm glad the inspection stuff is over.  Now on to the appraisal. 

Brain Dead

I was up really late working last night so I am pretty brain dead right now.  I actually feel numb to this whole process.  I've been trying to take emotion completely out of it because I'm so sick of getting my hopes up and then being disappointed when reality slaps me in the face.

This weekend we are scheduled to see 5 houses.  2 of them are Spec homes so I can't show them to you.  They are in a newer part of a neighborhood we like ok.  A bigger problem is that they will take several months to finish and probably have crappy unestablished yards. 

Of the 3 that are "move in ready" one is a foreclosure.  In a great neighborhood but at a ridiculously low price which makes me think that the inside has been beaten down.  Mr. Molly thinks we could put money into it and make it nice.  I know that this takes time, patience, and money and I don't really have any of those to spare on a "fixer upper."

So now we are down to two.  Both in the same neighborhood... the neighborhood we like ok. 

This one:

It seems like it might be pretty good.  I don't love the street appeal from this picture and I don't love the fireplace and the lawn/yard probably needs work the back.  But it could be pretty good.

And then this one:

Which just looks really small in the picture (why do realtors do that) when in fact it's 3200 sq feet above ground.  It does not have a finished basement, but is at a lower price point so we could finish it the way we want.  It looks like it doesn't have houses behind it which is nice.

There's also a new listing that just came on today (OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!) in a neighborhood we haven't looked in too much.  This neighborhood is kind of like our current one in places, but then there are some places that are nicer.  Mr. Molly drove by it (b/c there are no pics online yet) and said the street appeal is very good.  So we are going to try to add it to the list:

Could "NO PHOTO" be "THE ONE"?????   Who knows.

Not Moving Down, Moving Laterally

The reason the blog is called Movin' on Down is because 1) I am moving and 2) I am trying to get my size down. 

I haven't talked about #2 at all because the fact is that my size is not going down as of late.  Good news is that it's not really going up either. 

Stress and anxiety tend to wreck havoc on my scale numbers. 

I tried to copy/paste a graph of my weight loss in here but apparently I am not tech-savvy enough.  Here's a depiction of what it looks like:

_____
           \________
                            \________________
Feb                                                  End of March

(take that blogger! - i WILL make a graph)

However today I had a weekly weigh in and I lost 1lb from last week.  And my overall weight is only 0.2lbs higher from the lowest I've been since I started in early Feb.  So I'm going to go ahead and call that a victory considering the current conditions and that I haven't really been trying that hard. 

Imagine what I could do if I tried.  It's just... I can only work hard at so many things.  Job, House Selling, House Searching, Setting up Moving/Storage/Rental, Keeping Kids Alive.  That's about it.  Note "keeping kids alive" was last on the list.  Thank God cheese has protein in it and they are in good hands at daycare.

p.s. I'm going to guess that my new Canadian readers are really just Mr. Molly traveling on business.  :)

Mood Swings

So this morning I am happy.  Yes, I can go from despair to happy in 12 hours.  Thank you Zoloft.

Reasons why I am happy this morning:

• My son told me I look beautiful today totally unprompted
• Mr. Molly arrived at his business trip destination safely
• The daycare had free coffee and biscottis for the parents this morning
• Tomorrow is pajama day at daycare
• No work after 2pm today
• Cleaning lady is cleaning the house today
• RL is sending our response to the inspection request to remedy so I don't have to think about that anymore
• I get to talk to BFF this morning, and she is coming to visit in 9 days
• I found a couple houses to look at this weekend; 1 decent one, 1 foreclosure, and 2 spec homes

Note to self:  Take happy pills with regularity during house selling/buying process

Despair is setting in

The above picture is exactly what I feel like right now.  Except I want to add a caption that says "Woe is me! I can't find a $0.5M house I like!"  Yes, I know my problems are stupid.  There could be much worse situations.  Some people can't afford a $50,000 house.  Some people can't feed their kids and some people's husbands or kids have terminal cancer.

In the grand scheme of things, it's great we sold our house and eventually a house we like will come on the market or we will build one.

However, in my world right now, I look every day at realtor.com and my realtor website saved searches and every day the market is the same.  No new houses coming on, at all.  None. 

We just keep going back to ones we've looked at a million times thinking, "well maybe we could make that work." but we don't want to make a forced decision.  This is our "forever" house.  We don't want to compromise.

I wasn't really feeling this kind of despair until today.  Over the weekend we found a great house that we really liked.  We saw it on Saturday first thing and wanted to go back that same day.  RL couldn't make that work with her schedule so we planned to go back Sunday morning.  On Sat. at 5:30pm it went into contract.  Now, we didn't JUST MISS OUT on this house.  It was on the market for 20 days and it was in a neighborhood that we thought we didn't like.  But it turns out that we DO like some parts of this neighborhood and so we decided to try it out.  We just got there too late.  It was our fault.
Here is what we lost on Sat:

 

Above was actually the 2nd house that we missed out on, but the 1st one was mostly timing.  We saw it before our house was listed and by the time we had our contract it was in contract too:

But we still weren't in despair b/c RL told us that a house is coming on the market in the neighborhood we LOVE as a relocation and it would be listed right in our price range. 

Well, today when we talked to RL she said it's coming on the market way above our price range and we can't afford it.  So all the hope I had put into that little nugget vanished and on came the despair.

Now we are looking at apartments, temporary living.  That could end up being a year.  Who knows.

Hoodlums

Not much new on the house searching front so I thought I would tell you a story. 

One day, my dryer stopped drying.  It was very curious b/c it's only 6yrs old and ironically it's the only appliance that we are expected to take with us to the next house storage unit.  I asked the most knowledgeable person I know what could cause a dryer to stop drying.  Google said that probably the heating element had gone out.  He (yes, Google is a man) also said that the first thing you should check is that nothing is blocking the little vent the pushes the hot air outside.

I am not a HandyMolly.  In fact, though I have seen steam coming out of the sides of houses before, I never really thought about the fact that there was a hose leading from my dryer to the outside world.  I went searching for this opening and found a little hood covering a tube.

I reached inside the tube and felt... Styrofoam.  Someone a handyman A hoodlum had stuck a McCafe styrofoam cup inside the tube that expels the heat from the dryer to the outside world.  It was stuck in there so good that I had to break it up to get it out.  It even still had the plastic safety cap on it. 

I was seriously pissed.  When the Sears Handyman came and took the dryer apart he confirmed that the heating element had, in fact, gone out and pointed out singed lint near the burnt out part.  He said I am lucky b/c the house could have caught on fire.  The house that I am IN CONTRACT to SELL in 30 days.

What the hell hoodlums?  Mr. Molly and other observers think it must have been a neighborhood kid who didn't know the extent of what he was doing.  I don't know.  I had landscapers and painters here getting the house ready to list.  My neighbor next door has had workers around for months.. I don't know what the hell they are doing in there.  We also pissed off 3 realtors when we chose RL over them.  So it could have been a person with a vendetta.  Or it could have been a neighborhood hoodlum.  Either way I am pissed and I am checking that tube like every day.

So let this be a Public Service Announcement:  CHECK YOUR TUBE THAT GOES FROM THE DRYER TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE to make sure there is not a McDonalds McCafe Latte cup about to cause your house to go up in flames.  It could happen to you.  Especially if there are a bunch of 10yr olds running around in your 'hood playing "tag."

Inspection Day

As I write this an inspector and Jack and Jill are going through the house.  I'm sure they will not find anything but radon b/c the house is only 6yrs old but you never know.  I don't really care about the inspection at all, except that I feel bad for my in laws who planned a trip out here long before we even started cleaning out closets.  All they wanted was to keep the boys home from school and have a low key day with them and instead they had to be "displaced" for 3 hours (during nap time) for the inspection.  Ah well, we are lucky they are here because they can watch the kids while we go out again tomorrow and look for houses.  Again.

I am not that excited about any of the houses we are seeing tomorrow.  So I'm not even going to write about that.

Instead we are researching apartments to live in as temporary housing.  This, I kind of AM excited about.  Weirdly.  Seems like such a simple life to live in a furnished apartment for the summer.  Plus there will be no pressure to find a house immediately so we won't worry about making a bad decision.  And most apartment complexes have pools.  This is looking better every day.

Here's hoping that more houses go on the market next week!  Fingers crossed

p.s. HELLO to my readers in Russia and Germany!  The internet is so fascinating sometimes.