house

Houses in Motion

Posted on by grahams

I finally spoke with

[info]coco_b

last night, she apologized profusely for leaving me in the dark for so long… She seems to be having fun out there in South Dakota, at least in her down time… Apparently it is very beautiful out there, we’ll have to get out there as part of our travels sometime soon.

I’ve been spending most of my time unpacking, cleaning, and settling into the new house. I use the term settling loosely, because I’m sure of my decisions will be overridden by Corinna when she gets back… =) Yesterday I managed to get the last of the boxes out of the living room, dining room, kitchen, and den, which allowed me to mop all the floors. The floors were refinished before we moved in, and whatever they used on the floor (stain or whatever) was getting onto socks and feet, so I had been walking around in flip-flops and sandals all the time.. But once I got the bulk of the crap unpacked, I was able to move everything around in order to mop. Now the floors don’t seem to scum up socks and feet, although they may need another mopping to be sure.

I bought a grill the other day, a propane Char-Broil… I had some people for grilling over on Saturday because

[info]luke0x

was in town briefly, and afterwards some of us went to the Middle East to see a band I had never heard of before, CSS. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you if it was a good show because I imbibed a bit too much and I think I would have enjoyed a Barry Manilow performance at that point… Seriously, though, it was a fun time,even if it wasn’t exactly my normal listening fare.

Sunday started off a little rough, but I eventually pulled it together… Unpacked a bit, but mostly I just lounged around the new house… It was strange, but I think because I’ve had a seemingly unending stream of projects in the months leading up to selling Corinna’s old place,simply sitting around watching TV caused me to feel guilty, like I was neglecting something which needed to be done immediately. Once I Reminded myself that the boxes would still be there the next day, and we weren’t in a race to get a house on the market or anything, I was able to just relax and enjoy Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon. Later on we caught Severance with the film club, which had a big turnout and was lots of fun, even if I was tired and hungover…

On Thursday I’m headed to the dreaded Avalon to see Skinny Puppy… I caught them last time they came through town, and it was a great show, so I’m hoping for even more fun!

A Quick Update

Posted on by grahams

I’ve been really busy, for obvious reasons, but here’s a quick update as to what’s going on:

  • We’re still go for both closings this Thursday.  Everything seems to be on track, all the repairs to our new place that we asked for in the Purchase and Sale agreement have been taken care of.  In addition, we have a verbal agreement with the seller to move our stuff in on Wednesday (but not ourselves), but we need to get that signed off tomorrow or else our movers will have nowhere to put our stuff on Wednesday morning.  =)
  • Speaking of movers, I’m packing, packing, packing… 
    [info]coco_b

    has been working a ton lately, even this Saturday and today!  So I’ve been doing most of the packing, which is okay with me, especially since this will hopefully be the last move for many years..  I’ve pretty much got most everything except the bedroom packed up now…  Not sure if we will have enough boxes for everything, so there might be a last-minute scramble for boxes tomorrow.  Or, I suppose, we will just have to buy a few boxes from the movers and box up the last of the stuff while they are moving what we have boxed up.  We’ll see though..  Many thanks to

    [info]rat_girl3

    and

    [info]equalize

    for helping us out with the boxes.  They just moved into THEIR new place, and the timing just so happened that while they were emptying their boxes we were in need of them…  They were life (or at least wallet) savers!

  • For some reason I’ve started to sort of follow the Red Sox.  I’m not sure what happened, I think it’s
    [info]roryk

    ‘s fault.  Perhaps it was only a matter of time before I caught the local disease.

  • Yesterday we took a break from work and packing, and headed out to
    [info]adamfletcher

    ‘s folks house for grilling and pool chicanery.  It was awesome, we had a great time as always…  It was a much needed break from all the adult seriousness the two of us have been dealing with lately…

Inspection

Posted on by grahams
[info]coco_b

 and I met up with Mauro (our agent) and Tony (home inspector to the stars) this morning to have the new place inspected.  Pretty much everything went well, although the stairs to the rear deck need a bit of repair….  But an area we thought had water damage turned out to be wallpaper that had been painted over and which started to bubble up a bit…  Not fun, but much better than water damage.. =)

I have a bunch of pictures I’ll throw up once I can take them off the camera…

New House

Posted on by grahams

Front of Building
Originally uploaded by seangraham.

Corinna and I finished negotiations, and tonight our offer on a condo in Watertown was accepted! Here are some pictures, most are from the MLS listing, but the larger ones towards the end were taken by me. I’m sure there will be more in the future, but these should whet your appetite!

Obviously, the offer is only the first step in the process, we still have to have an inspection, sign the purchase and sale agreement, and close, and occasionally things go wrong along that process… But we’ll find out soon, because we are closing on the new place the same day we are closing on the old place: May 31st!

Shipped It

Posted on by grahams
[info]coco_b

 and I had our first open house this past Sunday, so we spent a lot of time leading up to it tying up all the loose ends in the place..   I was feeling pretty ill, so I wasn’t pulling 100% of my weight…  But I still managed to do some cleaning while she finished off everything else…  While our place had been listed midway through last week, we held off on showing it until the open house, to kind of kick it off with a bang.

We were kinda freaking out because when we listed our place, there were two other units on the market in our building, both of which were priced much higher than ours (in my opinion, they are both ridiculously overpriced).  But at the last minute on Friday, another unit went on sale for a few grand less than ours.  From the pictures in the listing, it looked pretty comparable to ours, but it was on the first floor.  So we really went to town on our place so it would show really well.  On Sunday, we found out that not only did this other place undercut our price, but they decided to have an open house at the same time as us…  So on our way out of our place, we decided to swing by and check out our competition..  This turned out to be an excellent idea, as this place didn’t compete with ours at all…  It’s not like it was a tenement or anything, don’t get me wrong, but it certainly didn’t show anywhere near as well as ours..  The walls were all flat white, with lots of very visible patching, etc..  The shades were drawn, so even though it was noon on a beautiful Spring day, the place looked dreary.  The bathroom was in dire need of overhauling, something we just had done a few months ago..   They opened up the wall between the kitchen and living room, but the kitchen wasn’t terribly pretty, so it was a turn off for me..  And they closed off the archway from the living room to the bathroom, making the place feel really claustrophobic when you were in the front entryway.  All in all, I felt that our place looked so much better, and I felt good that people would visit this other place first (since it was on the first floor) before making their way up to ours…   It totally re-framed expectations and made our place look that much better.

So after seeing this place, the nervous feelings lifted and we were able to simply enjoy our lunch and the beautiful day.   Mauro, our agent, was expecting 12 or so people to come by, but whether it was the weather or the great pictures in our listing, we had 20+!  Corinna had been saying for the past week or so that she had hoped to get an offer quickly after the open house, but I was quite skeptical..  There were several comparable places on the market in our neighborhood which had been listed for weeks or even months…  But it was hard to deal with that data as the real estate market is always kind of slow leading into the spring..

Anyway, to make a long story short, a woman made an offer on our place a few hours after the open house, and by noon the next day, 24 hours after the start of our open house, we had agreed on a price… (When I say “we”, I really mean Corinna and this woman, since I don’t own any of our current place…)  Corinna and I were completely caught off guard by how fast this all happened, and we are totally chuffed…  Obviously the deal isn’t completely secure yet, so I’m not completely relaxed, but it certainly is helping me sleep easier.  The woman has scheduled the inspection for this Saturday (at 8am, ick) and wants to close by May 31st!