Tuesday, May 17, 2011

inspection day!

so today . . . was our house inspection--not of the house we live in (thank goodness!) but of the house we want to buy...

this house has had me on a roller coaster. the first time i saw it, i liked it. but then i wasn't sure. then rollie saw it, and he loved it! and i liked it even better the second time. but i still wasn't sure...

(of course, it took me so long to make a decision about a new camera that rollie just finally bought me one. i fear that buying a house is going to be the same.)

and then the husband refused to sign our offer. and i thought, "ok, maybe this isn't the house for us after all..." but i was kind of sad about it. and then the wife said, "oh nonononono! he is not going to mess this up! he will sign those papers if i have get a judge to order him to do it!" (ok well those might not have been her exact words--i don't know what her exact words were--but it must have been something like that.) so we waited for the judge to rule. and i worried that someone else would swoop in and steal the house away from us, because by then i had decided it was the only house for us! and if we didn't get it, i was going to be seriously bummed!

but no one swooped in, and the judge ruled, and then the ball was back in our court. so we scheduled the inspection and got excited to see the house again! and then the sellers said we had to move the inspection a few days. and then i got impatient and irritated by their shenanigans! (at least, i thought it was shenanigans. maybe it was just circumstances, but it felt like shenanigans to me!) and so we waited through another weekend... and hoped that it was going to be ok...

but while we were waiting, again, our realtor emailed us the report from a home inspection that had been done last october. she told us that after the home inspection, those prospective buyers had backed out. oh great. now i was back to thinking that maybe this wasn't going to be our house after all. maybe it had insurmountable issues. maybe there really was a dead body buried under the deck...

maybe i should just pretend i was shopping for a camera and let rollie choose one for me.

which brings us to today. finally, we were going to get back into the house for a closer look. i had my clipboard. i had a 25 foot measuring tape. i had paint chip samples. i had my camera. i was prepared to document that house to within an inch of it's life! and i was excited. i was done waiting. it was time to spring into action and buy a house!

and then i got there...

rollie was already there with our realtor and the inspector. i took diandra in to show her around, and was quickly met by the the seller's sister (you know, the one who was "sick") who decided that i should not be let loose in the house unattended. she was not in a very good mood. this spoiled my plan. and my fun. i don't think she wants to sell the house, either--which of course makes me determined to get it!

i know, i am perverse.

with the seller's sister there (who, it turns out, really was probably sick--she still didn't look so good,) i didn't feel all that comfortable wandering about measuring things and looking at paint chips. so instead of spending two hours preparing, in detail, my plans for redecorating, i followed rollie and the inspector, surreptitiously measuring windows and floors and closets as i could, and then trying to remember the numbers in my head until i could note them in my phone. because while i started out with a clipboard, i had left it in the car. thankfully i still had my 25 foot tape measure and my camera in my purse...

as i listened to the inspector talk, i started swinging back to the "maybe this isn't the house for us" camp. because although he wasn't finding anything major, there sure was a lot of little stuff that needed to be taken care of. and it just sounded like a lot of work! and it made me irritated that we were spending so much money on a house and still had to fix it up!

when the inspection was over, the inspector said that it was a good house--no red flags. it was safe to go ahead and buy it. so i think we will. the location is good. it has lots of space and light. and the kitchen is awesome! (i know, you think it will be wasted on me, but maybe i will start cooking more often...) we should get the full report tomorrow, and then we will start making lists and scheduling workers and planning color schemes and looking at plants and prioritizing it all...

...because now i am very firmly back in the "this is definitely the only house for us" camp! i love it! so i am getting off the roller coaster now and heading to home depot.

i'm pretty sure that before we are done, rubio's is not going to be the only place where they know us by name ;-)

1 comment:

Carroll said...

I'm so glad the inspection went well and that there was no major problem. So now the fun begins. I'm sure this will be a busier than normal time for you but what fun you'll have. But I do know you and decisions but I'm sure you won't make a decision that can't be changed in time if need be. So have fun and get to packing and enjoy this very special time in your lives! Love you!