Time to Say Good-Bye to Our First House

It's been 20 days since I announced on my blog that we are officially moving. Between the time that we accepted the offer on the house all the way up to about a week and a half before we actually closed on the house, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. I was hardly stressed at all about it. 

I've been living with my mom and sister now for about two weeks now and it's weird not going "home" anymore. I'm so anxious to start working on fixing up our new home already! But I sure am going to miss this one. The week or so leading up to closing on it, however, I will not miss!

While we were in Seattle/Vancouver/Portland, we had the home inspection done on our house. I think we were both a bit shocked to hear the results of it. The biggest issue found was mold in the attic. Yup. Mold. The reason for the mold was the air ducts from the bathroom and the kitchen not being properly vented through the attic. Because the moist air was trapped in the attic, it caused the mold to grow. There wasn't a lot - a few spots here and there - but mold is mold.

The other concern found with the house was the roof. Come to find out there was not one layer of shingles, not two layers, but THREE layers of shingles on our roof. I suppose we have to accept blame on this one - when we bought the house, we didn't use a realtor, but we knew the roof needed to be replaced so we bought the shingles, and the current owners (who Perry knew) re-shingled it. Win-win. Sort of. What maybe they didn't realize was that there was already two layer of shingles on the roof, which is okay. Now here we are selling the house and finding out the roof needs to be re-shingled. What more could go wrong?! Ha!

Perry and I both agreed we wouldn't want to move into a house with mold in it, so we immediately decided we'd remedy the mold issue. (HUGE score - our homeowners insurance covered it, less the deductible!) Unfortunately what we realized later was if we fixed the mold, we'd have to fix the venting, and if we fixed the venting, we'd have to re-shingle the house, because the vents were roofed over. It was all or nothing, and if we didn't do any of it, we risked them backing out, and being worse off. In the repairs addendum these three things were listed, as well as a leaky faucet they wanted fixed. I probably used a few choice words before we agreed to fix the faucet. After all, we were dumping close to $8000 into the house just to sell it, and yet they couldn't cough up a few bucks to fix it themselves?

The friggen faucet was the first of the four things to be fixed. In order for them to fix it, they had to cut a hole in Ms. Gail's wall. Not a small hole mind you...

 I'm not entirely sure why it had be so big, but screwing it back in place was their fix. After they left I started wondering how on earth I was going to fix this. Around the same time, the sliding door for my room came unhooked from the top hinge and would no longer slide so I was worrying about how I was going to fix that too. It felt like everything was falling apart all at once. That same day, the "mold lady" came to test the mold to see if it was active or inactive so they knew what they were dealing with. We were hoping for the best...

The problem we began running into was the remaining three items needed to be remedied before closing or we'd have to push the closing date back, which none of us wanted to do. Luckily things worked out and we were able to get the mold guys in to work on the attic sooner than they had planned, so they started work a week before the movers came and were supposed to be done in just a few short days. Meanwhile the vent guy came and correctly installed the necessary vents in the attic while the other guys were out for the weekend with the flu.

The weekend of the November 11th, 12th, and 13th, I had my friend Britta and her two girls come stay with us so we could see each other and get the kids together one last time before we moved. It was a long weekend with a house full of kids but we survived. That Sunday was also the day Grandma came to town with a U-Haul load of stuff Perry and I claimed from the Whitefish house a couple years ago but didn't have room for here. Things like side tables, night stands, desks, cabinets, the large dinner table Perry's grandpa built... the list goes on, but luckily Britta offered to stay to help unload everything into the garage.

While were were unloading, her daughter came running out of the house in panic because someone put too much toilet paper in the toilet and it was going to overflow. She was hysterical, but we explained it was okay and we'd fix it when we were done unloading everything. Then new-husband-John went in and used the bathroom and came out and said the toilet was working, but again we were still unloading everything, and I said I knew, but hadn't had a moment to go in to look at it. Shortly thereafter, he was stung by a wasp so I took him in to get a bandaid. Ms. Gail came inside with us and immediately had to use the bathroom too, but when she saw it was full, she flushed it. Water was going EVERYWHERE! I started hollering about the water going in the vent on the floor and scrambled to get the toilet to stop running and to clean up the mess. Excuse my language, but it was a shit-show, but without actual shit thank the Lord! Later that evening I was laying on JP's bed, exhausted and as I stared at the ceiling I saw this...

 ...and immediately broke out crying. The toilet water leaked through the vents and soaked the ceiling. Perry didn't understand why I was having a rough day. When I told him the toilet overflowed, he thought I was talking about the downstairs toilet and couldn't understand why I was upset about the whole thing. It wasn't until I sent him this picture that he really understood.

Unfortunately for Perry, he couldn't sleep at all that night knowing all the stress I was under and knowing the ceiling HAD TO BE fixed by Friday. The one neighbor who might have helped us out was out fishing for the week so Perry took it upon himself to leave work early Monday afternoon and drive home. I was relieved but at the same time I was a bit bummed. We were planning on meeting in Spokane that next weekend and surprising the kids, but with him coming home sooner, I knew the weekend was going to be cancelled.

 Monday was a joyous day for me too...I spent the day cleaning the kitchen and finishing laundry because movers were going to be there on Tuesday to start packing everything. That also meant I need to set aside the things I didn't want packed, and making sure things are at least in the correct room of the house. So much fun. To top it off, the roofer started his work on Monday and the mold guys came back to finish their work and they got into an argument about trailers and vehicles and such. SO much drama... The stress really started kicking in that night when Perry was hours from being at home. I'm putting away laundry when HD informs me he spilled. A lot. To his credit he attempted to clean it up on his own, but it was a lot so he sent out for reinforcements, aka, mom. He spilled water all over the counter that had been tainted with a few too many packets of red water-flavoring. It stained the counter. It was at this moment I started drinking wine - straight from the bottle.

 This was the scene Tuesday morning. The movers came in like a wrecking ball (LOL) and started boxing things up before I was completely ready. The roofer came back to work on his shingling job, and the mold guys came back. Again. My place was CHAOS! But I'm so glad Perry was there to help. God clearly knew I was going to need him for this day, so He sent someone to clog the toilet. (I'm trying to laugh about it...I'm not there yet.)

 By the afternoon the house was in boxes and it still hadn't hit me yet that we were really moving. We took the kids to my parent's place, had dinner, and sent them to bed before we went back to the house to get a start on cleaning. Again, so glad Perry was there to help with that task! I was feeling good about it though because by this point we had just heard they were going to push the closing date to Monday the 21st instead of Friday the 18th so I would have the weekend to finish things up if needed.

 When we settled in for a night of cleaning, we quickly realized how cold the house felt so we made a few adjustments to the thermostat. We couldn't seem to get the heat on and now we're panicking out our new furnace not working. Finally giving up, Perry called the people who installed the furnace and it was discovered that the roofer put tarp over the intake on the garage so no air was able to get in. It was an easy fix when we discovered what was wrong, but at 10pm, the last thing I was going to have Perry do was climb on the roof in the dark. By Wednesday morning, the house was a frigid 56*. I wanted things to stop going wrong!

Before Perry left Wednesday morning to head back to Oregon, he found a vent to cover the hole in Ms. Gail's room. (I had to repaint the walls because I couldn't find the touch up paint after he did some hole patching a month back. Annoying.) I also had to repaint the ceiling in JP's room after he fixed that too. Again, couldn't find the touch up paint. JP and HD were SUPER excited to come home from school on Wednesday to a massive truck on the lane, and an empty house.

I tried really hard to keep my shit together as I watch my stuff head out. I'm not really attached to any of it, maybe just more the idea of my life being moved from here to there? I spent the next few days coming and going, cleaning here and there until I was done. I dropped the keys off at the title company first thing Monday morning, and started crying as I drove away. I almost kept it together. Almost. Now I'm just anxious to see my new house, hopefully on Wednesday if all goes as planned!