We're Almost There

I think we did it, I think we are going to actually have a home this coming Friday.

Yesterday we signed all the paperwork, again.  The money was wired this morning and I'm told that by Thursday we might be in our new house, Friday at the latest.  Our movers can't get there until Saturday, but as long as we have a roof over our heads and a floor below our feet that we can call our own, we're golden.

I sincerely hope I'm not jinxing this, but I'm going to go ahead and give you all a virtual tour.

The front of the house, including our very own palm tree.

The front doors.  As you walk through there are small sitting rooms to either side

 

Next up is the kitchen, to the other side of the island there is a huge walk in pantry.

Dinning area and into the living room

 

Master bed, bath and closet

Down the hall from the master is the downstairs bathroom, laundry and 3 car garage.

Now we go upstairs.

The boy's room, the girl's room and the guest room

Next is the loft, a.k.a. Ed's gaming area.

Mommy's office/playroom

And finally, the backyard.  The trellis in the back is a huge grape vine with 

luscious green grapes all over it.  (God I hope I don't kill it)

The house in CO still hasn't closed and I didn't hear from Catherine today.  I don't know whether to be elated or scared?  Ed assures me that everything will be okay.

But that's it for now.  The Edwards are official Californians!

The House

Oi Vey!  Where to even begin?

We dropped the price on the Colorado house by 10 grand and that resulted in an immediate offer.  This was a huge relief since we now knew what we had to work with money wise.  So the hunt was on!

When we drove out here in April our sites were set on a new housing development,  Richmond Homes.  The model we had picked out was called 'The Benton' and fit all of our needs with a 5th bedroom in the front ground floor for the office, 4 bedrooms upstairs and a beautiful kitchen.  Alas, it wasn't meant to be.  It turns out none of these would be available until November.

Looking to a 'not new' house, we were able to narrow it down to 2 homes.  The first one was built in 2016 and had basically the same layout as The Benton and was also in our price range.  It was just about 2 blocks from the school with not too much of a yard, but then again none of the houses out here have much of a yard.  The second one was a little further away from a school, was older but had a hot tub in the backyard.  The floor plan was not a favorite of mine, the house was really long and narrow with a 3 car garage, a double car at the end of the driveway and then a single car garage that was separate and would've been the office.

We were all on board with the 2016 house, that is until our realtor Jim told us that this was a landlord/tenant situation.  The landlord had not even given the tenants notice to vacate yet because he didn't want to lose a months rent.  However, Jim warned us that if the tenants wanted to be a pain about things we would be looking at up to 6 months to evict them with oodles of legal complications.  So we looked at the hot tub house again, which was the boys favorite.  It was a nice house, but it just wasn't 'The One', so I asked Jim to expand our search area to Discovery Bay and Brentwood. 

Jim sent us a list of homes and the kids and I set out to see about 5 that I picked out.  We scouted while Ed was at work.  About the 3rd house in we found 'The One'.  It was a beautiful 5 bedroom, 3 car garage, 2 sitting rooms when you walk through the front door, large living room, loft area for Ed to play his games and then a huge den area that will be my office, (which is pretty close to the space I had in Windsor).  The backyard has a built in patio covering/trellis with fruit producing grape vines.  When we looked at the house there was a big bunch of juicy grapes almost ready to pick and we all got excited at the thought of picking our own fresh grapes.  This house also has paid for solar panels, just like our house in Windsor.  It is also in a very secure gated community where you have to show ID before they will let you in.  So pretty much, this house was a perfect fit in every way.  We came back at 4pm to show it to Ed and made an offer that night which was accepted.

Now I'm hesitant to put up any pictures of the house just yet in fear of jinxing it.  So I will probably post some pictures on Monday when we are at the 100% sure mark.

Back to Colorado, the day after we put in the offer on the California house, our realtor calls while the kids and I are in Target.  She informs me that the buyers for our house were planning on getting a VA loan.  However their realtor or financier dropped the ball and didn't see that they already had a VA loan and it's frowned upon to have 2 of those going at the same time.  So our Colorado realtor, Catherine, managed to get a re-fi done for them and is really working hard to keep this deal held together.

Our sellers are in the same situation, they are relocating due to work so they are also on a very strict time frame.  Jim also told us that the sellers have a backup buyer in case we fall through.

We have been living in limbo for about 3 weeks now and let me tell you it sucks!  Our notice has been given here at the apartment, but we're not completely sure where were going to go if the Colorado deal falls through.  I've decided that real estate is like domino's, if one falls the rest are not far behind.

This past Weds. we heard from Catherine with a new closing date of July 29th for the Colorado house.  We are supposed to be closing on the California house on July 29th.  Guess what date is the first day of school for this kids?  Yup, July 29th.  Later I will be starting a go fund me page to cover the cost of my straight jacket and meds, contribute what you can.

I do believe that this coming Monday we will get the final word on the buyers re-fi and we will be 100% locked in.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed!

Next up I'll write a little about some of our adventures exploring California and them getting ready for their new school.

Getting Ready to Sell

Hello friends, family and everyone else that stumbles across this.

I decided to write a blog/journal (is there really a difference?), to keep everyone updated on what is going on in our new California life.  But to get the whole story, it's best to start with the selling of the house on Grand.

We listed the house and ended up using the same realtor that we bought the house from, Catherine.  This lady is a pistol!  She ran through a list of things that needed to be done to the house and told me that she would be bringing in a staging crew.  Her list seemed a little daunting, but doable.   That is until the staging girls showed up.  These two women went from room to room through the house while I busied myself in the office.  After a few hours they came to get me and introduce a new strain of panic.  In each room they had made piles of things they wanted me to stash out of sight, I knew they would be doing this, but I had no idea how much stuff would be in each of those piles.

The house was due to go live the next day, and as the staging girls left at around 4pm I was left to pack a 3 story house by the end of the night.  We'll call this strain of panic 'bewilderment panic'.  That is the kind of panic where you are so overwhelmed that your eyes dart from pile to pile of objects that need to be packed, walk from room to room not actually getting anything packed because you are so bewildered at the enormity of the task at hand, then finally realize you need to step back for a moment to come up with a plan.  When you find yourself walking in circles getting nothing done, you are deep in bewilderment panic friend.

We ended up going to dinner with Grandma & Grandpa and when we got back home I was in a much better place to focus on what needed to be done.  And just as a gift from me to you, when feeling overwhelmed ALWAYS take a step back, take a break, just get away from the issue at hand for a moment, I promise it will make more sense after a few minutes away.

So the house went on the market at $435,000, we had a lot of showings but no bites.

We were in the last week of the school year when the packing company arrived on a Thursday.  Three very nice ladies packed each room of the house up as I showed them what was ours and what belonged to the staging girls.  They were originally scheduled to arrive on Weds. to do a 2 day packing job, but their boss called Tues. evening to tell me he thought it would only take a day so they would only be packing on Thurs.  It seemed like not enough time to me, but he does this for a living, so who am I to contradict him?  These poor ladies worked their butts off and were there so late that night.  The office was the final place to pack and it took 6 of us to get all the beads in zip lock bags... I know that I bought 3 boxes of zip bags, plus what I already had on hand... I bet there are over 100 gallon bags full of beads.

The next day, Friday, the moving company arrived with 4 guys and a huge semi truck.  This is also the part in our story where I'd like to point out that our realtor should have called her staging company and told them to come and get their things.  So, here we are on Friday, with me, and just me, directing these 4 movers on 3 different floors.  While doing this I'm discovering that the coat closet didn't get packed as well as a few other things and I'm also trying to point out items that belong to the staging company.  Fast forward 13 hours later, I'm ready to just set the house on fire and walk away, but those movers got the job done.

That night 1 adult, 9 year old twins and 2 dogs moved into the Home2 Stay hotel on Timberline between the Texas Roadhouse and the Cinemark.

Hotel living with kids is a challenge especially kids that are not used to apartment style living where you have to be considerate of your neighbors, not scream or stomp, etc.  Doing this with kids and dogs is a different kind of panic, this one we'll call 'Homeless Panic'  This is the panic where you are constantly in fear of being thrown out onto the streets because the little dog is barking at everyone that walks down the hall and the kids are fighting and screaming at each other.  Living in a hotel not only produces the 'Homeless Panic', but has a close cousin called 'Gonna get seen panic'.  Gonna get seen panic' is when it's 10pm and you are in your nightgown and robe sneaking out behind the movie theater to potty the dogs and hoping nobody sees you.  I was super unsuccessful at avoiding this kind of panic and I'm sure gave nightmares to more than one teenager coming out the back entrance of the theater.

Back to the house now.

There were several trips back and forth to the house during our week stay in Fort Collins.  My first trip back I was greeted by two unhappy staging girls.  It turns out that the moving company had accidentally packed up an area rug, some throw pillows and some towels.  I told the girls this was an honest mistake, we weren't trying to steal their items, it was merely a case of me not being able to be in 3 places at once to supervise the movers.  The way I was treated though was as if I was trying to pull one over on them.  I told them that the items were on the moving truck on the way to CA and that once it was there it was going into storage until we found a house, which would probably be around July.  At that point I told them we could ship the items back to them.  That was unacceptable to them, I told them I understood and I guess we would just go ahead and pay for the missing items.

The following week imagine my horror when I opened up an email invoice for almost $800!!!  That was for 8 throw pillows, 2 bath towels, 1 hand towel and an 8x10 area rug, (and let's keep in mind that all of these items are used).  Upon reviewing the invoice I see that they are also charging us a $150 restocking fee and a $60 fee because the other area rug had dog hair on it.  I wrote back to them and told them I would agree to pay them $425 in which I listed out I would give them $25 per throw pillow, $10 per bath towel, $5 per hand towel and $250 for the rug.  Then I told them I would not be paying the the restocking fee or $60 to vacuum an area rug.  They wrote back to me that this is the cost to them to search out replacements items and clean the rug.  In the end we basically gave them a 'bite me' email.  I told them we never signed anything with them and had offered them a very reasonable amount to replace the items.  Since they continued to try and price gouge instead of working things out, how about nothing?  Now you get nothing.  We will send your items back to you once we get them off the truck and we will not be paying them one red cent.

As of now there has been no further contact from them.  Oh, and by the way, turns out Catherine found 4 of the throw pillows in a cabinet in the basement.  The packing girls had put them in there to make sure they didn't get packed.

So that is our getting ready to sell story.  Next up will be our road trip to California.

Peace Out!