Our First Home

Good god! I haven't posted since the day before we closed? GEESH. Well I guess I have a lot to catch everyone up on.

So, the day we closed Kevin and I went to the house to make sure everything was still in the same order as before. It was. (Although I think someone tried to clean, so some more crap was gone and some of the light bulbs were missing and maybe a door knob?)

So we show up to closing (Kevin and I) and we wait and wait and Mike isn't showing up so I call him... not only is he running behind but he's also lost so he showed up about a half an hour late sporting his pimp suit (Dropping a 1/4 of a million on a house might as well show up in the black Calvin Klein suit). But while I was waiting for him we got to see the previous owner walk up - WOW they were a pair of FREAKS!

Direct quote from Kevin, "I don't know if she knows what the word 'Bra' means." HA! So she's like 55-60 and so is he. She looks like a cross between a hippy and piece of white trash - i still haven't decided what term fits her better. He on the other hand just looks like a big dumb oaf. When he talks i feel like i am talking to a 5 year old and on top of it things kind of slur and I began to wonder if he was a drunk. Probably, later I found out that he returns to the cities every Tuesday night for a "meeting" -- AA anyone? All I know is they look like life has been rough on them and they both are major idiots so I don't feel so bad.

So while we are at closing Mike is seething because A) the previous owners were idiots and tried to fix things themselves but because they are so inept at life they made everything so much worse (you'll see from the photos) so he could barely sit on the other side of the table from them because every time she spoke to us he wanted to punch her. AND B) our loan officer is a complete idiot - she told me to get a check for $12,000 for closing because her estimates had us at paying $11,500 and this way if any was left over they'd write us a check. GUESS WHAT!? We owed $13,200 at closing and Mike had to leave closing to get another cashier's check because the difference between 12 Gs and what we owed was above the amount they could accept for a personal check. Need less to say Mike was pissed and not very nice on the loan officer review form we were given. So needless to say STAY FAR AWAY FROM LOONA ESPEDAL - she reminds me too much of the HP character who her name is eerily close too.

But the previous owner was a GEM! So she, I think, remarried to this piece of trash that she showed up to closing with. She owns a hobby farm (which we were going to sue her and put a lien on if she didn't show up to closing) out in the sticks where she has a bloodhound kennel. She sounds like she has all kinds of crap on the farm ATV, etc. Which is why she didn't have any money to pay the taxes or anything else on our house which is why it went into foreclosure by the time we were buying it. We think she must have taken a loan out on our house because she owed $199,000 on the house after owning it some 36 years. Anyhow she's nuts! I mean it literally. From what we heard after her first husband and mom died (right around the same time) she sort of started to lose it and make even less sense than before - which was 4-5 yrs ago so she's had time for her mental state to continue to disintegrate.

Everything she talked about I had to will my self not to roll my eyes or smart off to her. She talked about the custom (shitty and ugly) door they put in the back -- yes thank you if I ever want to replace it (which I will) I have to either replace it with another custom way too large back door or fill in some of the space and re-stucco it. Or all the electrical they re-did -- You put in aluminum wire you dumb ass! The guy piped in and was saying how he made custom insulation things for the basement windows for the window, "You know you can use those if you'd like." No shit?! I just bought them! Or the tiling don't even get me started on the tiling. The garden -- I had my mom identify it -- IT'S ALL FREAKING WEEDS! Oh but we could sell the special bamboo in the back of the yard and make money if we wanted to - it's not bamboo its Japanese Knot Weed and its nearly impossible to get rid of (more to come in the future about our crusade against the evil knot weed.) Yeah, thanks.

The whole time she was acting like she was doing a real big favor for us. It was irritating the hell out of me and Mike. I pretended like it wasn't happening and continued to be sweet and responsive because I wanted to get this over with, Mike he just turned red and didn't say anything. I mean she was trying to force her contractors on us. Call these people and just tell them it was Sharon Quam's house they'll know exactly who you are and what's going on. Oh call these people they gave us an estimate for the back half of the roof (that we now have to replace) they'll give you a good price if you mention your in Jeffery Quam's house... UGH! They just kept going on and on I am like I didn't even want to meet you let alone talk to you can't you just shut up so that we can close on this damn house!? My god I wanted I just wanted it to end. And Mike had to run to the bank so Kevin went with and they left me alone with the poor closing agent and the two freaks. I think closing agent was as freaked out by the crazies as much as i was.

Whatever, we closed and all is history. Except the crazies dropped some paper work off the next Tuesday while i was home alone. The crazy chick hugged me! I was like I really don't want to hug you can you just give me what you want to give me so I can lock the doors and windows and go back to cleaning? Too this day I fear them.

So we moved everything the next weekend. And I started cleaning. I spent ALL DAY Friday just washing the floors upstairs. Nothing else, it took me all day. I admit there's so much junk downstairs I still have only washed the floors in the front sun room. It took me a week to clean and organize the kitchen. There was mouse poop everywhere and four years of dust. Plus 4 years of people tracking in dirt from showings - ugh it was a mess. Plus I don't think they were cleanli-folk, I can tell that from the pigeons - don't worry I will get to neighbor gossip soon. Lets just say I don't know when the last time some things were cleaned and some things still haven't gotten clean and I think it will take me months to get it to my standards because the basement and attic are gross and creepy.

So far though the office is nearly organized - we still have to find a place to put some of the things that used to be in my desk which we gave to Tracy. We got a nice rug in it too (Thanks Brandon! We just used our gift card you gave us from IKEA, for our wedding, to get it.) The bedroom is almost there - I have been lazy and haven't put away all of my things yet. The kitchen is nearly there, I just have to wash the floor better when I wash all the floors on the first floor. The bathroom - ugh mess, I did a quick clean but I am putting off the hard core clean because its just and old cruddy bathroom that will just hopefully go away before I have to clean it - right Mike? :)

The buffet is all full of all of our neat pieces that we have collected since the wedding - although we did find out that half of our champagne flutes are the wrong kind -- this is why we should have opened all of it when it got shipped to us from Marshall Fields but someone thought that was a bad idea because it was all packaged up why unpackage it -- All I have to say is I TOLD YOU SO! :) HA! But that was one of the worst things we have un-covered while unpacking. Mike lost a Belvedere glass shot glass bowl (fill with ice and matching shot glasses) and I lost a hand me down glass candy bowl which i had two of. So we're going to go talk to Marshall Fields soon and hopefully they will exchange them for us. Keep your fingers crossed.

The front sunroom is set up for TV watching but it needs a rug. We also need a rug in the bedroom and the living room once it has more furniture. We found an absolutely perfect rug that we both love (believe it or not we both agreed on it) but its pricey as hell and the wrong size - why are american rugs all the same size!? Jake I believe is completely moved in. So at least someone is, although we moved all his stuff from one of his closets out when we started pulling cable the other day -- yeah something to keep in mind when buying an old home -- does it have cable jacks? Because if not guess who gets to pull the cable - You! Lame. Oh well it seems to be going semi-ok. Better than it being all on the outside of the house like Dish Network wanted to do.

There's a lot less but we are making progress -- SLOWLY but surely.