House Sold

 We  had several offers on our home.  The first 2 were way below asking and because it was very early in the process we felt comfortable turning them down.  We then got 2 offers literally 5 minutes apart.  The first one was for full ask  and the second one was for 25K over ask.  We of course jumped at the full ask and then the other offer came in so we signed a back up contract on it.

Of course then comes the inspection, survey, and appraisal.  Finger biting time for sure.  We weren't really worried about the appraisal.  We knew that we had a unique property and there were really no comps anywhere.  Our best guess turned out to be just exactly what we thought it was worth.  Lucky guess I'm sure and we were just stubborn enough to stick by our guns.

So the closing is literally a month away and we keep getting peppered with questions about the house.  And I'm thinking that this is all very good signs  that they really want this house.  So it's right before Thanksgiving and we are supposed to close the next week.  I get a call from the realtor and an email with the inspection report.  This is where the buyers want to dicker about the price.  This is wrong, this is wrong and so we think the house is now worth x amount of dollars. I told the realtor that I would get back to them because I had to talk to Bob.  So I talk to Bob and he says....They offered full ask and we should hold them to it because we have another offer for 25K over.  So I get back to the realtor and she calls their realtor and then calls me back and says "We have a deal".  Bob decides to go to Menard, TX to hunt with some buddies.  Then on Sunday I call the realtor and ask if I have to get all the rest of the furniture out of the house before we close...we are supposed to close on Tuesday.  Yes, she says....shit...we still have all the furniture that we left in the house to stage it.  It needs to be out she says.  Bob is 150 miles away so I call a friend who lives in Georgetown and has a trailer and I call my Brother In Law who is a gem of a guy and will always help out in a pinch.  I'd say we got 95% of the stuff out and Bob was coming home in the morning and we could get the rest of the stuff before we signed closing papers on Tuesday.

Bob gets home about noon and we head into Georgetown to get the rest of the stuff.  We are just about finished loading and I get a phone call from the realtor.  The buyers have backed out.  And to add insult to injury they want us to release the earnest money.  

I admit what I know about real estate could fit on the head of a pin but don't you get the earnest money back if your buyer walks ????  Well apparently no, no you don't.  Because we had a back up deal the buyer didn't think that we were harmed by them walking out and if we didn't release the earnest money they could hold up our other deal.  So we released the earnest money.  Back up contract immediately went into effect and so there was another month to wait until we closed.  There were no surprises with this one, no dickering about the money or repairs and they ended up having to use the same appraiser that did the first appraisal.  It all went off like clockwork.  Kinda anti climantic for all the drama that we endured with the first deal.  

Now we are just waiting to visit with the home builder again.  We've already spoken with him once and we were supposed to meet with him this past week but we had snow.....so I'm guessing that he was delayed.  

I'll just leave you with pictures of the snow. 

4 Months in

 We ended up moving in around the 2nd or 3rd week of June.  Our dog Bonnie passed away on May 22.  We had hoped that she would pass in the night or on the porch of the home in Georgetown or up here while she was resting on her bed and looking out at the pasture.  That didn't happen and we had to make the difficult decision to euthanize her.  Our Vet was kind enough to allow us to have her pass away in our truck when she spent her happiest days with Bob.  It was a devastating loss to both Bob and I because she was just 14 years old.  We have been very fortunate to have some very long lived dogs...17, 18 and even 19 years old...so to lose her, our very best dog, at 14 was extremely heart wrenching.  We had decided to bury her out here at the new place.  So she is buried under a huge live oak tree just a stones throw from where we will build the new house.  It's still very sad and when we pass by her grave going from one pasture to another we will wave and blow a kiss.  She was our last dog.  We had decided that when our Pepper died in 2012.  We had 40 wonderful years with dogs and gave them the best lives possible.  They were all loved beyond measure but at this stage in our lives we are just tired of having to say goodby.  It hurts far too much.  I do not miss the anxious feeling I would get when she wasn't eating properly.  Or when I knew in my heart that we needed to make another trip to the Vet.  I do not miss the expense of her medication although we would have spent a fortune to get her well if possible.  I think we all reach a point where we know no matter what we do....she is still going to die.  I miss having a dog around....40 years of habit do not disappear overnight.  I still get a feeling that I'm missing something when I get in the car to go grocery shopping or if Bob and I happen to be out late and I think we need to get back so that we can let the dog out to do her business.  It will pass.  Time will heal but it does take time.  

This is Bonnies final resting place.

She lies deep underneath this stone.  We placed it over her grave because we have a real problem with feral hogs.  They can root up the ground like a rototiller and even though Bonnie is no longer living....to have her rooted up and eaten would have been sacrilege.   She is safe in her internment and I think that both Bob and I will have our ashes scattered here when it's our time.  Rest in Peace our Ms. B.

Living Quarters

There is the lumber that will build the temporary living quarters.

I am woefully behind on this blog so I'll try to catch you up fairly quickly.

The guy we hired ( who came with glowing recommendations) we ended up firing because he was so painfully slow and inaccurate that he just had to go.  Bob and our friend Keith finished up the job.

 So once we got it framed we had to have it sheetrocked which we ended up doing ourselves because we'd wasted some much time with the guy who came with the glowing recomendations.  It just became about doing the job as quickly and efficiently as possible.

 So there's the sheetrock to do but we also at the same time had to run plumbing lines and electric lines...gotta have water and electricity.  So you do a little electrical ,little sheetrock and then a little plumbing and then a little electric and then it all starts all over again for the next room or rooms.
 We've also been dealing with our dog.  She acquired an autoimmune condition almost a year ago.  About 6 months ago she started to have some issues with not wanting to eat so we had her to the Vet.  They did an ultrasound and saw no masses or anything like that but said the outside of her liver looked strange.  Was this an aging process ( she's 14) or is this another part of the autoimmune disease.  It's called Reactive Cutaneous Histocytosis.  That was about 6 months ago and she had some good months but she has been steadly losing weight and I'm feeding her whatever she wants.  Sometimes its chicken, sometimes plain rice or potatoes, sometimes tuna or turkey.  It's been a struggle to get her meds into her lately and I'm not about to fight her.  Bottom line is that we can't cure what is wrong and I want her last days to be pleasant memories of doing what she wanted and eating what she wanted and not fighting to get pills down.

Thought I'd taken some pics of the sheetrock being done but I guess not.  Then the guy came and did the taping and floating and I went to the store and picked out paint for the walls, ceiling and cabinets.
The walls are Granite Dust...it's a real lovely gray color with the trim being white.  The cabinets which I had made in Jarrell, TX are being painted a darker Gray.  I think the name of the paint was like Ultimate Gray.  It just "pops" as the decorators like to say.  But these are pics of the priming and then the painting and then the placing.

In this picture above you see the tall cabinet which is the pantry.  We've actually moved that to the other side of the room and it sits next to the stove.  We had another cabinet built with pull out shelves and that will go where the pantry originally sat.  Makes for a better arrangement all around.

Next 2 pics are of us building the framework for the bedroom closet.  Still trying to decide what kind of door(s) to put on and I think we have it narrowed down to a biofold door with 2 lights with pull chains on the inside.

Here's the before and after sink install.  The picture below is
of the second "bedroom" which is Bob's Hobby Room.  He was able to scroung a bunch of old fencing and some old tin.  The fencing became the walls and the tin is the ceiling.  Makes for an interesting room.  This will have all our game mounts on the walls and the room will hold his bow bench (for all his bowhunting equipment) his gun reloading bench (for all his gun related stuff) and his flyfishing table (for all his flyfishing supplies and fly building material).  The room is quite dark and we may end up cutting in a window....but that's not something that needs to be done immediately....and we want to put in a different kind of light fixture and that also does not have to be done immediately.  Next pic is of the bathroom.  What can I say....it's a bathroom.

Some of you may be wondering what type of treatment we had done to the floor.  It looks pretty neat in the pictures...well, sad to say that this is just left over from when the tape and float guys did their work.  Most people don't ever see this cause it's covered up by wall to wall carpeting but we aren't going to have anything but area rugs and I can only get down on my hands and knees and scrub so much at a time.  It's getting clean but it's taking it's time.   Last pic above right is the outside wall of the living quarters.  It's actually inside the shop....looking at this picture one of our 3 overhead doors is directly to your right....I have another picture somewhere that shows you if you are confused.  And you can also see in this picture that we have made good use of the used tin and fencing.
I think part of the reason that I don't have all my pictures together is that somewhere in the midst of all this choas I got a new phone and then the "Pandemic" happened and I couldn't get to the phone store to have them transfer everything from one to the other.  Even the cloud stuff didn't transfer automaticaly....I don't know why but it didn't...Hopefully soon I will be able to get that done and this blog will recognise this new phone and I can just transfer from there.  Hopefully.

Insulation

The foam insulation guys were here yesterday and finished up today.

This is what the inside of their truck looked like.

There are a couple of 55 gallon drums filled with " stuff" on the other side of this stuff.  Somehow it all gets mixed and then sprayed on as you will see in the next video.

That foam is amazing in its growth capacity.
We have to let this stuff " cure" for a couple of days and then we will go back in and start installing the overhead lights and also finish connecting the plug boxes. 

We've had the next contractor come in and do all the measuring for the living quarters so we are just waiting to hear back from him.  Hopefully soon as we'd  like to get out of this house and put it on the market asap.

Welding Shop/ Temporary Living Quarters

We are almost finished with the tin on the building.  Unfortunately we were 3 sheets of tin short for the overhang.  Since they need to go on before the roof tin, that's why there are sheets of tin missing on the roof as well.  We also need to have the end wall finished.  This all happened on Friday.  Our tin guy said they would be back this week to finish up and we kinda expect that they will be there tomorrow. 
We have electric rough in to complete before they come back to do the insulation which will be first week in February.  As soon as they get started we will give a heads up to the contractor who will build our temporary living quarters. 
So good progress...we had hoped to begin moving stuff in by my birthday which is next week on Thursday.  Not going to happen but you gotta learn to go with the flow or it will drive you crazy.

Electricity and Plumbing

 We've  had a very productive couple of weeks.  We were able to get all our trenches dug for the electrical lines and water.  Septic tank connected and all the lateral lines that go with it done.  Electrical lines put into conduit and pulled from box to far side of shop/living quarters.  Water connected (no leaks!!) all the way to where it enters the shop/living quarters.
Tin guys were there on Wednesday but rain arrived and they left.  It's fairly dangerous to try and put up tin in the rain.  One slip and you've lost a hand..or foot or severed a major artery.  We had rain up until Friday morning and hoped they come back maybe on Saturday but they did not.  Pretty sure they will be there tomorrow and they will finish putting the end walls up, the roof and the overhang.  It's possible that by the end of the day tomorrow we have a dried in building...Pretty exciting stuff! 

Living quarters/welding shop

We had to wait 5 days for the slab to cure before we could begin any work on it.

But Bob and I got to work just as soon as was possible.

In order to save money where possible, Bob took on the job of framing the building himself with friends helping out when possible.  Being a welder for over 30 years does have it's advantages.

December 31, 2019....all the overhead doors are up and we are just waiting for Jose'.  He was supposed to be here last week but he got behind on another job.  We had hoped to have tin on sides and roof before the end of this year but that's not going to happen.  Most frustrating thing about building is waiting on other people.  Happy New Year readers and hopefully by this time next year we will be out of these temp quarters and into the new house.