Joys of Home Ownership

39,000 Planks of Plastic

We have had a hectic week, (and for the last couple months, they have all seemed hectic) we have moved all our stuff, which includes what we brought with us and what we shipped to us and what we have bought since being here, out of the AirBnB and into our new home. I must have taken a dozen 5 mile round trips. Two of which were ferrying one mountain bike at a time with the front wheel off and the Mini’s hatch bungeed partially closed. Somewhere on one of these trips the Ladybug crossed the 39,000 mile mark.

Tuesday we had the cable company come in and install two cable boxes and the modem for the internet. One in the bonus room downstairs and one in the living room. The living room is hooked up to our new 43″ Samsung UHD Smart TV (that just fit inside the Mini’s hatch) that will eventually get mounted above the fireplace. The downstairs hookup will be for our old 50″ Samsung Regular HD Smart TV, when it gets here.

Also on Tuesday we visited a local flooring place and picked out the new “hardwood flooring” to replace the carpet in the 3 bedrooms. Thursday they dropped off the materials to let them acclimate themselves to their new home and 2 nice young fellows spent the day ripping out the old carpet and padding. Today they were back to actually lay the new laminate planks in the three bedrooms. It is all finished except for the 1/4 round molding in one room that will be finished on Monday next.

This morning while those two guys were sawing and banging we ducked off to do the closing on the house. Here in Oregon it was done at a title company’s offices, not a lawyers office like in South Carolina. Maybe because of this it seemed very low key. No real estate agents, no seller, just us, a banker and some sort of clerk. We went home for lunch and then this afternoon went out to Walmart and bought a small folding table and two folding chairs because we were tired of eating, sitting on the floor. We were also tired of sleeping on an inflatable mattress, so on the way back from Wally World we stopped at a local bedroom store and bought a nice new queen sized Serta memory foam bed and a new bed frame. We knew we needed a mattress because we tossed the old one away before we left Aiken. We didn’t need a new bed frame because we did bring one, but Donna feel in love with one while mattress shopping (and I did really like it too.) It will be delivered tomorrow.

We have also had an estimate for a new roof sometime this week, which we knew the place needed it after the home inspection (we offered $8k on the house less than asking knowing this), and will get get done sometime in January. We have also arranged to have someone come over and measure for some nice new vertical blinds to replace the old wood slat ones in the living and dining rooms. And I have also not detailed the tens of trips to Home Depot, Walmart and Fred Meyers buying other odds and ends.

Home Sweet Empty Home

Mid morning, after yesterday’s light dusting of snow had melted, we stuffed the back of the Mini with a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff we bought over the last week and drove over to our new home. These were things that we needed because we donated or left behind their predecessors back in Aiken (microwave, toaster and a Keurig.) There were also some things that we will need to occupy our empty home until our household shipment arrives after the first of the year in there too (towels, sheets, a blow up mattress, and some cheap silverware and plates.)

We brought over with us a take and bake pizza from Papa Murphy’s and ate lunch in our empty living room. When we came back “home” after to the AirBnB we ordered a new washer and dryer from Home Depot. Because we are a rural area they have none in stock, everything has to be ordered, so those won’t be here until after Christmas. Tomorrow we will go buy a 40″ TV to place over the fireplace because our existing 50″ one is too big. That one will stay downstairs in the “bonus” room with the futon for watching while washing clothes because the laundry room is on that level.

We’ll be probably go over for a couple hours each of the next three days farting around and will start sleeping there either Wednesday or Thursday night. We have to be out of the AirBnB by Friday morning at 11:00 AM.

Dirty Tricks?

I spent most of yesterday changing the utilities of our new house into our name. Water comes from the city and trash pickup is supplied by Waste Management (in Aiken both these came from the city.) Then there was electricity from Pacific Power and natural gas from Avista (in Aiken both these came from Dominion.) Today we signed up for cable.

What all these places had in common was that they never asked for proof that in fact I was moving into this particular house. This got me thinking of a really evil dirty trick to pull on somebody. It might cost a bit, so to reduce your investment pick one that does not require a deposit, and sign up for it in your name. Make sure to sign up for paperless billing and then when the first bill comes, pay it. Wait a week and set a date to shut off service. The current occupants probably wouldn’t notice the missing bill, but they sure would notice when the water stops flowing or the lights go off.

I am totally not recommending this. For one it would be pretty easy to figure out who did it because all these places ask for a drivers license or social security number for ID. Anyway, I just thought it was odd that no one asked for some sort of proof I lived there…

Here Comes Our Stuff

After being told, with the holidays and all, we would be lucky to get into our new Klamath Falls home by January 10th, we learned last night we can be in the place this coming Sunday. The closing isn’t actually until next Friday or at the latest Monday the 23rd, but we are paying 8 days of rent to the seller, to get into it on the 15th.

First thing this morning I notified both the Mayflower movers and the car shippers that it was time to send us our stuff. Dash Auto Logistics was first to respond and the Miata could be here the day after Christmas Day. Not long after that, the movers got back to us, our household goods won’t even be loaded onto the truck in Augusta until the day after Christmas. So we might end up with a convertible that won’t be usable for another 3 months and be waiting an extra week and a half for our pots and pans, couch, TV and bed.

That’s of course the worse case scenario. With the car pickup date and travel time ranges and the household goods travel time range they could actually get here only two days apart, December 30th and January 2nd respectively. It is winter and and we are in the Cascades, so weather might be a factor here as well.

Wednesday the 13th

We got up at 5:30 this morning to go to the YMCA (The best time for lap swimming is between 5 and 7 AM.) When Donna went to turn on the bathroom light, it didn’t come on. She used the hallway light as a guide to do her stuff. When I went in I thought it might be a burnt out bulb, but when I tried to turn on something we had plugged into the outlets where the switch was, it wouldn’t come on either. We headed off to the the Y and I’d further troubleshoot when we got back.

The poor Mini has to sit outside uncovered and that means before we can go anywhere, the windows have to be cleared of dew or frost each morning. This morning it was frost on one side and dew on the other, with the windshield it was dew that turned to frost when swiped… We got underway fine, buy a half mile or so down the road the Mini started to hesitate when I shifted. While waiting on the next stoplight to turn green the idle became sort of rough. Accelerating away and shifting into second it bogged down a bit and a giant yellow half-filled check engine light popped up in the middle of the tach. The car ran OK the rest of the way with an occasional hesitation on the 1-2 shift. On the way home it ran mostly better, but still not perfect and the light stayed off.

When we got back to the AirBnB we discovered that not only was the bathroom effected, but every kitchen outlet was not working. Including the one for the refrigerator! So we frantically texted the owner (we had his number because we had been in contact before to repair the dishwasher and fix the very annoying sticky front door.) We also messaged via the AirBnB app the host. After about 45 minutes we started getting calls, texts and messages about our issue. Eventually the owner showed up around 9 AM to start trying to solve our issue. He tried flipping breakers on and off. He tried shutting off the main breaker and turning it back on with little success. We left him physically swapping breakers around inside the box as we had that other bug-a-boo to deal with.

I had gotten a Mini service place recommendation from a fellow Y member just the other day and when I called them they said they could read the code, but wouldn’t be able to do anything today because they were slammed. So we headed over there to see what was going on. The Mini on the way over was doing well under a mile or so from our destination when it was running crummy and the half-filled light came back on. They ran the code and it came back as P0302, cylinder #2 misfire. They asked if I wanted to set up an appointment, went I said yes, they asked how about next Tuesday. Uh, OK.

It really wasn’t OK, we were planning on leaving Thursday morning to go up to Granite Falls, WA to visit the Morrison clan. Having already cancelled on them once because of the house buying stuff, we decided not to repeat it. Solution, rent a car, there is an Enterprise office in town, so we headed there after the car repair place. Bad news there too, they didn’t have any cars to rent. The good news was that they were expecting some returns by 5:00 PM, so they entered our info and said they’d give us a call.

Returning to our home away from home, we found our landlord/owner just finishing up. He finally figured out the issue, a previous tenant had decided to keep his stereo equipment in the hall closet and as a precaution he had replaced the normal outlet in there with a GFCI one and for some unknown reason it had tripped.

For the trifecta of bad news all we needed now was the the owner of our prospective house to turn down our counter offer to return some money at closing so we care afford a new roof for her old place. Sure enough around 4:00 PM our realtor emailed to say that it was a no-go. At this point we both thought maybe this was the universe telling us it was time to tuck our tails between our legs and move back to Aiken.

Well, our realtor and the sellers realtor (not wanting to lose a commission) had talked and suggested an alternate offer might work. Ask for a reduction of the house sale price to match the amount we wanted at closing.

So by the end of the day our AirBnB was back to it’s normal mediocre self, we had a rental car to do the traveling to Washington and we had made a counter-counter offer on the house.

If a Wednesday the 13th was this troublesome, I hate to think what will happen a month from now on Friday, December 13th.

House Hunters IX

Even though we have placed an offer and it was accepted on House #5, after the home inspection last Thursday we are now having second thoughts. The front half of the roof needs replacing. The back half was done recently, but not correctly, they didn’t flash or put a boot over the electrical drop and other boots over the other 3 vents are torn. So new roof is in the near future. Because it is a hill side lot gutters should also be installed. The grade in the back needs to be re slopped away from the house to keep the water run off out from around the foundation. Both sides of the driveway retaining walls are leaning pretty good, not too urgent, but another couple grand to straighten out. The small rear deck on the back is kind of squishy in spots and there is a repair job on the back outside wall near ground level that needs attention. So this morning we combed the Sunday paper for Open Houses and plugged addresses into the GPS.

House #23 – This one is over in the area of town we would like to live in. It has recently been remodeled, along with the inside rooms, just about every major component has been freshened. The insides have character, but there is so much character that it bordered on quirky. There are 2 bedrooms up with a really nice bath between them and zero carpet. There were two bedrooms down as well. One bedroom down there with a random sink in it and its closet was around the corner. A shared bath, then a second bedroom that had a small extra room that could serve as a walk-in closet. All of the downstairs was freshly carpeted. The garage was intriguing in that it was a tandem, two cars could fit, but they had to be in a line.

House #24 – This too is right where we would really like to live. It is only 1,00 feet away from House #23 as the crow flies. It is 2 blocks up and two over, or 1/4 mile, for us land bound humans. This place is 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, which is nicer than House #23 in that on the main floor there was an actual master suite, then a second separate bath and a second separate bedroom. Downstairs was 2 beds and a bath with a separate laundry room. This was not as updated as #23, but as compensation there was an over-sized two car garage/shop a couple of steps up from the carport and back entrance to the house.

Both these places were similar to good old House #5 in that the upstairs areas were traditional sort of layouts and the downstairs levels were a warren of rambling rooms and hallways. And both were really more than we want to spend on a house. So we headed further west of town to go to two more open houses.

House #25 – This one was like Brian wanted in that it was all on one level. The kitchen needed updating, but it would be serviceable for a while. It did have a master suite, but the stand up shower was even smaller than the one we left behind in Aiken. There was carpet everywhere which we would have to pull up and replace with wood. No central air conditioning. It is not really too far out of town or too far from the YMCA, but to get to either place you had to drive through the area where all the shopping is, so it is not fun. The only real redeemable thing about the place was the back yard, it was a nice size with a small covered deck. There were a couple of small out buildings, including a greenhouse with four dug up holes in it1.

House #26 – This Open House visit was one more bone for Brian’s desire for one level living. The photos looked promising. It had all the right ingredients, 3 bedrooms with two baths. A master bedroom with wood floors. Two car garage with a nice size backyard that had a small deck. But then things unraveled quickly. It was a mile or so further out from the already far out #25. The homes were so cookie-cutter that on a dark night you would be hard pressed not to pull into the wrong driveway. In the end this Open House suffered the same fate as Home #11, we didn’t even bother to go inside it.

House Bagged


House #5 took the bait and was snared by our trap late this afternoon. Now let’s see how long it takes to get to closing. We optimistically asked for December 6th, but the realtor said inspections are taking up to 3 to 5 weeks to be scheduled and with only 4-1/2 weeks between now and the closing that doesn’t look promising. And how long will it take for loan approval?

As everyone knows it is not a real home until they are filled with Mountain Bikes, so this afternoon we visited the local bike store, Zack’s Bikes, and bought a couple. Mine is a size large in Matte Trek Black with 29 in wheels. We walked the mile and a quarter to the store, packing our helmets and cycling shoes to change into there. Hers is a size small in Purple Flip with 27.5 in wheels. We then rode them back the 1.25 miles to our Airbnb. Gonna take awhile for both of us to get used to the gear shifting of them…