Sold the house!

We signed the papers today and after the inspection, it will be final on Monday.

Woo Hoo! I finally have my house back to myself.

No more having to make the beds each morning, no more not cooking so the house won't smell and so we won't have any dishes in the sink, no more having to wash, dry and shine the sink each and everyday - sometimes more than once, no more vacuuming the room 4 times a day (just to get the few pieces of lint), no more telling the kid to not touch any of his things in case he messes up the room.

And finally, no more having to leave the house at a moments notice because some stranger wants to look at it.

All done! Yah!

So now I have to get back to cooking, using up food from our freezers and pantry, and also get back to my packing.

Tonight dinner was from the freezer, a chicken lasagna for K & I and pizza bagel bites for the kid.

I have a bunch of bananas in the freezer that I am going to turn into muffins soon.

I also have to start contacting utilities to change our address.

Lots to do - 5 weeks to do it all.

Tuesday

Less than a week left to sell the house. Had one viewing last night, there was on scheduled for this morning, but they cancelled and our agent is bringing someone by tomorrow at noon.

We all got up early this morning - K dropped J & I off at the community centre at about 7:45am so J & I could go swimming. Just us and a bunch of lil old ladies bobbin around the ppol. We stayed about an hour then left, got changed and waited until the library opened at 10am.

Got a couple more novels, and then walked home - stopped on the way to get J some Benydril - his hands are itching again.

Came home and read some more. Nice lazy summer day.

Friday

So yesterday I get this extreme toothache - I actually called the dentist - who wasn't in but I made an appt for today.

Before that happens, my real estate agent shows up - he has just checked out the house across the street that went up for sale last week - it sold today - the people who came to see our house last night bought it. And the house on Avondale that has been for sale for a month or so sold last week. The house across the street is smaller than ours but has bigger bedrooms (our's has the family room), had hardwood floors and a finished basement and was 5K less than our's. I probably would have picked that one too.

So we have dropped our price yet again.

So next comes my dentist appt - I need a root canal - great - I am on antibiotics for 5 days and then get a root canal done on Wednesday.

I don't know how soon the new house price will be listed but I really hope we get some prospective buyers in this weekend - I hope we get an offer next week actually.

We now have 10 days to sell the house or our offer on the other house is null and void.

Didn't do much else today except read cheap romances and eat too much. We did Swiss Chalet for dinner - did Montana's last night - spending way too much on food these days.

But it will all be over soon - I know it will and life can get back to normal and I can get back to packing.

Tuesday

So far today I have had one coffee, with stevia, 1% milk and some coffee creamer. 2 cups of water. 2 cup of mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries) with honey & lemon juice.

We have two weeks left to sell this house.

ETA: 4 more cups of water. 1 cup of leftover lentils & rice, 2 pcs whole grain bread, mayo, fried egg (in EVOO), 1.5 slices ham bacon sandwich, rice crispy square.

Starting to freak out

So our offer on the house was accepted, however, it is conditional on the sale of our current house. We have until July 16th to sell it or the offer is null & void. I want that house! This one has to sell! We dropped the price 10K but have only had one showing since - we do have one scheduled for tomorrow but expected to have some calls for Saturday which didn't happen. K & I redid the grout this weekend - we used the premixed stuff, it looks much better than last time.

K is thinking very negatively about this whole thing - I don't think that helps - butit is hard to convince him to be positive - he is naturally negative.

We are thinking that we will put J back into public school instead of Catholic school as he can walk to the Public one and would have to be bussed to the Catholic one.

I think he will do fine there - the problem with the last public school was more the principal and the reputation J had there.

I know I just have to think positively that this house will sell, probably this week at the decent price of 245K. I hope also to be able to close earlier than Aug 24th - I would like to close Sprucewood on July 27th and this one on July 30th so that we have a couple days overlapping.

That would allow us the entire month of August in the new neighbourhood to meet people and get settled before school starts in Sept.

I think the people viewing our house tomorrow are really going to like it and put in an offer on Tuesday - probably a low offer of 240K, we will counter with 247K and then they will counter with 245K which we will accept - I really hope they can do a July 30th closing.

Everything is going to turn out fine - and once it is sold, I can get back to packing stuff and not have to worry about constantly cleaning everything, although, having the house clean has been nice. Who knows, maybe if I am not too busy I will keep it up - lord knows, we will have plenty of cleaning to do in the new house and to keep it clean as well.

Laptop & stuff

I bought myself a laptop last week - online through Dell. I checked today and it is listed as shipped two days ago - I don't know when I will receive it. I have such plans for my laptop. I want to be able to sit in the backyard in the sun and write. Write what I don't know yet. The next best seller? Who knows? I just want to write. I will also, no doubt, spend countless hours surfing the net and reading blogs of others who just want to write as well. I'll call it research.

I want so badly to be able to write something - something good I mean - something that I can make a living on would be fantastic. But I have read so much lately on how hard it is to get published and all that, that I have almost talked myself out of wanting to write - but not completely.

I am taking the summer off - I am not looking for work unless I can find a part-time work-from-home type job. I want to spend time with da kid as well as just have time off for myself. I would really like to get back into my painting too - but it requires the right mindset and usually when I am fretting about not having a job, well I am just not normally in that mindset.

We have had 8 viewings of our hous e- still no offers. We dropped the price 10K yesterady, let's hope that gets more people interested. We are going to make an offer on the house in Bowmanville - the 2nd one we saw I think and the only one to really fit the bill of what we are looking for. It is large enough and in our price range. It has alos been on the market for over 100 days - I hope that is just because it is waiting for us to buy it and not because it has anything major wrong with it.

I just really hope this buy and sell gets moving soon - it is really a pain to try to keep the house in perfect order all the time - I just want it over with and done - then I can relax and start packing again :D

Adventures in Selling/Buying a House

We decided about 2 months ago to put our house on the market and buy something bigger - something that we could accommodate an in law suite in the basement for my father in law.

Since there really aren't that many house in the area with inlaw suites, we will have to buy something with a basement big enough to have one built in it.

Since we are losing the basement to my father inlaw, we have to ensure we will have enough space on the two upper floors for all our junk.

While getting our house ready to list, I did get rid of tons of junk. Our real estate agent came by and told us what needed to be done to our house to have it showable.

We had the interior painted. Da man and my nephew painted the garage trim and outside front windows and trim.

I decluttered, cleaned the inside thoroughly, and packed as much non-essensials as possible.

It took us approximately 4 weeks to have the house ready to list. Our agent came and took pictures and got us up on the MLS site.

During this same time, we had been looking in the area for house that were for sale that we liked. We went and seen 5 or 6. We were really surprised that many didn't seem to have put inthe effort we had to make their house look clean and presentable. Many had obvious signs of disrepair.

At this point our house has had only two showing, it has only been listed for 5 days though. I think our agent was alittle optomistic with the asking price and I think next week we may have to reduce it a bit.

There is one house we do like, it is the right size and the price has recently dropped and it has been onthe market for a long time so they may even take less. It does need quite a bit of cleaning and minor repairs but nothing major and it is down the road from good friends of ours so that would be a bonus too.

So now our house is freshly painted and all nice and clean - it has to stay that way should we get a call to show the house. It is actually very nice to have it this way - but not so nice keeping it this way. I appreciate the result if not the effort.

So now we wait - our house was listed in the paper today so maybe we will have some calls for tomorrow. We can't very well make any offers on any other house until we actually have one on ours. Most agents recommend against accepting an offer on the condition of selling theirs.