I haven't abandoned my website, in-fact I have been tweaking the code here and there as well a adding a gallery feature to the IEDB categories. The reason why I haven't written in a while is due to Robin and I had been looking for a house; we been looking ever since we got married but got more serious about it since last Thanksgiving.
One Sunday morning on our way to Church in Exeter we passed a house that had been up for sale for a while but we had just noticed that it was for sale; so on our way back from church we stopped to take a look at the land and exterior house. While looking at the back yard I noticed that the sliding glass door was open so we went in and looked around. We knew the house was a foreclosure and were surprised at how clean and good shape the house was in - minus some of the interior doors were that damaged and the odor of #2 fuel oil spill in the basement. We called our realtor to give us more information on the place and found out that the house had been vandalized & sat through a winter un-winterized. The damages were mostly in the basement where the electrical wiring was stripped, copper pipes removed and 1 of 2 245 gallon oil tanks taken which is where the ~1 gallon of #2 fuel oil had spilt. Other than that, the house was in good shape as it's only 6 years old.
We looked at the house several times in November, including running a water test on the well to determine if the water had radon & arsenic which came back much lower that what the Government says is safe which was good news. I also had our Pastor, Stan, who runs his own Oil company run a pressure test on our heating pipes, shortly after he put the pressure on water started spurting out of the dining room ceiling where a hole had been- this to say the least discouraged me. We were still un-certain about it and had a "falling-out" with our realtor and decided to end our contract early with her and got advise from one of Robin's friends of the family. After Thanksgiving had passed I was still very nervous about the house due to the potential freeze damage to the pipes and electrical damage. Robin and I prayed a lot about this house and another 3-4 weeks had passed with me up late worrying about house, going over figures and quotes from friends of the family, etc until I finally stopped relying on myself and trusted God. I should have come to this point much sooner; I basically asked the Lord to open or close doors with this house if this is what He wanted for Robin and I and all of the doors opened and stayed open throughout the entire process. I'm very thankful for the advice from Robin's family and my family as well.
Second half of the entry:
Over that course of time the price of the house had been reduced 4 times and interest rates dropped as low as I've ever seen and a few days before Christmas we put our first offer in- a very low offer that was rejected right away from the Bank that owned the property. After a couple of days of playing "The Game" we counter-offered at a higher price which was rejected again. We continued this back-and-forth bidding war for a couple of weeks until the stakes started to get more serious when another bidder came into play; we decided to stop playing around with the numbers and offered $1,000 over the asking price to which the bank accepted the next day.
Finally, that hurdle of decisions was over and now another hurdle was on its way. Our final bid was accepted on January 27th and closing was set for March 5th, 2010. During that time span we continued to get quotes from contractors, prayed and saved money as well as spent money on all new appliances (Refrigerator, gas stove, dish washer, gas dryer and washer).
March 5th arrived on a Friday; Robin and I closed on our first house without a hitch. The next day Robin's father started some of the electrical prep work while Robin and I cleaned various things in and outside of the house. The following Monday power was turned on and then the following Thursday/Friday her father and Roland (electrician) re-wired/replaced the damaged runs and did an excellent job. They even added new outlets and hooked up a timer for our outside lights. The following week the plumber and heating technicians came out to repair damage to the domestic plumbing (15 breaks in between the first and second floor). It turned out that the furnace was fine and that the heating pipes only had one break (which was in the dining room ceiling) which was a huge relief and answer to prayer. Unfortunately the breaks in the domestic plumbing created another obstacle-sheetrock that needed to be repaired; fortunately Robin's father works with someone that is in the line of work and he did an excellent job repairing the holes with blueboard and plaster. After the plaster set, a little sanding and paint you could not even tell a hole existed in the first place. He also repaired a hole in the dining room wall that was made to run CAT6 cable from the basement to the office which could have been avoided if I wanted to put more effort into running the cable with a fish but since we were already making holes I thought that one more hole would not be a big deal. Dad and I worked on swapping the location of the range and refrigerator due to the size of the refrigerator I wanted it had to go along a wall that was deeper. Thankfully dad was able to swap the cabinets around easily enough.
The next week mom flew up to help us get started on painting the kitchen, living room and bedroom walls and ceilings. Mom and I worked on that for two days and then Robin on one of her days off painted the dining room while I painted the closets and finished installing our closetmaid closet system that dad helped with a few weeks ago. Later that night we decided to move in the weekend of the 27th; I rented a 10' truck from Budget Rentals and we loaded it up that Saturday morning with the help of Hunter, my cousin. The entire move took about 4-5 hours thanks to everyone helping out. That evening Robin's father helped replace the PVC pipe for the dryer exhaust as it had to be 4" rigid stove pipe; fortunately the path the pipe took was directly under the office closet floor and her father and mine were able to peel the carpet back and cut holes into the sub-floor. The next day the propane technicians came over to hook up our gas dryer as they had already hooked up the range earlier on.
Over the next week we continued to paint, organize and setup our new house. There were many things we have done to the house to make it ours and fortunately we both took many photos of the journey to help us remember the entire process. If you are interested in seeing the photos, please contact me through Facebook and I will send you the URL and password to the gallery. You can find my Facebook link under the About me section.