Toilet

Katie finally got her a toilet! And the best news is that it doesn't leak. We are not happy with how the grout turned out when it dried. It has a white haze to it. I have done a lot of grout and haven't had it turn out like this. I was thinking we would be able to do the kitchen tonight, but I might try it on the laundry first and see how it turns out before heading out into the kitchen. If all goes well I will have them plan to do the carpet next Monday. So we should be moving in next week!!!

Me KNEES!!!

I am so ready to be done with tile. I really enjoy doing it, but it takes quite a toll on my body, mostly my knees, and my back, and my ankles, and my shoulders hurt too... All of the floor, except the crawl space door and the pantry, is laid now and the bathroom is grouted. I still need to do the surround in the bath tub and the wall behind the fire place. O, and all of the base board. I am not looking forward to that either. I would have just used trim, but they had the linoleum rolled up the wall so high that the trim we have in the rest of the house wont cover. Katie has been painting away. Mindy came over last night and helped out. It is nice for her to come over and help. Even if she wasn't painting, I think it is nice for Katie to have someone to talk to. When I am in work mode I am not very social...

We spent a lot of money yesterday. We paid for our carpet, which is about 500 over budget. But that is only because we didn't know how big the house was. I think it will be worth it to have new carpet in. By then way, we are going on three weeks with no mice and you cant smell any trace of cat pee in the house. We are pretty happy about that.

TILE

I got the tile laid in the laundry and bathroom last night. It makes it look soooo much better. We didn't get any painting done last night because Katie stayed home and caught up on washing cloths and cleaning house. We had a lot of stuff piling up since we have been spending so much time with the new house.

Remodel Updates

We are well on our way. We have had some help from friends and family and it has made things go a lot smoother. Katie has the bathroom all painted except for the trim, the laundry is 95% painted, and the kitchen and living room ceilings should be done today. Painting will take a little longer than we had planned because the sprayer we were going to borrow is not available. It is moving along pretty well though. I got the floors prepped for tile in the bathroom and laundry. Tonight I will do the rest of the prep, and if I am not painting I will probably start laying some full sheets in the laundry and maybe in the bath. We will see. I don’t know how Katie is handling the long days, but I am loving it. I get in there and get into work mode and I don’t want to stop. Now, the next morning when I have only had 5-6 hours of sleep it’s a whole different story…
Katie’s dad came up last Saturday and helped us with a wiring issue on our well. We had lost one of the 110 legs out to the pump house and had no water for a couple weeks. We were able to find where a rodent had chewed the wire. We made a splice and put in a junction box to the well. I can do a lot of things, and even some electrical, but I had no experience with wells and was a bit nervous that I may screw things up so I was so grateful that Dave was able to come up and give a hand for a few hours. Katie has a great family that is so supportive and willing to help out.
I think that I should have the tile (at least on the floor) done by the end of the weekend. I want to get the bathroom laid tomorrow so that we can grout on Friday and Katie can have a toilet on Saturday. I guess it is a little bit more of an issue for her to just go behind the juniper???
I do think that we should have a lot of equity in this home. When they did our appraisal they said that the home was 867 sqft. That did not seem right to me at all since I thought it was closer to 1200, but I assumed that I must be way off. Well, when the carpet guy came out and pulled measurements on Monday, he told Katie it would be 950 sqft of carpet. That sure didn’t make sense since we are doing about 300 of tile and the house is supposed to be 900… Well, the guy was nice enough to check the outside measurements and he came up with 1300+. That is just a little bit different right… I guess it helps on our taxes. So if you take the amount per sqft from the appraisal then it looks like we have about 35-40 thousand of instant equity… I do not know if that is totally true, but I thing after our costs for upgrades we would be around 20. I think we did ok as long as the place keeps standing…

FUNDED

We are closed and funded. I got back from Boise yesterday and went straight to the house. Katie's uncle was nice enough to let us use his trailer and even delivered it. We got all the carpet/pad linoleum, and the tub surround ripped out and in the trailer ready to dump today. The smell is already getting better!

CLOSING TIME...

Katie will be going in to close at 2:00 p.m. I am in training today so she has to sign everything for both of us. I feel kind of bad not being there, but what can you do... It should fund tomorrow and then we can start ripping stuff out Friday night. I can't wait to be able to move forward.

House Update

It looks like things are moving forward. The seller "Has No Money", so he will not be able to pay any of the bills he owes. The two agents will be paying the bills out of their commissions so that we can get a free and clear title and close. Pretty sad. I talked to the irrigation company today and found out that the delinquent bill goes back to 2004. It was $45 a year, but in 2007 went up to $60 a year. That is $5 a month. You cant even get a Big Mac meal for under $5. We are really trying to close on the 10th since Katie will already be in town for work, but I am planning on the 11th because I know how things go. It really stinks that we have lost this time. We would have had the place gutted and would be prepping for paint this weekend... What can you do?

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Extentson

Well, we did make a little progress yesterday. I guess that they guy is going to pay some of his bills, and then the agents have said they will kick in a bit to make the deal go through. I know they want me to give a little, but I will not budge until the very end if it is all I have left to do to make the deal go through. We did get an extension from the bank till March 12. I hope they can get everything in line. All our stuff is good to go, we just need them to get the title stuff cleared up. I guess we will see what new stuff can come up in another week.

Some Good News

I forgot to post our good news. Katie says that her good luck balances my bad luck... Not sure if that is true, but it does help sometimes. This news has nothing to do with luck, it was her hard work and dedication. When we returned from our trip to Utah, Katie found her acceptance letter to ISU Graduate School for Occupational Therapy. We knew she was in, but it was nice to have the official letter in hand. In addition to her acceptance, she also has earned a scholarship. She is one of three that have qualified because of superior grades and GRE scores. It is a one time $1000.00 award that she will receive after completing her first two semesters of school. I am sure they do this so they don't wast it on those who wash out. I wish it was $10,000, but we will take whatever help we can get. Scholarships are down right now do to the economy, so this is a pretty coveted award. She has worked very hard and deserves whatever she gets, except being stuck with me.

February Is Over

We are so grateful that Blake is doing better and that all were able to return home safely. We ended up making the most of our trip down there. We bought a fridge, glass top range, and a natural gas stove/fire place. All were used and purchased off of KSL and I think all in all we got pretty good deals. We were also able to take mom to a basketball game that we won, and go to another hard fought game that we came up two points short on. We visited with a few friends and got a little shopping in as well. It was nice to spend a little bit of time with Becky and her family, even though it wasn't under the best of circumstances. We were also able to visit with Katie's parents and brothers.

Katie's brother Justin, was in a single car rollover Friday night on his way to Malad from Logan. The car is totalled, but Justin is OK. He cut his hand up a bit, and I think the seat belt may have bruised him up a bit, but considering he rolled it four times, he is in great shape. We are so grateful that he was waring his seat belt and that he was not seriously injured.

We were expecting that everything would be in line to close today on the house. I have no idea why we expected that since nothing else has gone right with the house. Everything on our end is ready, and has been. Right now we are being held up with title. Not that it is the title company holding us up, rather the seller having liens against the home that is holding us up. We knew that there was one that we were waiting for them to clear up, but now there are several (4) that have come up since we signed our agreement. The seller is never around and seems to not want to take any responsibility. This is no surprise since they have been in bankruptcy once, losing their house, and have unpaid bills... It is really troubling that people feel no sense of responsibility for their actions. We are kind of over a barrel because if he just walks away and goes into foreclosure we are stuck with some costs for inspections etc., and it is obvious that it won't do any good to hold him liable to the sale contract because he doesn't pay anyone else. I am just so sick of the roller coaster ride we have been on. I hope we have some good news by the end of the week.