Sunday, October 12, 2014

And so it goes...

You shouldn't be able to see light under the garage door. That was my first thought as I pulled into the driveway yesterday. My second was, "What is that cable on the outside of the door." As I quickly headed into house and through to the garage, my curiosity turned to rage. The garage door was clearly broken. The reason for the light underneath was that it was off it's track and where a tightly wound cable used to be, there was now an unattached cable. Sean who was a few minutes behind me soon returned home. Shortly after I heard him pull into the drive way I heard him step on the door from the outside. He had seen it too. Soon, there was two of us standing in the garage, unable to believe our eyes.

Perhaps you are asking yourself, why is she making such a big deal of a broken garage door? Things happen right? You would be correct, they do. Except this garage door was perfectly fine just two hours earlier. What had changed during those two hours was that our home was being inspected for our buyer. Somehow our garage door was broken during the inspection. What the hell? Even if for some reason it was about to break which I don't see as possible since there had been no problem with it just last night, a note of some sort would have been helpful. We just came home to damage, no notification of any kind. No information to our agents, no warning to us that our house was no longer able to be secure. Just another check in a long series of pain in the ass boxes that have documented this house selling experience.

There is a reason that buying and selling homes is on the top five list of most stressful life events. We Ross's don't like to do things half ass, so we decided to double down and do both at once. Except for my first year of teaching, which happened to also be the year my dad was dying of cancer, this is the worst and most stressful experience we have ever lived through in our entire marriage. Preparing this house to sell took my entire summer and all of our savings. Then we had  the water heater issue, then the rodent issue and don't even get me started on the ongoing battle of installing hurricane straps. Yes, in the Willamette valley we are supposed to entertain the idea of hurricane straps. We are resisting for now. All this adds up to about $8,000 in repairs after we exhausted our own savings, that mom has financed until we close since one of the fun side effects of buying a house is that you can't take out any debt. Great...we put mom's extra money in limbo so we can fix things that are ridiculous just to be able to sell.

Oh and then there is the buyers. So far there has been three of them. The first had no business even wasting our time since she had no money. The second dropped out as quickly as he got in. The current buyers have made it to the inspection stage, but not without significant bumps, delays and uncertainties along the way. With the addition of a broken door during their inspection, I'm not holding my breathe that their list of requests will be smooth and simple. Oh, and have I mentioned that with all the unexpected items,  and the rock bottom price with closing costs included, we will be lucky to have enough money at closing to just pay mom back.

Which leads me to the buying portion. We have our dream house in our reach. It is absolutely perfect for us, except for one thing. It is no longer a walk to my sister and the kids. That part breaks my heart. But the home is so amazing and we are in the same town that I have resigned myself to driving to visit sister instead of walking. I will not let this location change our relationship. The house is set on the side of a hill, near the top of a local mountain. It is beautiful and you can see half way across the valley from the roof top deck. Initially when we found it, we expected we would have about $25,000 to bring the original 1980s home into our century, but now we will be thrilled just to get in. We will have the rest of our lives to make it our own. Right now, we honestly just want to get home. We've got our financing in order, we've got our inspections done up there and we have done everything right along the way. It's time that our buyers get their shit together and do the same.

We are really hoping for no more bumps in the road. I'm a little concerned though because this morning the fridge is making all sorts of noise.....