So… the carpeting is installed. Here’s a quick before and after pic:
Before, red carpet in the hallway looking towards craft and guest rooms:
After, green carpet in the hallway looking away from craft and guest rooms, towards master suite:
The loft is also complete, as well as the back stairs:
It seems that I have gone more than a month without any sort of content rich post. Wow. I AM teh sux0r, as the kids say these days. The lack of communication has only been driven by my own tired emotional state. Too much to do and worry about makes for no energy left to make any meaningful posts. So, what follows will be more of a brain dump in some unorganized fashion. You were warned….
-Work has been, well… work. Busy as ever trying to get two full time jobs to fit in the space of one.
-We have been at the new house every night and weekend since taking possession of it, excluding the 4 days Jean’s parents and sister were in town.
-Playing host to in-laws can be a very emotionally taxing role, especially when you have 5billion other things to think about.
We have been refinishing the front stairs, which has amounted to a huge amount of time spent hunkered over them with sand paper. We FINALLY got the first two coats of stain on over the weekend and are very please thus far with the results. Next up is the polyurethane coats and then cleaning up the base-boards, rail spindles, and risers with a nice coat of white semi-gloss. Pics follow under the cut below…
The next few weeks are going to be very interesting in a BUSY sort of way.
We are waiting on our flooring to be delivered, which may or may not make it in time to be installed before we move in. I am still hopeful, but I don’t think it is going to happen, so we are planning on moving in without the floors installed.
I am also working on getting an electrician out to resolve some grounding issues in the old 2-wire part of the home and to split off some unwise double-tapping in the breaker box.
Of course, work had to get in the way. We move into the house on Jan 18th, and then I am off on Jan 21st to fly down to Irvine for 3 days of work. I fly Back to PDX on Jan 24th, so the trip will be short and stress filled I am sure. During that time, Jean gets the fun task of staying home and making sure the rental is clean enough to hand back to the property management group, as well as organizing the new home as best she can before I return. Once back from the trip, we’ll be able to focus properly on getting the work on the floors done. In the mean-time, we will need to figure out how to move in such a way that things can be easily moved around to accommodate the flooring work.
Right now, I just need to see progress. Sitting around and waiting is NOT doing it for me. Having ONE project finished would go a long ways to helping me deal 
Now, on to the work in progress pics…
We got the keys, have ordered flooring, and begun some minor demolition…
Read all about it here: http://siobhan-genie.livejournal.com/88945.html
Sorry bout the cop out…
A quick house buying update
Here we sit in the middle of escrow, literally. We are scheduled to close on Dec. 11th, which looked to be in jeopardy of slipping to a later date as of last Friday.
Sitting at lunch Friday afternoon with John, Mary, and Colleen, I received a call I couldn’t let go to voicemail. Our realtor, Doug, was calling with information from the appraiser that the permits for the 1994 renovations on the house were not completed with a final walkthrough and sign off.
This, of course, sent me off into a whirlwind of worry as I attempted to figure out what our options were at this point. Without going into all the issues, suffice to say that getting the permits signed off would cause us to slip the close date (which would cause the seller’s contingency buy of a new place to slip) and would result in a tax increase based on the additional assessed square footage.
Because of the holiday, we had to wait until Monday to get word from the City Planner if indeed the permits hadn’t been completed, or if the information was just missing from the records available to the appraiser. Well, as Doug was verifying this information, the appraiser called back and indicated that he wouldn’t sign off on the appraisal until the permits were completed, which basically took any choice out of our hands.
So an inspector was scheduled to go out to the house and do the final walk-through inspection, which resulted in a few minor caulking issues which the seller will have taken care of before close. But all said and done, and the permits are now signed off without having slipped the close date. Basically, everything concluded in a best case scenario, which of course was the LAST thing we expected as we … (ok only ME)… as I worried about all of the worst case scenarios and how to deal with each case.
As we stand currently, escrow is once again progressing as expected and we have no fear of any permitting issues down the line if we find ourselves in need of selling at some point.
Assuming that we are still taking possession on December 15th, then we are still on a good timeline to get the necessary work completed prior to our move-in, hopefully around the 2nd or 3rd week in January.
