fun weekend

So on Friday night both of my toilets refused to flush and I noticed that water was backing up in both showers a bit. I considered this inconvenient because I rather like indoor plumbing, and with the rain and all it kind of made the backup plan unpleasant. I thought maybe the rain itself was to blame for the stoppage but that was just a coincidence.

Saturday morning I called my home warranty company so they would send a plumber to check it out… and a couple hours later I called them again because I hadn’t gotten a call back. I find out that none of their contractors were available; despite it being considered an “emergency” to them they couldn’t get anyone out until monday. So instead I called up the plumbers who snaked the drains at my moms house. They came out in about an hour, snaked the lines, and discovered that it wasn’t just some easy clog we were dealing with like I’d hoped.

A common problem with old sewer lines is tree roots: they grow down and force their way into the clay pipes at the joints, which were only sealed with tar to begin with, then once inside they kind of go nuts. Over time they plug up the big pipes and waste water can’t get through. If maintained it’s not a big deal, but when left to sit for extended periods of time it becomes more of an issue. Mine, of course, was a pretty big issue.

The plumbers came back Sunday morning with their handy dandy backhoe and made quick work of my lawn. Fifteen feet of pipe replaced – updated to PVC – and a couple of sizable roots sawed off to discourage further arboreal attacks. It only took them around three hours and I was out there the whole time getting in the way. The little inspection camera was kinda slick. All in all $1.5k well spent, even though I’d rather not have had to in the first place…

They joys of owning a home, right?

so very busy

Wednesday:
left work early, got my keys, sorted and piled up the junk in back yard, bought and installed new light bulbs, and bombed the house for bugs overnight (used 8 canisters).
Thursday:
worked all day, began cleaning around 6, decided to replace both toilets and the sink in the master bathroom instead of moving in first.
Friday:
drove all over town to several different Lowes & Home Depot stores to buy the new toilets and vanity set, picked up some paint samples, cleaned more, removed both toilets, removed the plastic sliding shutters on the closets, replaced the toilet in the main bathroom, returned the second toilet due to a cracked tank, cleared out all the rooms for the carpet cleaner coming in the morning.
Saturday:
got the carpets shampooed, removed all nails and screws from the walls, plastered nail and screw holes in walls, bought paint, repaired damage to bedroom and bathroom walls, laid new linoleum tiles in master bathroom, got my cable and internet installed, stain treated the carpet in the master bedroom, painted master bathroom until 1am, forgot it was Halloween.
Sunday:
installed new toilet and vanity w/ sink in master bathroom, had carpet in master bedroom shampooed again, removed all the junk from backyard and garage (which filled about a 10 yard bin), removed the old shelving and panels in the garage, trimmed the tree in the front yard.
Monday:
worked all day, masked and painted the master bedroom until midnight, forgot to eat diner.

woohoo!

After a solid week of stalling everything finally cleared and I picked up my keys yesterday! So exciting! Can’t believe I just bought a house… now I get to move again. Yay. But first I have to clean it out and do a bit of fixerupin. Being a short sale, the seller really doesn’t give a damn how the place looks because all the money is going directly to the bank. So that means as they pack up their stuff, any junk they didn’t want to keep gets left behind. The bank sent them in there to clean it out before I moved in, but that just meant tossing it all into the trashcans until they ran out of room, then just pile it up in the garage. So that’s nice. Plus the back yard was a bit of a mess, rotting particle boards resting against the fences acting as cockroach incubators… so all that’s got to go.

Yesterday was a lot of sorting junk into piles out back, testing light fixtures and bulbs, and walking around grinning while thinking “this place is MINE!” Before I left last night I set off about a dozen bug bombs and left the house sealed to take care of the resident critters inside – still need to get a big bucket of kills-every-goddamn-thing to spray the yard. My mom is in there today with a gallon of bleach to tackle the first wave of cleaning, and I’m taking tomorrow off work to clean more, repair nail holes and such, and possibly paint some walls. Saturday morning I’m getting the carpets shampooed and having my cable installed that afternoon, then I can start moving things in.

should have seen this from a mile away

So here I am at work, sore from the move-a-thon yesterday, when I get this text from my Realtor: “Just funded!!! Recording tomorrow!!! Praise God“. Finally some good news! I guess they decided not to take me up on the urine sample I offered. So I ask if that means I’ll get my keys Tuesday or Wednesday, to which she responds “Tomorrow or late tonight“. Awesome, right?

/sigh

Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have bought it either. What can I say, I was tired, and I wanted to believe. Just four and a half hours later I get a new email from her – “Looks like we will not be recording tomorrow as planned…” Turns out the close date, the same problem that screwed me up last Monday, is back for more. I guess they didn’t know how optimistic they were being when they picked the 23rd for the extention, and not knowing the full extent of their duncery I agreed that five days was certainly reasonable. “What happens if it takes longer” I even asked. “Don’t worry, it’ll be before Friday anyways.” Ha! And of course no one thought about the evaporating deadline as it whizzed past, it would have been far too easy to send an updated extension with the report waiver getting signed.

Shoot me. Shoot me now.

sing it if you know the tune

You know, yesterday I got to thinking that I should try betting all those “just think positive, you’ll get your keys tomorrow!” people that I’d still be locked out this weekend. It’s a win-win idea: on the one hand I may have been out some money but I wouldn’t care since I’d finally be in my house; on the other hand I would at least have some extra cash in my pocket while the underwriters think up more ridiculous hoops for me to jump through so they can keep stalling. I get that there’s a lot to cover, and that this isn’t the only thing on their plate. What I don’t get is why they can’t look everything they have, decide what they need, then ask me for it. Instead, they start going down the list until the see something that confuses them, then push it aside until I call and ask for an update. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Today’s hold up is brought to you by a simple recommendation on a voluntary report. There were big scary words involved apparently, and as a result I either need to get a reworded report to replace the “bad” one, or we can get the report removed from the contract (by having everyone sign an extra page saying that we all know it’s there but we frankly don’t care what it says anymore, after if cost me $600 of course). You’ll note that neither solution requires addressing the recommendation in any physical sense. The recommendation itself isn’t the problem, the existence of the recommendation is the problem. There are two lines on a page that don’t sound good and they must be dealt with.

So here’s the current plan: I finish packing everything up tonight, put it all in storage this weekend, return the keys from my apartment on Sunday as agreed, and find a box to sleep in until someone with a brain shows up and sorts out the loan that should have been approved a week ago.

tl;dr: Still no keys.

packing in progress

I’ve got two bookshelves that until very recently were overflowing with various toys of mine… but for the time being, all that has to be boxed up and ready to move. Once I’m settled in I’ll need to figure out where everyone gets to go. They’ll have a whole house to fill if when the damn loan goes through!

and it just gets worse

So that last bit about the underwriter getting confused over my magical vanishing money wasn’t solved simply by providing my bank statement showing exactly where the money came and went between my two accounts. Of course not. That would be too easy. I ended up having to throw down with every statement of mine from the past three months… on the idea that I can’t possibly provide anything more than what they now have, and if they can’t figure out that it really was mine all along and not the result of some Nigerian money laundering scam then I should just move into the house and say I lived there the whole time  and tell them to prove me otherwise.

Today’s hopeful prediction for my new close date: Friday. Considering their track record though, I’ve got at least another week. Should be fun being homeless come Monday since I have to surrender my apartment on the 25th. Maybe I’ll ask if I can sleep at their office while they sort it all out.

I just don’t know what to say

In the process of preparing to buy a house, I was saving money. Makes sense right? I was keeping it all in my checking account the whole time because that’s where I deposit everything. By the time I had amassed what I expected would cover my closing costs, with the closing date a good month or two away, it dawned on me that I have a savings account for a reason, I should be using it for this. It may not be much, but any money I put in there will accrue interest. So, thinking this it the smart and responsible thing to do with what I had saved, I transferred most of it over.

Less than a week later I realize that I’m still waiting for my deposit check to clear – and I no longer have the money in my checking to cover it thanks to my transfer. Moron. So I move part of it back in a panic, which should be plenty to cover the deposit in limbo and any outstanding withdrawals. After another couple of days it dawns on me that I’ll obviously need everything in one account to write the final check at closing, so I transfer the remaining amount to the original account. Back to square one. However, as a result of this, I now appear as insane and incompetent to my loan processor as they do to me.

I understand the confusion I caused: in the course of about ten days I moved a large sum of money from one spot to another and back, but in two smaller pieces. To gain 9 cents in interest. I completely accept the triviality of this in retrospect. But what I don’t get is what the underwriter thinks happened: they see a large transfer to an account, and then two smaller transfers from the same account that add up to the first transfer… but they don’t know where that money came from. What?

Some people think when you close the door on the fridge, the light stays on. These people apparently believe that the light, and everything inside the fridge, simple cease to exist - and when they open the door again they must gasp in astonishment, wondering where the all this food came from.

today just gets better and better

nothing ever goes according to plan

So, apparently, my loan didn’t fund yesterday like I was told it should. It didn’t fund because it was one day past the close date listed on the approval paperwork. It was past the close date on the approval paperwork because the loan processor wasted about a week by requesting information she had on her desk for the past month. Had it not been for her “confusion” I could have signed the final paperwork Monday of last week instead of Thursday, the loan could have funded and recorded that week, and I would have my keys already. Instead I’ll have maybe a day to clean the house, move all my stuff out of my apartment, and turn in those keys on time. I knew to expect delays, but I was hoping everyone involved would have at least some baseline competence in their jobs… silly me.