Our New House

Our new house. 

So Brian and I have been looking for a a house for a long time. We have wanted a ranch house because he has bad knees and I had a bad knee. We have seen both our parents struggle with stairs as they got older. His parents, my husband said, were even living in a death trap before they moved. They lived in a raised ranch so once they took the chair lift up had there been a fire they only had the chair lift to help them down and only one of those at that. Anyway this October we finally found one that seemed to meet all our needs. Brian and I never decide on big decisions quickly, but this time we did. We have now seen several houses and this was only the second one that we decided to bid on. Last year there was a house we liked, but that is when everyone thought it was a great idea to over bid on houses. That one needed a ton of work too.  We bid on this one and decided that since my niece moved in we really needed this because it would get my one daughter off our front couch. We told our realtor, Brian’s sister, to put in our bid with a clause that said we were willing to go 2000 over the top bid. Well, good thing we did because that is why we won. That meant at the end of October we owned two houses. 

We have been working on it whenever we can. I finally told my husband that although he can hang drywall we should just hire someone. We did and there started the oh dear. We picked the guys who our roofer suggested. He is amazing and super picky like my husband. They did a great job talking about what they would do so they were to get started. First of all not sure how but they always broke the drywall at the bottom of the wall on every piece they put up. At first they were just leaving their water bottles, trash and whatever laying around. I had to ask them to clean up after themselves and also if they could start cleaning up all the dust, especially before painting. “Oh, we do a nice job,” they said.”  They kept showing me these million dollar homes that they worked on. They must have a clean up crew that comes in for them there because unfortunately I had told them all the rooms paint colors.  Needless to say my husband would catch them as they were going not doing things they had said and point it out to them. One day, they said they were going to be done and I told them remember you said you were cleaning up  the mess and everything is going to look nice. I said Brian was taking off early to talk to them before they finished. Guess what they took off early too and left behind a huge dust bowl with freshly painted walls. I wanted to cry. Not only that but things weren’t done right. We are now paying the painter we should have had to do it to fix stuff. Everyone we asked about drywall included the painting so we said might as well. Big mistake!

The mud room I wanted to put in was to be done by a different guy. I am obviously not good at hiring people because he too had great recommendations. However, first he had a flat tire and sent me a picture, then he got shot, yes you read that correctly and sent me a picture from the emergency room of the wound. Then he came and worked on the room with his swollen arm. He then didn’t come back and when I texted him he said he had dropped his phone in the toilet and lost my number. We really just wanted him to complete the job and go away. He came back and worked for like an hour and called to tell me he had fallen off his ladder/bench thing and broken open his wound. He needed to know where the nearest hospital was. I told him and texted him to see if he was okay, but with his open wound he cleaned up all his stuff and took everything. He doesn’t seem to respond back!  Now we have another guy who is supposed to come finish/ redo parts of the mud room. 

Meanwhile Brian is working 10 hour days at Facebook in DeKalb which is almost an hour away. Coming home to the new house and working on things until around 10 then coming home to shower and eat dinner to do it all the next day. I am not the best helper of most of the things he needs to do anyway, but hurting my knee at the end of January and struggling to walk really didn’t help. Our kids try to help but they are all busy with school and other activities so when people ask me when we will move in…….. I hope before we go broke and lose both houses is going to start to be my answer.   Oh yeah we have barely started to pack because well the new house and school and all the other activities we have going on!!!