Cha cha changes....

This is what you see when you enter our property. I took this picture from the gate. To the left is the garage, then the driveway circles around and the barn is to the left (Maxivan is parked in front of the barn).

I took this picture back in the summer, when we first started this process. It is from the top of the steps down to the house. You can see the white lamp post just in front of Greg's car in the picture above.

This is how it looks now, this picture taken from the front of the house, back up towards the driveway. You can see the white lamp post the previous picture was taken from. Follow me? =)

I took out all those solar lights. They didn't get any direct sunlight to charge them. There must be 36 of them.

This is from the back deck towards the chicken coop.

Before:After:
They uncovered some treasures in all of that tall grass. I raked up 7 or 8 large piles of the downed grass. CRAZY amount of work for this city girl. My hands still hurt.

Greg wanted to paint the garage and epoxy the floor before we move in. So this past weekend, we sprayed the garage. 15 gallons of Kilz and 5 gallons of Semi Gloss. I swept up about 10 lbs of paint 'dust' off the floor. Greg also replaced the fluorescent lights with energy efficient CFL's. With the garage painted white and new lights, it looks like a brand new place!

Here are some of the before shots.

The only critters we've encountered are lizards and frogs. Apparently tarantulas are the most active right now, so the 1 that Greg removed must have been the only one dumb enough to show it's face in the day. The kids say hi to it every time we drive around the bend where Greg moved it to.

Sunday I spent the entire afternoon cleaning the upstairs hall bath. There is a reason I do not clean other people's houses for a living. I had the heebie jeebs so I just poured bleach on the floor, put on my rubber gloves and dove in. I think I will repaint the aqua to a prettier version of aqua and call it a day in there.

I'll post more pic's if I come across any other good before/afters.

*3* Offers on our house!

Greg and I just signed a full price offer this morning!! Please keep fingers crossed that there are no hang-ups. This seems to have gone so smoothly, I'm waiting for something to come up.... =)

Well, We didn't Close on the 16th...

But we did sign our papers today. Now, the short sale banks involved just need to be paid (via our wire transfer) and signed off on.... Too bad that Capital One doesn't do wire transfers to Title Companies, and too bad that is the bank that we transferred all of the funds to to wire the money to the Title Company. Too bad we didn't realize this until Thursday eveing. Oh well, we had to wait on them right?! If all goes as planned, we should be closing this week.

Our house went on the MLS today... and had 4 showings today while we were out! Two more have called to show it tomorrow. Hopefully we will get an offer and be moving on with life. Cross your fingers for us please.

Out at the new house today Greg pressure washed the garage and I cleaned the baseboards inside. No critter encounters. Oh, except the black widow. But Greg drown her in his beer bottle. We're going to go back out tomorrow and go to the Harvest Festival at the kids new school. Hope to meet some of the country folk! Maybe talk chickens. Or tractors. =)

Green Acres is the life for me.... I think.

I won't bore you with all the details. Lets just say we are jumping thru hoops to get our funding to go thru. We had to have the south side of the house scrapped and repainted due to the appraiser calling weathered wood and paint 'dry rot.' And we had to install the cabinet doors because he also mentioned that in the appraisal. The cabinet doors were in the process of being painted/distressed, and had all been removed. Then at the last minute the bank wanted a hand rail installed on the steps that lead down of the back deck. Okay. We're playing along because we want the house. It is weird though, to be making repairs to a house we don't own, and I don't entirely trust the lender.

Anywhoo, I took the kids out this afternoon to help Greg with the rest of the cabinet doors and while there I figured we may as well water something. Greg brought soaker hoses and we were laying them around the front walk area when Teagan sees this guy:

Greg flung it over to the other side of the street (which is a ways away) but the spider is probably back to it's home by now *shudder*

The kids were scared/fascinated. I was in flip flops. I think we'll be boot shopping tomorrow...

After that excitement was over, we got back to work. I think it looks great (except for the 6 cabinet doors I repainted yesterday with old paint, that is shiny... but we won't talk about that right now). I'm not as into the distressed look as I would have been about 5 years ago. So, they will get another coat of fresh paint, and they will match.

We put on new brushed satin hardware. Looks pretty with the granite. Bless Greg's heart, he does such a nice and perfect job on this kind of stuff. It always turns out beautifully! You can see the areas where they sanded the white paint back down to the oak.

The appraiser is going back out tomorrow to take pictures to show the bank we did the repairs they requested. Cross your fingers they don't ask us to do anything else. If all goes well, we should close on the 16th, 1 day after the seller's short sale deadline of the 15th. Amazing if you ask me!

We left after dark. The kids were too scared to go outside, in the dark. It's dark out there. Really dark. The front porch has lights, but the breaker is broken in the tripped position, so that needs to be fixed (item # 2613 in case you are counting). They had a lot of solar lights, but they aren't bright. We'll be adding some real lighting out there. So I can see the tarantulas at night. But it won't matter then, because I'll have on boots!

Lighting comes after we have the landscaping cleared and cleaned up. While I was there yesterday I had 'Nacho' come give me a quote to clear 100' fire/safety perimeter around the house, prune and trim. $1200.00. $300 more if we want it hauled away. Yipes. That comes after we have the lids for the septic tank dug up, inspected, pumped and add risers to the lids so we don't ever have to dig them up again. Most likely a lot of things will have to wait until we sell our house.

Oh, and speaking of critters. When Greg left last night, he followed Peppy La'Pue down the dirt road to Salmon Falls Road. Peppy got a little testy near the end there, and Greg swears he went into the bush and lifted his tail. We're having the 50 gallon barrel of Tomato Juice delivered, since we can't go pick it up in MaxiVan (just kidding).