I feel like I've lost my steam with this story, I am done with it.  I'll finish up quickly here.

So it's closing day.  I asked loml to come with me, due to my irrational fear of the seller.  A couple of hours before the closing, the realtors, loml and I had the final walkthrough.  And happily, the seller was gone.  She wasn't staging any sort of hostile takeover.   It appeared she did most of the items she said she did, so we were all set to close.

At the closing, all was going well.  The seller didn't show.  Her lawyer was personable.  Mine was running me through the first round of paper work.  And then, somehow, it came up that my mortgage was entered as waiving escrow.  I never planned on waiving escrow - I always wanted my taxes and insurance to be rolled into my monthly payment.  The mortgage broker and I never even discussed changing this.  And here was my mortgage, no escrow.  I explained, in an angry voice, that this was NOT right.  She started to figure out what to do.  And then mortgage broker walked in.  I think it's unusual for these guys to show up at the closing.  There he was, all subdued shame due to the problems he had already caused.  In the end, he saved his own ass by showing up and he got the situation rectified, though I wouldn't say it happened quickly.

And so I own a house.  I own a house that is currently in a serious state of construction.  I now get to decide whether or not to lop off the back of the house due to a seriously unstable and dangerous enclosed porch situation.  I only have really terrible pictures of it so be warned.  The porch goes along the back of the house. Half of it is off of the kitchen and is a mudroom.  The other half is off of a bedroom and is a fabulous closet.  Here are the only terrible pictures I have.  Mudroom on left, closet on right.