I've been thinking a lot about home ownership lately. There are a lot of people that talk of home ownership like they talk of their marriages and their jobs: like it's a shackle holding them back from reaching their true potential. Though you have to wonder, true potential for what?  

This house is old, it is going to require a lot of money over our lifetime together. But it is also something that I am still super ecstatic about. It sometimes hits me at odd moments, like last night randomly: loml and I live here. We are making this our home, however slowly that is happening. We now have furniture in all the rooms. No unpacked boxes. And lists of plans and hopes and problems. To me this isn't solely a responsibility, it's a hobby. I'm going to put money into this house to make it my own and I'm going to relish it (most of the time).

I think I've mentioned here before that I was a weird teenager - I used to watch This Old House every afternoon and initiated a process to choose nice, wooden furniture for my room. My parents helped subsidize my weirdness - if I paid part of the cost of the furniture, it would be mine as an adult. It is now officially a part of the purple room here. I have always enjoyed this part of domesticity. 

The gutters could use replacing. The garage as well. Mulberries. The basement floor is partially ruined already. The list goes on; and sometimes it feels damn good to complain about the problems. But I own those problems, I am happy to put part of my money into fixing them. I'd rather have money to replace the garage than I would a new shirt, shoes, purse, gadget or car. It may not seem fun to you, but it is to me. I mean, what is more fun than seeing and falling for this and realizing there are dozens of places you could put it:

(via Oh So Beautiful Paper, hopefully available here soon)

I'm having this weird issue, that I'm slowly becoming aware of:  I cannot clean in the house while loml is present. And by present I mean not otherwise entertained/detained.  And detained means one of the following:  asleep, out of the house, somewhere in the house with someone else, cleaning with me. 

Is this super childish of me or ingrained habit?  I can't figure out if I'm resistant to cleaning because he is available to clean to so why isn't he doing it?  Or if I'm resistant because I don't want to be watched?  Or if I'm resistant because if he's not busy I am striving for quality time?  Or really, when it all comes down to it, am I just so used to working the cleaning junket by myself that I can't fathom having another human wandering around messing up my pattern?

I think they are all equally likely.  

It's crazy to realize that I moved in to this house only three months ago.  We drove by my old apartment on Saturday and I felt a slight pang of nostalgia, maybe a moment of sadness...but it was only a moment.  It feels like we've been living in this house for as long as I can remember (though maybe we have...if we're using my memory as the compass).  I think this house quickly became a home.  It's not a place I live, it's the place I want to go to at the end of a bad day and the place that I'm most comfortable.  I wasn't sure how having a roommate would affect my ability to feel at home here, but if anything he's made it easier.  If I don't stop myself now, I'll start writing in cheesy cliches and then next stop, vinyl wall art.

There are weird things I love about this house (the tiny window in the bedroom closet) and habits I can't seem to break from having an apartment.  I can't stop stock-piling laundry...I need to do it every few days, not every few weeks.  

This is sort of a round-about post.  I meant to write about how I want to settle in more next week (I have the week off).  To move my clothes into the closet in the basement and start showering down there.  And, maybe (gasp) look for a lamp for the side table and a towel bar/holder for the basement downstairs.  Big plans!  Super exciting!  Running low on topics!

I present to you, without further explanation, an emotional storm.


This is the gear room.

That door ahead of you opens into the electric meter closet.
This is the meter on the floor while the gas company was working on it (from the very first trip); picture credit: loml instagr.am.

Please note the ledge and it's height off of the floor.  Notice all those pipes on the right blocking easy access.  The meter hangs in the large empty space on the left - pretty much right in front of the ledge.  How and where does a fat cat hurl her body up there and squeeze in?  We will never know.
This is what it looks like when you are sure the cat is in the wall and loml suggests we take a flash picture.

Click on that one to enlarge.  The dark lump in the back is Boku.
I immediately try zoom, then take a picture.

Click on that one to enlarge.  This is the moment (5:05pm from the timestamp) that I started to completely break down.  Because in that image in kind of looks like Boku is stuck on her back legs.  I can't stop seeing it like that.  Like she was trying to climb to the right and got stuck in a slightly ramped position.  That white bit at the bottom left is her paw.  Does anyone else see that?
From this point until around 5:25 I was inconsolable.  We couldn't get Boku to move or make any noise.  I have almost 20 pictures trying to document some kind of change.  Anything.  Nothing.  Because Boku was dead, remember?

The first glance into the hole.  Still didn't have the best angle/ability to see her.

The second glance.  It was NOT a back paw.  It was white ass hair + insulation = visual trickery.
And then we had this. picture credit: loml instagr.am

Now we have a handy dad fixing up that hole.  It will be mended before any of you will ever get a chance to see it with your own two eyes.  And I am so happy for that.

I really should have done Nablopomo. I know I should have. And last month would have been a banner month to do it. So much random crap happened. And by "random crap happened" I mostly mean "shit went wrong". There are about a dozen stories I should have told you. And now I will distill it all into one post of bullet points.

I'm thinking about writing every day this month. Don't hold me to it, but I need to kickstart my impulse to blog. And what better way than to force it? I should probably "save" up these stories if I truly mean to do this...but I have a hunch a ton of random crap is going to happen again.

• My basement was finished. Stuff was moved in. It's becoming a two floor home.
• Since we've been down there more, we realized it smelled like gas in the gear room *the bedroom will henceforth be the gear room*. Gas company was called. They replaced some apparatus that held the meter in place.
• Next day, couldn't find the cat. The feral mama cat. Boku. Boku, seeing the open door to the meter closet, jumped up to a ledge (2-3 feet off teh ground) and climbed inside the wall. Probably about 7 feet inside the wall. And we only found her because I'm a crazy cat lady and just knew she was in there. She didn't make any noise. We poked her with a tape measure (it was the only thing long enough). No noise. We tapped on the wall. No noise. In our eyes, she had climbed into a dark, quiet spot to die. Boku died. So we had to get her out. Loml was the calm eye stuck in the middle of my emotional storm. He got a saw and proceeded to cut a hole in the wall. And opened it up to Boku staring at him. THAT BITCH WASN'T DEAD. Sorry, just needed to rage there for second. She is alive, well and coaxed out of the hole with some tuna. Ever since the sawing episode, though, she is deathly afraid of Loml. Tides turned? No longer the favorite?
• And then it still smelled like gas. We called again a week later. SURPRISE, the gas is at blow up levels. And since the leak is "on our side" of the piping, they turned off the gas and left. At 2pm on Black Friday. So I called a plumbing company and had to pay emergency rates to get some dudes out to fix it. The gas company comes back (2 hours later. No gas, I was told, is not an emergency). This gas-man (cue taxman by beatles) picked my basement apart; there is a lot wrong in the boiler room. Anyway, he kindly fixed one of the leaks (by tightening a cap) himself and turned our gas on. So far, we haven't smelled gas again.
• My contractor dinged me with an assortment of extra costs. That made me ill for a few days. I bitched it up to him though and cut those extra costs in half. Though I still have extra costs. Sigh.
• Of course, as you know, I got the IUD. And my body is reacting to it in all kinds of ways including, but not limited to, teenage pimple face, crazy mood swings and weird junk I don't want to share. I know my body is getting used to not being on the pill but I'd really like it to cut me a break. Though, bigger picture, I think (as long as it's in the right place still) my reaction has been mild. I'm not in pain or anything (some people have cramps for months). I will say (TMI ahead) that I cannot reach or feel any strings that I'm supposed to be checking. Hopefully my next check up will show that everything is in the right place and I'm set to not have babies.
• I woke up a few nights ago having chest pain. Not sure why I woke up, but it was hurting with every breath. I got a litany of tests today that will hopefully show that I am super healthy and had a random asthma-y thing. No results yet though. As an aside, my general doc asked if i was still on birth control, I explained about the IUD and she just sort of briskly said, oh even better. All doctors love this thing, eh?

I'm sure I'm forgetting things.  For another day...

This post is about my lady parts, detailed tidbits, so consider yourself warned.  

I shouted an expletive at the doctor's office today.  It slipped out with a couple of ouches and noises of pain.  Because today I got an IUD.  There's a devilish part of me that wants to put a medical drawing here of an IUD in a uterus, but I'll restrain myself.  The copper paragard T is in my womb.

And let me just say that it was painful.  And my body was confused afterwards (still is).  So here's the run down.  If you don't want details, stop reading.

Basically it was 4 stages of painfulness.  I'm on the table, speculum'd up.  I get cleaned out with iodine.  She warns me that my cervix is closed tight.  So, in order to dilate it, she pokes it.  That's right.  She poked it.  Didn't feel all that great, but it didn't necessarily hurt.  That's level 1 pain there.  Then she clamps something on to it (I believe her explanation was "I'm going to clamp something now".)  I don't know why.  Maybe she needed to keep it open.  I forgot to clarify at that point.  The clamping burned a little, so pain level 2.  Not the worst, though my doc, at this point, was astounded that I didn't even flinch.  Then she needed to measure my uterus to get the IUD sized correctly.  And this my friends, is what I'll call pain level 4.  I guess I wasn't expecting the pain, but I did say (in a very low shout voice) "oh shit ow ow ow ow" as it was happening.  It felt like the end of the world in my womb.  Like she was stabbing it with a knife.  Incidentally, my uterus is size 7cm.  Pain level 3 happened with the actual insertion of the IUD, which she claims should have hurt the worst.  Maybe I was ready for it at that point, but while it hurt a lot, I grimaced and breathed evenly and didn't feel the need to shout.

The immediate aftermath was intense.  I think my body went into a mild version of shock (maybe the surprising level of pain did it) so I started shaking, I got insanely hot and I felt like I might puke all over.  I also felt a little off-kilter.  Some of those things lasted only 10 minutes.  Some came with me on the train home.

Right now I'm having waves of weirdness.  I just feel like there's something off in the lady parts.  For chunks of time it's hard to get comfortable.  Sometimes I feel completely fine and just feel a bit full in that area, like a normal menstrual thing.  I'm having some cramping off and on too, though it's not nearly as bad as some of my worst period cramps.

I went with an IUD, and specifically with the copper one, because I just got really tired of the hormonal side effects of the pill.  I tried switching pills to see if maybe that would help, but then it's just a new handful of side effects.  I'm super hopeful that this is going to be easy, crazy effective birth control.  Something I never have to think about.  From everything I've read, it sounds like the first six months can be interesting.  So I plan on sharing here.  Part of the reason I started researching IUD's is because of Lena Chen's experience, so I feel like I should behave in kind and write about mine.  Only with more gory details.

This doesn't fit here at all, but the deck is going up and it's going to be awesome.  Getting rid of the janky enclosed porch was definitely the right decision.

Things I know now that I didn't two months ago:

1. Built in microwaves are not meant for short people.  It really looks nice and saves space, but I can't see the food as it cooks.  The kitchen is going to become an obstacle course of step-stools at some point.  
2. There might be something to this whole robe thing.  I think I need a waffle robe or something similar for my mornings.  All the windows have no blinds and most of my morning routine involves states of partial undress.  
3. Sometimes we live under a flight path.  Either that or sometimes the flights all sound like they're about to crash out of the sky.  It only happens occasionally that they're super loud and I think it may have a correlation with inclement weather - but man, 20 planes sounded like they were going to fall out of the sky tonight (loml once described it as sounding like the Lost airplane).
4. Sleeping with a boy for a month can suddenly make it hard to not sleep with a boy and that offends me.

The bathroom downstairs look amazing.  And the basement is getting close.  Loml wandered around down there a bit last night and besides his being certain the house is going to fall down around us, we're both looking forward to having it as actual living space.  Two weeks from today?

The bathroom tile looks amazing.  I'm annoyed with the construction but also excited.  I think the tension of that is exhausting me.  Work has been kind of exhausting as well.  I'm just tired.  That is all.

From the doorway.  You can see the pipes for the double sinks/vanity on the left.  I bought the vanity today, online.  Fingers crossed it actually looks like the picture.  On top of that black edging, the wall will be painted green.  Romaine to be specific.

Thought I should get a close up.  The tile for this bathroom was expensive.  Glass on the walls, marble on the floors.  There is no grout just yet...

Please forgive me for being terrible at taking pictures.  Basement pictures below.  Good luck figuring out how the basement is set up from the photos you're about to see.  Over the fact that it's not my strong suit?  Good, now we can all move on.

Being a homeowner is really odd.  Sometimes I pause and think 'We live here.'  Kind of incredulously.  And then it immediately follows 'I own this house.'  And then I scratch my head, say 'huh' to myself, smile a little and continue on with whatever I'm doing.

I will say, I have a lot of new respect for homeowners.  And very little respect for the homeowner who owned this house before me.  It appeared to my mom on move in weekend that she never cleaned.  It also appears she didn't take much pride in the house.  The french doors featured yesterday have glue on every single windowpane.  It takes a little time and a razor blade to get the glue off.  And then they look like new.  From what we have learned about the house, those doors have been there since 2004.  Six years of dirty looking french doors?  I'm not even a very clean person and I find that impossible.

Basement picture extravaganza!  Try to remember the last picture show.  I managed to fail at taking that same perspective shot and am too lazy to go downstairs and fix it (no access from inside the house, have to get a key, unlock the door, etc, etc).

From the bottom of the stairs looking west.  That rough bit of floor is where the stairs used to come down.  The bookshelf is an add on from the foreman, a way to hide a jumble of ceiling pipes that turn in to the utility room at that point.



From the bottom of the stairs looking south.  Door on the left is the bathroom.  On the right is utility room.  Notice the height different of those doors and then weep a little inside for loml's head and any tall friends of his.

From the bottom of the stairs looking east.  Loml makes his first very sinister actual appearance on this blog, if you don't count his feet from the first picture.  In the picture it looks like he's walking in to the laundry closet (to his left).  To his right is the "rec room" where the TV/couch will be.

From the bottom of the stairs looking north.  Floor drain!  That rough floor is where the shower closet was.  You know, the closet with a wooden door that you opened to a surprise shower.  Complete with drain that has no plumbing.

"loml's room".  Will have a bed in that nook and lots of gear in the rest of the room.  Today he actually purchased a $4 prize to hang on a few walls in there.  You should ask him about it.

The bathroom.  First left will have a vanity.  Second left is a toilet nook.  Up to the right, to the right of the window is our custom shower.

This is what it looks like when you have a wall that doesn't say "family a journey to forever":

And this is what it looks like to have a front entry way with stuff in it (including cat):

Still settling in.  Probably will be for the next month.  I promise I will get pictures of the basement again, hopefully tomorrow.  Slight hitch to that plan is that the contractor is coming tomorrow and we are going to have to argue a bit about the bathroom door - so I may be in a tizzy and full of hate for the basement.  But soon, I swear.

I live here now. Here as in, the house I purchased. 

***

I'm currently preparing to grab Boku and force antibiotics down her throat. She's finally come out from hiding in the following places:

1. The litterbox
2. The very back of the closet
3. Under the couch

She's taking antibiotics because she has very few teeth these day, specifically one less than before her trip to the vet and three less than the last time I saw in her mouth.  The canines fell out somewhere in the apartment.  I already missed my chance to grab her - she's wandering around now, curious, finally.  She just found the front door, where she can see nature.  It's a whole new world here.  I think nature scared her, I cannot find her again and antibiotics are still in a syringe on the coffee table. 

Mona did fine, came out yesterday to get some loving and then hid behind the bed in the guestroom all night.  Baby steps.

Someone found the food/water and someone used the litter box, so all in all, cat acclimation is going OK.

***

The move went really well.  Nothing got broken, everything found it's place and there was only one fight.  Miscommunication between myself and loml caused Drama with a capital D when it came time to pay the movers.  But, that fight lasted only a very short time.  Then we were busy fighting about the cats.  Kidding, kidding.

I still have quite a bit to do around here.  When the basement is done, then it will fall into place.  And suddenly we won't have nearly enough stuff to fill this house.  But right now?  There's enough stuff.  I have to continue to put it on shelves and ferret it into corners.

I'll try to get some pictures and update on the construction in the next few days.  Now though, I have stuff to dust and windowpanes to clean.

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.

Time for a shift.  Here's where I vilify my mortgage broker instead of the seller.  It's July 16.  The same day that I got the great news about the contractor.  I got a voicemail from the broker the night of the 15th.  It was confusing, basically he suggested that I get the mortgage without my Dad.  I knew I could qualify on my own but never considered it because then my Dad's down payment help would have to be taxed.  If he signs with me, he's not giving me the money as a gift, he's just putting money down for our mortgage.


So.  July 16th.  I call the broker back from work.  We no longer qualify for the loan.  Panic.  Rage.


Remember when my mortgage was pre-approved more than a month before this, the mortgage that included my Dad?  Yeah, the mortgage guy fucked up royally.  And in the terms of the contract, I had to have my loan secured by July 23rd.  And my Dad is in France.  The mortgage broker and his assistant somehow missed one of my Dad's debts.  Please consider that about a year before he had also done my sister's mortgage, with my Dad cosigning and at that time the debt existed as well.  Moral of this story:  records are important.  Filing.  Cross-referencing.  Look at the damned mortgage you did last year and start from there.


So basically the options, as mortgage broker (MB) saw them and emailed them to me that day:

1. My dad would gift me the money and be taxed off of his ass. 
2. I would have to just take a larger mortgage and in a year, pay down the mortgage with the lump sum from my dad.

If you could all take a second and very seriously analyze these options, I'll break down the very rude phone call I made to my MB.

1. Unacceptable.  He'll be paying out the ass.
2. I lose a full year of mortgage payments.  Because this option is essentially a refinance.  Also, my payments would be huge for that year.  And there's no guarantee that they would get smaller at the time of the lump sum payment.  Cluster.

My Dad's solution was to loan me the money.  "Loan".  Mortgage broker, on the phone, said that was not possible as I would no longer qualify on my own with the loan.  Here's where I went full on bitch.  It went something like this.

Mortgage broker:  No, you can't accept a loan as this would adversely affect your asset to debt ratio and you no longer would qualify.  Do you understand?

Me: No actually, I don't.  First, how did the debt get missed? (imagine full on dripping bitchiness)

MB: That was my fault, I apologize.

Me:  Second, you want me to take a full mortgage, right?  One which I qualify for on my own?  How is it possible that I no longer qualify for a mortgage if I take the loan?  Smaller mortgage + LOAN should equal bigger mortgage.  There are no missing variables here.  I would be borrowing the same amount of money in both cases, only from my Dad my interest rate is lower.  So technically, if I got a loan from my Dad, my asset to debt ratio is BETTER.

MB:  .................(long silence).  That makes sense.  I'm not at my desk.  Let me work on some things and call you back.

Yes, that's right, I schooled my mortgage broker in finance.  I HATE THAT DUDE.

Eventually we worked it out and I got a loan from my dad for the down payment, which is technically a second lien on the house.  But don't worry, mortgage broker fucks up again, at the closing.  See you next time.

As a complete side note, I got an email on July 21st that my closing was scheduled for August 5th.  If you'll remember, it took us weeks to settle on August 16th.  I had a brief panic attack when I got that email and imagined the seller engaged in some kind of hostile takeover of the house - living in it for free for 11 days.  Truth is, she just didn't want to pay the fees.

Not sure what to share, so here's the tiny yard patch.  Garage on the right.  

Brief interlude:  I just want to say that I cannot wait to move into the house.  Writing these posts has actually been a bit of a bummer.  Re-living the insanity.  But I do want it all here as a record of these past few months, so I'll soldier on.  Only three more to go until the house is mine.

This is the part of the story where I brew a bubbling pot of hatred for the seller.  I was leery at the inspection.  I was angry and full of dislike at the closing date business.

The day after the agreement was set, all the earnest money was down and we were just waiting for closing, I contacted my realtor to arrange a time to get some contractors into the house.  There was a lot to be done at the house - pathetic head room on the stairs to the basement, all the worst from the inspection, and I wanted to create a great finished basement.  So my realtor asked me when I wanted to go.  I told him a couple of times.  And this is the response he got from the seller's realtor:

Sorry, but my client does not want to allow any contractors to come through prior to closing. She is in the process of packing and her children are at home during the day. She would prefer that Katie wait until they move out. I'm sorry. I did try.

And now I'm holding a pot of hate stew.  This was a month and a half before closing.  And apparently, something my realtor had never had happen.  NEVER.  HATE.

The next post happens before this next bit, but this bit fits here.  Two weeks later, I got an email from my realtor.  All it said was "The seller reconsidered and is offering these times" with a forwarded message from her realtor complete with two dates to choose from.  I was astonished.  So I chose one of the dates and flat out asked my realtor what happened.  This is his response:

Yeah, I kind of embarrassed [the realtor] into it.  Here is my email I sent yesterday: Would you please ask the seller to reconsider allowing Katie in to meet contractors.  In my 15 years of selling real estate I have never once seen this courtesy denied by a seller.  It will help Katie a great deal if she can line up her workers so she can get work started faster after Closing.  Thank you.

Seriously guys, you should use my realtor.  He is the best.

Since I'm so excited about what is going on in my house right now, here's a before and after with the basement.  There's a slight perspective error here, I'm a bit farther back in the before.  But, go with it.

Edit: the new blogger editor is a POS that creates the ugliest HTML ever. As a developer I OBJECT.

I caved. $1200 credit it was.

Also, from here on out you should assume that I'm crying.

Ok, so it's June 23 now. I don't know how to recreate the next 7 days chronologically, so I'll just scrap that and say that the inspection/attorney approval period lasted for 7 more days. And the reason why is NUTS.

As I said before, my mortgage rate was already well locked. I had a 60 day rate lock. It was set to expire on August 5th. There is a daily fee for closing later than that expiry. As I also said, I wanted to honor the agreed upon July 30th closing date.

The seller decided that "the period" had been too long and she needed extra time. She wanted to move on the weekend of August 14-15. However she did not want to pay the fee for the extension. Her desired solution was that we close on August 5th and she live in the house for 10 more days free of charge.

Yes, that's right. She thought it within her rights, logical and perfectly sane to request to live in what would legally be my house for 10 days for free.

I was already leery. She had already lost me with her taking my expensive inspection, reading it, fixing superficial stuff and saying, eh, fuck off I'll find another offer. Now she's asking to live in the house I own for 10 days free of charge? Basically she wanted me to pay the fee for the extension or to pay for 10 days of mortgage. NO WAY.

So for seven days I sat and waited while lawyers went back and forth. I tried to figure out if I was being unreasonable (I was not. I was willing to honor the original signed contract so I should not be financially punished). Eventually someone talked sense into her (I believe it may have been her realtor) and on June 30th "the period" was finally over. She agreed to close on August 16th and pay the fee for the mortgage extension.

Today one of my coworkers told me he was reading this and that he hoped the house was worth it. I had to laugh because little did he know there were at least four more posts of insanity and tears ahead. Now, three more.

Front entryway. Hard to tell what's happening here. A little ways forward on the right is the front door, taken from the living room through some french doors...

Roughly the next day we got a response from the seller. She agreed to handle items 1, 6 (just remove ivy), 7 (her answer was to call ComEd), 9 (recontact electricians who did the work initially), 13, 15, 16 (just clean the pipe), 17, 18 and 19. It also stated that due to the lengthy inspection period, she wanted closing moved up from our signed contracted date of July 30th. It is currently June 17th.

Seems like she agreed to do a lot, though as far as I can tell, she did not handle very many of those things. But I didn't know that until the final walk-through and by then I was so tired of the whole process I just let it slide.

Anyway, that left 12 items she said would "remain as is." Most of which were very expensive projects. I worked my butt off getting quotes for the bigger items (tuckpointing, chimney liner, asbestos). I handed over what I thought was a very reasonable offer for a $4000 credit. I also responded that I preferred to stick with July 30th. I had locked my mortgage rate already and that lock expired on August 5th. If the closing is after that date, there are fees.

She countered with a $1200 credit. Here's the the thing. This all happened on Monday the 21st. I don't have any documentation of her original counter-offer (that $1200). However, I know I then offered to split the difference (sort of) and go for a credit of $2000.

June 22nd. Day 12 of the period. Her response was forwarded to my lawyer courtesy of hers. Here is where the tears start. Her email to her lawyer for your viewing pleasure:

I already sent you the receipts from the plumber's visit and Orkin. We took off the ivy and installed the toilet kit ourselves. The electrician already came out to assess the inspector's claim that the wiring was wrong. He fixed a few minor things on the list but their is no receipt. I can try to get him to put something in writing. ComEd came out and looked at the tree and said it is a low voltage wire and it is not impacting service so they would not trim the tree, maybe they would later after they finish their emergency storm work? The tree is on my neighbor's property and I cannot trim it anymore than I already have from my garage roof. I will paint the rest of the exposed tile in the basement.

We could not find any red tape where the inspector stated he marked gas leaks. the boiler was just serviced in March and no leaks were detected.

____, I apologize for this going on so long without an agreement but I am not going to accept her counter. I said $1200 was my final offer. Let the buyer know, I thank her for her interest in my home.

I will clean the house and do some of the work left and try again for another offer.

$800. And she's putting the house back on the market. At this point, I already had almost $3,500 sunk into the house (earnest money and inspections of various kinds, etc). June 22, that was not a good day.

Something to cheer us all up, built-in:

It is really hard to write these posts, concerning 2 months ago, when so much is happening right now. Rooms painted! Basement gutted! Stairs gone! But we'll get to that. For now, let's get on with the inspection.

The inspection/attorney approval period (herein referred to as "the period") was ill timed - my sister's wedding was at the end of that week. Therefore the lawyers agreed to extend it to 7 days instead of 5.

My realtor recommended the inspector, who was fabulous. This is another person that I would be happy to recommend. He went everywhere in the house (including the attic, only accessible by a tiny square hole in a closet). He took pictures of everything. My report ended up being thirty pages.* Thirty pages of old house rickety money-pit wonder. To be fair, it was not unexpected. Old house = issues. I went in hoping for no major structural issues. And there were none.

*I met my neighbor on Tuesday night. She is fantastically nice and has the coolest garage - a brick wonder with a beautiful deck on top. It sounds like my street has a lot of of very friendly, busy body types. This will ultimately be great and annoying. Anyway, I digressed from my original digression. She mentioned that the whole neighborhood was impressed with my inspector/inspection report. They all saw it and feared the magnificence that was my inspector. The seller was amazed by all the things wrong/the thoroughness.

In the end, we (realtor + me + loml) narrowed it down to 22 items that were of concern. Yeah, 22 items was narrowed down from a billion. For your viewing pleasure, I've transcribed my realtors notes below. These are in order that they appeared in the report. This list was sent, on or around day 8 of the period, to the seller's lawyer...

1. Aluminum capping or wood replacement
2. Chimney liner
3. Tuckpoint Chimney
4. Seal at base of north wall along gangway
5. Seal all open areas around exterior
6. Ivy has deteriorated frame walls (rotted) on garage
7. Trees trimmed
8. GFCI's throughout
9. Address all electrical issues
10. Replace cracked vent stack
11. Replace copper to galvanized connections with proper fittings
12. Shower in basement has no waste lines
13. Gas leaks
14. Water pressure
15. Leaking main bathroom cleanout
16. Improper plumbing under kitchen sink & at dishwasher
17. Toilet problems
18. Where are missing storms & screens?
19. Rodent control - mice
20. Smoke & carbon monoxide detectors
21. Asbestos floor tiles
22. Porch construction poor

Here are two lovely, kitschy examples of number 21:

Right before loml and I went back to those two houses, I got pre-approved for a mortgage. Being a single lady with a sizable donation being made by my father, I assumed my dad would need to co-sign. So what I should say is that we got pre-approved. For a mortgage almost twice the size of what I ended up with. Please remember this fact for later posts. It becomes infuriatingly important.

Next step was an offer. I think you should realize that this was all in May. So long ago. My realtor believed the house was way overpriced. The one thing that I want to be clear is that my realtor is awesome - both loml and i are huge fans. I would recommend him to anyone in Chicago. He impressed us on the first outing by somehow owning the building that houses loml's corner store. And it seems like he's lived in every neighborhood or has a sibling in one now. Currently he lives in my sister's hood and his sister lives in my future hood. If you want a recommendation, I'd love to share.

Original offer: 15% less than the listing price. Here's where I lose the full trail of things. I think she came back at 5% less then the listing. That was still too high. We volleyed with a counter-offer of 11% less. And then we didn't hear anything for several days.

I finally heard back, saying that the lady had decided to relist the house at 5% less. The realtor suggested that if we came up just a little, 10% less than her original listing, he thought we'd get the deal. When we discussed the offer from the beginning, the realtor said he thought the house was not worthy of an offer over 10% less than the listing - so we were at the very top of what it was worth. I was already emotionally involved with the house so I said, yes please make the offer.

June 4. One year anniversary with loml. Out to dinner (which turned out to be really bad, foodwise). His phone rings. He says he has to get it. I make a joke about him being a really bad boyfriend for talking during our anniversary meal. It is the realtor. Offer accepted.

I feel like I've set a precedent, so here is a picture of the already trashed/deceased poker room. I think you should know that this poker room kind of sold the house - I loved its kitschy-ness. It was, to my dismay, made of asbestos. More about asbestos later.

It's a little sad and amazing that I have no idea where to start. The beginning of this process was pretty normal. I had a realtor (I had briefly, at the start of 2009, looked at condos and completely chickened out). I asked him to start pulling stuff on MLS. At the start, I knew, because of the dead real estate market and the fact that I would now have a lodger (loml), that I could afford a building instead of a condo. So the listings were single families, two flats and three flats.

Loml accompanied me on all expeditions, even though it would be my mortgage, I wanted us to both like the place we chose.

After the first trip, it was fairly clear that while I could afford a multi-unit building, any building in my price point would need work. While I wasn't against that, I didn't want to buy a place that would require a ton of time, money and annoyance to get it right. At that point, single family seemed the way to go.

So we went out again, this time to a variety of single families. And on this trip, we saw the house for the first time. As we were walking around in it, I remember whispering to loml that I really liked this one. It was the only house that I did that. And it was allll downhill from there.

On our third trip out, we went back to two single families that we had really liked. And I pretty much settled on the fact that I wanted the whisper house. I wanted it even with this on the wall:

Oh man, today I became a woman.

I am officially a homeowner. And wow, it has been a comedy of errors. Except most of the time I didn't find it very funny at all. I definitely cried far more often than I laughed. Over a few posts I'll tell you the whole sordid story. The offer! The never ending inspection/attorney approval period! The "goofy" seller! The contractors! The mortgage broker! And again, the mortgage broker! <shakes fist>THE MORTGAGE BROKER</shakes fist>.

I did not handle the process gracefully. I didn't even handle it all that well. But I came out on the other end with a house that I love completely.