Home Sweet Home

Late Wednesday afternoon, I checked redfin.com to see any info on our new house....and there it was!  SOLD!  Correct price!  Had been on Redfin 'zero' days - just posted.  So we knew we'd closed.  A bit later, an email from our realtor confirming we closed, congratulating us on the new house, said it was beautiful!  She knew we had already scheduled the key pickup with the job sup - so we've officially had the keys for just under 24 hours.

We are so, so elated.

My friend P. is moving in to her brand new house in Elk Grove - she had her final walk through a few days earlier and texted me a pic of her standing in front of the "Welcome Home" banner the builder had on her garage door.  I felt a little jealous of the hoopla she had that we didn't - there are still a lot of little things to be done in the house - cabinet trim, a broken window to fix, mirrors and shower glass will arrive on Tuesday (fingers crossed).  We have a refrigerator installed and making ice - but it's not our refrigerator - they delivered the wrong one to our house which means someone else's house has our refrigerator.  It will all get sorted.

B. called yesterday with so much excitement about the house - and then J. texted him a picture of the kitchen and he went crazy over it.  It's a good sign when  your son thinks the kitchen is so beautiful.  And this morning, I sent him a close up picture of the pendants over the island - they are art glass, absolutely stunning and they didn't show the detail in the kitchen pic J. sent.  B. said 'it has such great ambience'!  Thrilled me to know he loves it.

Everyone who's been in it says it's beautiful - but you never know if people are just being polite.

And I've jokingly said 'I think the workers working here are just glad we don't have a deer head on the wall'.   LOL.

We will do a video and/or picture tour of the entire house soon - hopefully, before we bring in our old, dated furniture.  We've budgeted to replace it all but we're not really 'keen' on buying via the Internet.  (Lesson for the next house we build - well, really just a life lesson 'cuz this is the last house we will own:  internet pictures never give an accurate confirmation of how something looks.  The stonework on the front of our house looks completely different from what we thought it would - a comparison again of the picture we used to select it vs. the real thing is just amazingly different.  Way too much 'adobe' coloring in the stone and I specifically picked what I picked because it had very little 'pink' tones according to the picture online.  But oh well.  It looks fine).

So we want to shop for furniture when we're allowed to enter a store and look before we buy.  Hopefully in a couple weeks, we'll be able to do that.

We made a trip over this morning with two loaded cars and will do the same for the next few days - over and over.  We are also continuing the 'purge' and have already thrown out a few things that we know we won't use, no longer like or just plain don't want.  Like moving from Tracy, filling the garbage and recycle bins weekly is our goal - until we vacate the rental officially on May 31st.

I'm looking forward to having time in the house this weekend to start working on pantry organizing, getting the kitchen set up - where should dishes go, silverware, kitchen tools, etc..  I'm going to have to channel my sister K. who is super duper creative and organized.  I'm sure if I get stuck I can text her and she'll offer ideas.  I wish we weren't having a pandemic 'cuz I'd fly her to Reno to give me consulting services - someday.  No idea when.

OH - and this morning at 4:03AM, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake!  I had just gotten back in to bed after using the bathroom.  This one wasn't like the ones we had in March - no loud 'boom' followed by movement.  It was just a long, rolling, really long and rolling quake.  J. slept through it - I have no idea how.  I didn't go back to sleep for quite a while and woke up at 6 groggy.  But got up.  Was excited to start the move process. 

Movers will be here on Wednesday next week to help with stuff we can't move ourselves but we're pretty determined to get as much done as we can before then.  Every hour they don't have to help us move saves $120!  So yay!  We're cheap labor in comparison! 

Stay tuned for pictures and hopefully a video. I just told J. I want to do pics and videoing BEFORE we put our old furniture in the place.  Our furniture is fine....but I really want pics of the house empty to share with family & friends.  Then we can share updates as we get our new dining room and living room furniture in the house eventually.

Postponed

The house didn't pass inspection on Friday so we didn't close.  No keys.  We reached out to the realtor (who now lives down the street from our new house) and she guided us through what happens next.  Today and tomorrow will be a flurry of activities out the house - including fixing the duct work issues that caused the inspection fail.  Lots of final details - including a refrigerator and shower glass for the two master suites - final cleaning and final inspection.  We hope to have the keys later this week.

We bumped the movers back a week to Wednesday & Thursday next week.  If we end up getting keys this week, there are plenty of things we can start moving on our own - spending productive time doing things that need doing which will save us the hourly rate we pay the movers.  Hoping we can mostly have them for the big furniture items and the storage units.  All the little stuff - kitchen, pantry, small household items - we can hopefully move a lot ourselves.

Mother's Day was nice - Facetime calls from both sons.  J. and I decided to head out for a drive and headed south.  Beautiful valley.  We stayed off the highway and went back roads going South (a route we've never taken before) and took the highway home - retracing the route we took seven months ago when we arrived in Carson via Highway 88 through California.  It amazes me how deeply green the fields are - we've had very little rain.  In California, things only green up when there's been ample rain.  But here, the earth is pretty deeply saturated from snow in the Winter - and then the earth has to warm up enough for things to realize it's time to green up.  The trees behind our rental house were so dead looking, I was sure they wouldn't bloom.  It took a really long time for the trees to bud but when they did, they went crazy pretty quickly.  Grass fields are the same.  Once there's enough warmth in the ground, things take off. 

It was a nice day -

J. is playing golf today.  When he's home, I'm sure he'll put his clubs in the garage and then head to the new house.  Hoping he'll see big progress on the myriad of little things that need to be done before the loan will close. 

Will We or Won't We

Getting the keys is dependent on a certificate of occupancy being issued and while all the loan stuff is done and our builder should have payment in full tomorrow for the house, we're not so sure we're going to get the keys tomorrow.  Maybe Saturday?  Fingers crossed.  We'll see.  We know everyone is doing what they can to make tomorrow 'the day'.

This move has been hard to 'pack' for given that we could literally just load stuff into open boxes, laundry baskets and bags and take loads to the house in our cars.  If we get the keys tomorrow, that gives us Saturday, Sunday & Monday to get a lot of stuff moved on our own.  If not, we'll have little to no 'pre-move' time and we'll just have to do what we can next week.

Oh...and the movers showed up at the front door this morning around 10AM - 'Ready?' he asked.  Um, no.  Remember, we phoned you to change the dates to be next Tuesday and Wednesday.  Today's date was 'penciled' in when we first met with them to get their pricing info and estimate.  Guess they didn't cancel the penciled in date when we reserved a new, 'firm' date.  But oh well.  They said 'we'll see you next week'...and headed out.  Turns out they don't really have a truck - it's a truck with a trailer.  This should be interesting.  It's only a little over 3 miles from this rental house to our new house so I know it will be fine.  Fingers crossed.

The Governor is making announcements related to "Phase 1" re-openings....a grim reminder of just how far away we are from any state of 'normalcy'.  Notwithstanding that I love to play slots and miss playing in a casino, it's pretty obvious that casinos won't be opening for a pretty long time.  I worry about how many will come out of this still solvent.  And yes, I'd be so sad to see closing - but again, not as much from being someone who loves to play but just from being someone who realizes how hard hit businesses are during this incredibly strange, difficult time.  It's frightening to realize how long term the economic effects can be.

For me, I'm saving up fun money as much as possible but even told J. 'if this keeps up, I'll start moving some fun $ into the 'landscape' budget - 'cuz it sure looks like we won't be playing much anytime soon and we need a backyard'.  We were also super excited to confirm at the signing yesterday that our first mortgage payment isn't due until July 1 - so we have a 'no housing expense' month in June which is AWESOME!!  Another deposit into savings for landscaping!  Or furniture.  Or whatever.

We got out the cat carriers today and enticed the cats to go inside them to eat a few bites of tuna.  (I put a small amount of tuna into a small dish and put the dish at the 'front' of the carrier, inside).  It took a bit of some specific 'guiding' to get them to realize the tuna they were smelling (and going crazy for) was actually inside the carrier - but they figured it out and went in for the nibble.  Then they both went out, traded places and licked each other's bowl clean.  We're leaving the carriers out and will do the tuna routine again over the next few days to get them ready to be taking a car ride to the kennel on Monday - we've decided it's the best approach for their safety and our sanity.

It's bright and sunny but still a bit coolish at times.  We haven't turned the heat on in over a week and while we had a couple days where the AC might have been nice at night, we just opened the windows and that's been keeping it cool enough to not need AC.  Hoping we can do that at the new house, too and it will be much cooler on the natural in that house because it's single story.  It's amazing how warm it can be upstairs even in coolish weather.

We finished watching "The Americans" and have started watching "Killing Eve".  The ending to "The Americans" was satisfying but also created so many questions.  "Killing Eve" is really great and we're enjoying it very much.  We also had to reactivate our Dish subscription - six month suspension ended recently - so now we can use our Dish subscriber code to watch a variety of other 'stuff' on TV.  Dish will be installed at the new house the end of next week, hopefully - we've missed it.  J. was so happy he was able to get MSNBC broadcast last night - but it was all COVID-19 all the time and I had to ask him to turn it off.

We just realized there was a major goof at the house - we made a change to have the 'hobby room' be plank vinyl instead of carpet - and they ended up carpeting it.  Also pretty sure we were upcharged $393 for that change - so we're due a credit of that amount.  I told J. if they will add that overcharged upcharge amount to our landscaping allowance, we'll leave it as is.  Otherwise, it's going to be a pretty big deal for them to fix it - they'll have to redo a part of the hallway to make the vinyl 'flow' correctly into that room.  Grrr.  J. - who goes to the house daily - didn't notice that there was no flooring in that room yet - even though the plank vinyl is done everywhere else - so now we're partly responsible for the goof - because he didn't say anything about it.  I rarely visit.  Probably wouldn't have noticed either even if I had been visiting.

The builder issued a check to us for the upcharge we paid for the 'change order' so the hobby room stays carpeted. 

Counting Down

I ventured to the bank today - no other way to get a bank check for the down payment funds we need for the house.  I parked close to the branch building - huge mistake (more on that in a bit) - and went to the doors which were locked.  An employee opened the doors and I said 'I need a bank check for a real estate transaction'.  She said she had no tellers available so I could go to the drive through. 

The line for the drive through was 12 cars - and the backup was creating all sorts of issues in the parking lot. 

Luckily, a customer left the branch and so she was able to let me in.  A very nice teller assisted and I was done in about 10 minutes total. 

Getting out of the parking lot took WAY longer than that.  There were cars queuing up behind where I parked, making it impossible to get out.  I pulled out slightly and then went straight - basically 'over' other parking spaces - having seen someone else do this - they were able to go out the exit near the main street by going between two cars waiting in line. 

Unfortunately, there was a lady who refused to budge - she could have backed up 3 feet which would have given me plenty of room to get through and head out to the street - but she kept waiting and moving forward....to block anyone from getting out.  I almost got out of the car to just ask 'Hi, would you mind backing up a few feet - the car behind you has left plenty of room for you to do that'.  But I didn't.

Instead, I backed out - all the way out in the opposite direction of the parking lot 'lane' I was in - and managed to get out the exit I pulled in to.

We have a notary coming to our rental home tomorrow morning at 11 and will proceed to sign the mountains of papers required to buy a house.  We will give them the check, the check and paperwork will be delivered to the Title Company and fingers crossed, we'll have keys to our house on Friday.  Still things being done - outside stonework, for example, doesn't look like it will be complete by Friday - but we're OK with having a few loose ends to get done.  We also don't have the front landscape done at all - the builder pays $4,500 of those costs and we pay whatever else - and we'd like to see if our budget will allow us to get both the front and back done at the same time.  We'll see.  The homes in our neighborhood tend to have a lot of 'rock and stone' - which is so not my thing.  We're talking things through, finding a lot pictures for ideas and we'll see what we end up doing.  Really, the backyard should wait until next Spring  - but we might be able to get some plants established before winter hits.  Definitely lots to learn here about growing things that can survive snow.

Movers are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday next week - one day to move from the townhouse to the new house and another day to move two storage units to the house - storing stuff in the garage.  We debated that a lot - but I know that if we leave things in storage, it will be too easy to avoid tackling all that 'stuff'.  Better to have it all in one place while we have plenty of 'shelter in place' days ahead to go through it all. 

It sure feels like we're going to be sheltering in place for a lot longer.  Casinos have info indicating they plan to reopen on Memorial Day but the Governor has made it clear he's not naming a firm date and we'll have to wait to see how it goes. 

I feel so conflicted about all of it.  Going to the bank today started a 14 day possible exposure clock for me.  J. has been doing most of any errands we've needed done but sometimes, dividing and conquering is the only way to go. 

The virus is scary.  Reading articles of people who have had COVID-19, made it through, been tested and are confirmed negative (no virus present) only to end up still having continued very serious symptoms.  So even surviving it and having no virus in your system (according to blood work) doesn't mean it's 'over'. 

I'm glad to have a brand new house to keep us (plenty) busy for the next couple months.  Who knows when and what restrictions will be lifted. 

I found hair cutting shears in our boxes but they are ancient and likely not sharp.  But we're pretty darn desperate - J. wants me to trim his bangs and I need to trim mine.  I can get away with longer hair on my head but the bangs are way too long - so I end up sweeping them off and have a giant bald forehead.  Atrocious! 

New house, we're coming for you!