Kristel's Blog

I put an offer in on the house today. It was listed at just under $135,000, appliances negotiable. Having taken a look at the appiances… it might cost me more just trying to make them usable to my standards. (my standards = clean & at least 2/3 functional) So that’s not happening. What is happening, or already happened, is I placed my offer, the first offer on the place as far as we know, at $125,000, no appliances. We’ll see how this goes. He’ll absolutely come back with some sort of feedback. Apparently he works late so I have to wait for tomorrow to find out whether I’m to go higher or not.

Dad’s trying to convince me (and my mother…) to just get the carpets cleaned. I’m thinking, if it’s going to cost me a couple hundred to have them all clean, I might as well spend a couple hundred (ok, several hundred) more to put hardwood in the living room, and maybe a laminate upstairs. (We’ll see how that goes.) The carpets are pretty crappy, so I’m wondering if it’s worth it to fix it up in the first place. Ok, the upstairs hallway looks new, it does, however, need to be stretched. Paint shouldn’t be too bad, planning on repainting the main floor & upstairs. Not doing much on the basement (except for cleaning) at least not until after Germany… I’m thinking that trip’s going to cost me some serious moola, doable, but still… When I *do* get to the basement, think next year, I’m thinking an insulated (ie not just cold concrete) floor, at least in the fun area… the fun area will have the pub table, stereo, bar, maybe a cool couch; oh, and since I have a half bath right above one part, I’m thinking I could probably put in a third bathroom down there. Not doing anything with the existing 1.5 bathrooms — well, the small .5 will get a new coat of paint, and maybe some prettier taps, but that’s it. The upstairs is in good shape, and I can’t repaint that without retiling, and the dark blue isn’t that bad. The back patio… is, well, just patio. Maybe over the summer I’ll put a little trellis up or something for some shade, and I’m absolutely going to have to find a way to bring grass to patio stones for Pepper so I can just put her in the back and have no worries. I’m picturing a deep, picture-frame looking thing with dirt and grass… sometimes called a planter, but a really shallow one. Lots of dogs in the neighbourhood for her to play with; she’ll be in heaven. Sliding door needs some lubrication, kitchen cabinets need some cleaning, but the outside is fine, but maybe some point I’ll replace the hardware on them. All of the closet doors need replacing at some point. The bedrooms absolutely first, or at least taken off!, and then I’ll remove the ugly, but functional ones…

So basically, all the changes are cosmetic. We think we can convince the bank to give me an extra $5,000 for improvements on the property, so that’s where all of that is coming from.

On a Pepper-related note; she’s back from the vet today. Poor thing is very sore, when she’s lying down, she cries whenever she moves. When she’s not lying down, usually she’s sitting just staring at me. The gave me pain meds for the next two days, so hopefully by the third most of this is over. The vet did a good job, there won’t be any sutures for me to remove. However, we still have to go back on the 29th for a check up. Does anyone know when I can take the cone off? I’m thinking once it’s healed pretty far that she won’t even feel the need to lick it anyways.

Have to find a lawyer tomorrow. Hopefully Dad’s will work. Thankfully the bank is all set up, once my offer has been finalled, and after I get home insurance, than I just go in and ask for the mortgage. Getting insurance will be easy; hope I don’t get a penalty for cancelling my renter’s insurance after not even a year.

I hope my offer’s accepted. And if it’s not, well, we did go $10,000 lower, and I’m approved for waaaay higher *shh don’t tell him that* We’re asking for a closing date of March 15th. That basically gives me a little over 2 weeks to move… which is good especially if I want to put new floors in… though it’s not like I have so much furniture that I couldn’t move it all out of the way.

Marlene sent my mom pictures of my (very exended) family’s new addition, Katie. Oh she is so sweet. I love the little knit hat in the first few photos… I’m going to have find an adult-size pattern for me. On a knitting note, I don’t know if I’ll get Michelle’s & Marisa’s christmas presents done for next week… Marisa’s is about 60%… but that took me hours and hours to get that far. Michelle’s is going quickly, but I get bored, so it’s also going slowly.

I feel like I’m starting to get into novel proportions… or at least novelette. Oh well, I’m trying to contain my excitement, but clearly that’s not working… if it was, I wouldn’t go into so much detail about the house, certainly wouldn’t start talking about it… again.

So I’m thinking the G.A.P. room (aka God-awful-pink room) is going to be my office. It’s the smaller of the two bedrooms, and if I ever get around to getting a queen bed, the double would be a tight fit. Plus, how much room does a desk really need? The other room will be guest bedroom. I’m thinking yellow? Hmm, I’m sure Mom’ll have an opinion. It might look a little small with just the bed & probably the bookshelf in there, but we’ll see. Kitchen I’m thinking a green, still sort of pastel, but definitely a little bold. The living room, I was thinking a lighter green? No, I’ve got too much of an attempt at red accent thing going on, so not green… which could change what I paint the kitchen since you can see it from the living/dining. Dad says neutral, but my furniture is neutral, so I think I could do a bit of colour. But maybe that’s just the I’ve-been-living-with-beige-for-ages part of me. There’s a darker beige in the painting above my couch, but I’m not sure whether I should go matchy, or whether I’d like the colour in the first place. Oh well, we’ll see. My bedroom? um… we’ll come back to that. Maybe a nice gray? Or would that bug me? Maybe, maybe not. My bedroom when I was a kid was gray, and I hated it, but then, it wasn’t a nice paint treatment, the gray wasn’t as cool as the one I’d do now, and back to the paint treatment, I swear in one spot you could see one freaky wolf chowing down on a small child. Basement? Yeah, not being painted until I start to decorate down there. The only thing heading down right now will be the pub table… probably. Dad’s saying I should keep it up and put the kitchen down, but I’m thinking, no, put it down. But he does have a bit of a point, the cabinet behind my kitchen table matches the pub table, and it may or may not be upstairs. You know what I’m *not* doing in the bathroom? Ducks, wood paneling, or carpet!

Oh! You know what the best part of moving is? Instead of having to clean out my closet, I can just start packing them into boxes… the clean stuff anyways. The non-clean go into a laundry hamper. Okay, so packing doesn’t sound like the best part of moving, but it’s certainly better than unpacking, finding broken stuff, and not being able to find your cookbook with bonnie muffins in until 2 years after you moved in to where you are now.

Okay, I really should stop talking about my moving, the house, the offer,… at least until the deal’s been settled. And the only way for me to do that is to publish now and walk away.

Wait! I wanted to say what I know about the home owner — 2 kids, he and his wife have split up, and their divorce was settled such that he owns the townhouse. He’s living there, wife and kids not. The kids come visit, but not often enough for there to be more than a couple outfits in their closets or more than one pair of shoes. There’s only two photos of aforementioned kids… we wonder if that’s because the divorce was quite recent and the wife left him with only those two, or if he just didn’t want to distract you from the freakishly huge tv… seriously, it’s the size of my entire entertainment unit, if not bigger… both in width and height, oh, and depth too. He also leaves his butter out, uncovered, and laundry on the floor when he knows there’s a showing.