house for sale | OUR LIFE IN 3D

26 Mar 2013

Walk Like An Egyptian….

So Dylan, Skylar, and Aunt Sue are all playing Princess Castle. The girls have their fav Princesses and are talking about their fav Princes….and marriage!

Aunt Sue offers in, “Well when you are ready I can marry both of you”, holding the King Triton action figure in her hand.

Dylan counters, while clearly misunderstanding the meaning of Sue’s offer, “Oh no! We are ONLY allowed to marry one person in this country!”

Ya gotta love her.

Reality kicked in a bit yesterday after riding the high of a bid on our house. We put a bid on a house this weekend as well (we need to move now) but our offer was so low, in the owners eyes, they didn’t even acknowledge it.

This house listed for $295K. The current owners bought the house 2 years ago for $265K. We offered $260K, planning on going up to $275K if we had to.

That wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t even good enough to make a counter offer.

I want to ask the owners if they know what house prices have done over the past 2 years of foreclosures? It certainly wasn’t double digit growth!

My wife and I have been looking in this neighborhood since last Spring, mainly for the ideal school system it resides in. We have looked at several houses in this very same road stay on the market, with their prices dropping regularly over the last 9 months. Remember that one house with a pool?

This house has been on the market as long as we have been looking. It started at the same $295K price and is now under contract for 255K. Big drop! I guess the realtor of our preferred house is not disclosing this gem, which is right down the same street from the owners. And that house had a pool!

Another, larger house, that is closer and on that same road as the house we bid on, has been on the market for over a year. We actually looked at it last Spring. It has dropped from over $300K to the current contract price of $259K. Amazing. What have the rates been doing since then? They are not going down anymore. So go ahead Donald Trump, watch your house sit for awhile. And sit. You could have been moving while the rates were still low.

So going back to yesterday’s post, reality tells me we actually have not sold our house yet. We just have an offer. There are still a few more thi ngs to cross off before we…have to get out!

OK! I got that outta my system. Sorry for the rant.

We had a birthday party last night at our house! Among all the chaos and stress of hoops and obstacles in the month(s) ahead it was nice to see some happy smiles on the kids.

My parents and the Great Aunt Sue were in town for the fun. And it was good fun for everyone.

My parents aren’t getting any younger either. Dylan was helping them unload their car Saturday when they pulled in. She was slow walking bent over as she carried a bag up the steps of our front porch. Confused on why Dylan wasn’t springing up the steps like she normally does, Mom asks, “Dylan what’s wrong with you? Why are you walking like that?”

Dylan, in her innocent nature responds, “I was walking like and old lady”, mirroring how my own Mom covered the stairs after an 8 hour ride in the car. No matter how wrong that was you couldn’t help but laugh knowing she didn’t mean anything bad by it.

Dylan, enjoy it now. In a few more years you won’t be able to get away with that remark! Except maybe with your Dad

For a quick look at some of the weekend festivities and gift box destruction check out the video below.

Thanks to everyone for making this a great birthday weekend!

Posted in Archives and tagged birthday, eagle landing blvd, house for sale, presents, roma, sc

07 Mar 2013

17 Comments

Once Upon A Time…Part II

So do you remember the story of the Queen and the Ogre that dreamed of a castle facing the sun, overlooking green fields and a calm pool of water?

Certain factions kept treating their dream like a toilet, many wanting more money to keep the (warm) water flowing.

Undaunted, they kept their dream alive and trudged through to the next week. The odds were in their favor now; the law of percentages. How many more instances of ~~bad~~ miserable luck could their be left?

Can I make you another list?

Sunday – Our new neighbors moved in next door. It had rained the whole prior week. Our neighbor, who just happens to be a contractor for Boeing, decided against backing his U-Haul up the drive way to the front door. Instead, this cowboy ran his loaded U-Haul across the bottom tip of my driveway. He decided to cut across my lawn and into his front yard in said moving truck. He made it about 10 yards into HIS yard when his back wheel sank.

He tried backward then forward, forward then backward, each time his wheels just dug a little deeper. He ended up having to get someone with a chain to pull his truck back across his yard and mine.

So now, this house I want to put on the market, has a pair of tire marks etched into my front yard, 8 inches deep.

Tuesday – Our contractor came back over to our house to evaluate his work. I gave him I need a better job to the portion of our ceiling he tried to fix the prior event-filled week. I told him a small handful of other touch ups. He thought he could get my ceiling right. He said he also said he saw 2 new cracks in the wall from more settling of the house (Errr!) I asked him to get me an estimate of how much to fix my ceiling the best way. He told me he would call me.

Wednesday – After not hearing back from my contractor I decided to text him in the afternoon. He never got back to me with an estimate. He instead decided to just do the work. He texted back, “Can I leave the plastic sheets surrounding the project up over night”?

Me… “You started already?” remember last week a layer of white dust covered our entire house although THIS TIME I didn’t get a chance to move all the furniture out of our living room. “(heavy sigh)”. I texted back, “As long as the kids can’t reach it and tear down your work.” I followed jokingly with, “And so I can see the TV at night”.

He replied, “Oh I unhooked the TV and took it down and put it on the other side of the room.”

I gasped.

If your TV is like mine it had about 18 wires of different colors going in to their own individual portals on the back side of the TV. Its tricky and complicated and not something I look forward to doing very often.

What shape is the TV in? Where did he unplug the wires at? Where are they? Are any missing? What did he do?

I came home and found the TV unplugged and sitting on the floor on the side of the room. Now there were big hand prints made by the dirty hands that unplugged the flat screen and set it on the floor…covered in dust.

I thought about setting the TV back up but reconsidered knowing they were not done yet. So I marched the TV upstairs, out of harm’s way; otherwise known as Skylar.

Thursday – It rained so no work done. TV still upstairs. A fine layer of white powder all over the house.

Friday – I called the contractor to see if he would finish today. He said he would. In fact he was finishing up as we spoke.

I rushed home to see the results of the ceiling and was pleasantly surprised. The whole thing looked perfect. Finally, a moving burden off my shoulders. (Sigh)

I went back to the dining room to greet my family. Dylan tugged on my shirt.

“Daddy, do want to know what went wrong today?’

Mom interrupted, “Dylan let daddy unwind and eat dinner first.”

Undaunted Dylan chimed in, “The dishwasher stopped working.”

Yes, the 3 year old dishwasher had no power to it and refused to acknowledge any attempt of mine to resuscitate it. ($400 to remedy it)

Saturday – It was pretty cold for here in March and so my lawnmower didn’t want to work either. Oh, and I am out of margarita mix! Will this ever end?

How was your week?

Actually the week wasn’t all doom & gloom. There were plenty of upside highlights as well. I have rambled on here as I wallowed in my own pity. So I’ll keep these short….

– Friday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday. So our girls went to a Dr Seuss birthday party at the local library. They like a party.

– It is the beginning of a birthday streak here. My Dad’s was last Sunday and Mom’s is this Sunday. Two weeks later is Dylan’s b-day and then Skylar’s is in another 2 week’s For all you family and friends, I have the two girls registered at Target and Toys R Us!

Pleae pardon for a brief commercial interruption… Dylan wanted me to tell you (i.e. everyone) here favorite TV shows are in order: Winks Club, Batman, Superman, and Sophia the First. I think there is something like “Cat Clawed” in there too.

– We looked at two more nice houses. While both are similar (swimming pools and Jacuzzi’s) they both fell short in certain areas. But I could settle into the Hornie Grebe one.

here is one… http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7321-Horned-Grebe-Ct_Hanahan_SC_29410_M62711-68695

and http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1425-Coopers-Hawk-Dr_Hanahan_SC_29410_M57535-15253

Which do you like best?

– We had our house deep cleaned this past weekend, getting up all the layers of dust through out our casa. We only need the outside power washed yet before we put our ~~money bit~~ lovely home on the market.

– Our super-duper (one blogger says I can no longer use the word ‘awesome’) Realtor pointed out once we put our house on the market all appliances are under a certain warranty. This means our dishwasher can be REPLACED for the amount of a $60 service charge. Yea baby!

Our Realtor is soooo good! She has the reputation of selling a house in 7 days in the area we have been looking. ~ She may have met her match with our house!

– And, Friday my wife got her 2012 bonus check which could basically pay for ALL the disasters the past two weeks, pay for our forth coming vacation, our Federal taxes we still owe, everything on my AMX card, plus add a couple grand for our new home’s deposit.