<p>Inspections on the house we are buying is today. I’m hoping they won’t find much, as the house has a new roof, new HVAC, but is being sold as is.</p>
<p>As for furniture, there is always over downsizing. I sold or gave away everything but one bedroom set, the dining room table, and the butter colored sofa and love seat that didn’t look like they had much wear. </p>
<p>Now, looking at the house we are in contract for, I need 4 more bedroom sets, darker sofas, theatre seating for the media room, and goodness knows what we will do with the dark paneled den. Thank goodness I live close to High Point…</p>
<p>The mess from trying to unpack at our house is driving us nuts at the moment… BF doesn’t even seem to be enjoying the house because he is letting it get to him so much, which is a shame-- but that’s his way, he will adjust in a week or two. We’ve realized the movers broke his TV and that did nothing to improve his mood. But while he’s being a crabbypants, I am happy as can be. I love the house and we’ll take care of the mess in time. </p>
<p>My to do list includes getting our fence installed (may wait til next spring depending on if the ground freezes any time soon…), pool (definitely waiting until at least next summer), paint and new flooring for living room/master bedroom/hallway/den/guest room, new light fixtures for kitchen and hallway, get a kitchen table, get a new living room set, two tvs (maybe three now that one BROKE), furniture for the sun room, sun room fireplace needs to be serviced, repair doors that won’t close, replace chipped windows, have security system installed, get rid of textured ceiling, install recessed lighting in dark living room, figure out why the master shower has hardly any hot water when the rest of the house does… and christmas decorations. I am thinking this will take us a year or two for the major things… we’ll just have to prioritize and take it one project at a time. </p>
<p>The good news is, I can cross purchasing a lawn mower off the list because apparently the former owners shared with the neighbor and she offered to share with us, too. It may be too early to say for sure but it seems like we have great neighbors, everybody has been amazingly welcoming despite it clearly being a very tight knit group. There are a pack of little boys that just adore BF, I find them waiting outside my garage every afternoon when we get home from work.</p>
<p>Ema, you’ve got the right attitude. The first night we were in the new house, DH was a grumpy gus. Now that things have improved – we actually ate dinner in the dining room last night! – he’s getting into the swing of it. I’ve got a list an arm long also. It won’t all get done in one year.</p>
<p>I’d like to get the basics and the most expensive items out of the way before we start really planning a wedding, but we’ll have to look at that and see if my expectations are in line with reality. If they’re not and we have to adjust the order in which we do things, that will be okay, but I’d like the paint and floors, fence, and furniture done before then. I’m not in a real big rush, I just don’t want to put these things off so long that we end up getting married, having children, and then never end up getting around to it at all. We can afford a laundry list of big projects now that we’re young and have no responsibilities besides the mortgage, but circumstances may be different in a few years. We’ll just have to see what we can do and deal with the rest!</p>
<p>Yesterday DH and I went to her office to sign the documents for the sale of our “old” house. (Sale is now scheduled for Friday, tomorrow.) Part of the disbursements from the 10% binder the buyers provided a while back, that’s been sitting in escrow, is a Connecticut State Conveyance Tax. I asked how that was calculated – it wasn’t a flat % of the sale price, so it wasn’t intuitive. She told us how it’s calculated – 0.XX% of the first $YYY,YYY of the sale price, and then 0.ZZ% of the remainder of the sale price. OK, fine; I get it.</p>
<p>She then went on to tell us how it used to be calculated, until about a year ago . . . . or maybe it changed in 2010 . . . . </p>
<p>It reminds me of going to Macy’s and asking the sales clerk if they had a particular pair of shoes in size 5 1/2. After looking for ten minutes, she came back and told me, No, they don’t have them in 5 1/2, but they do have them in size 8 and size 10. Why would I care??!!</p>
<p>Inspection finally finished. The biggest ticket item seems to be double paned glass that lost it’s seal. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you realize he found it in over 200 panes of glass. We are getting estimates of what it would take to fix it, but meanwhile, what is the downside of not having window panes sealed? Would it occasionally fog up? Or once it fogs up would it stay that way?</p>
<p>I imagine it would be the double pane not serving it’s energy saving purpose. On 200 windows that might be a pretty sizable amount of heat loss during the winter.</p>
<p>Once they fog up it can be very difficult to get rid of the moisture. Worse case you drill a small hole in the inner pane. Repeated fogging/unfogging will leave deposits on the glass, which can’t be cleaned.</p>
<p>If your windows had a fancy gas in them (like argon) and the seal goes, the magic gas escapes.</p>
<p>How old are the windows? 200 panes sounds like every window in the house. Maybe there is a warranty?</p>
<p>How did he determine the seal was gone? If it’s not fogged up, I don’t know how you tell.</p>
<p>Other than a minor loss of efficiency, if you are not getting fogging I don’t think there is a huge drawback if the seal fails.</p>
<p>I’d get a second opinion. I’ve seen an occasional window – usually a picture or display window – lose its seal, and they get filled with condensation – but not every window in the house.</p>
<p>VeryHappy, if I was your friend, I would be a grump and say, “What were you thinking, stacking up one closing dependent upon another? I’ve bought and sold many, many houses, and nothing ever closes on time. You can’t depend upon people to do things when they’re supposed to, and you can’t stack things up like a deck of cards so if things don’t happen at exactly the right time, you’re in trouble. You need a backup plan, and you can stay in my house as long as you need (dogs are free to puke on the lower level, no problem).”</p>
<p>Sorry to rain on your parade, but I swear, nothing has ever gone smoothly for us at a closing. Anything that can go wrong, will. I can’t depend upon the competence of anyone, nor the hope that they will prioritize my closing to make sure things go well. You would get a swat on the butt from me (along with a bottle of wine, and a place to stay).</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the market keeps crashing next week, seems like you may have made a great investment move, cashing out your 401K briefly.</p>
<p>The windows in question are those small, 8x10" or so windows in a house with true divided light windows. A door has 15 panes. The inspector used a flashlight to determine the seal was broken. None were fogged.</p>
<p>We are having a window guy come in to give us a quote on replacing them.</p>
<p>Our inspector told us the seals are broken on one of our windows. It is almost always foggy… maybe even all the time, I don’t remember. It’s also in the shower and probably should be frosted anyway, so for the moment I am not worrying about it. Though, my stone-chipped front window also fogs, is huge, and is visible from the street… I will probably fix that sooner. That window wasn’t broken at our inspection and we didn’t discover it until we moved in.</p>
<p>When we bought the house, there was one window pane had a bullet hole in it. A window guy gave me an out of the world estimate. I had to find a local glass store to get it replaced, that means I had to measure the size and bring it in to replace the sealed portion of the window. It is NOT an easy task if you have not done it before.</p>
<p>If the seal is broken, use a low heat hair dryer to steam out the fogs, normally it will stay clear for a long time.</p>
<p>We’ve never had a closing go smoothly (all 2 of them!) For the second I scheduled a full month between them. The bank didn’t want us to carry two mortgages so officially my parents rented our house for a month - only it ended up being only two weeks. I knew from my previous experience to leave plenty of time, but it still ended up being tight since the whole house needed repainting, the electric had to be updated and all the floors need refinishing. None of which I wanted done while we were moving in.</p>
It may be too early to say for sure but it seems like we have great neighbors, everybody has been amazingly welcoming despite it clearly being a very tight knit group. There are a pack of little boys that just adore BF, I find them waiting outside my garage every afternoon when we get home from work.</p>
If they’re not and we have to adjust the order in which we do things, that will be okay, but I’d like the paint and floors, fence, and furniture done before then. I’m not in a real big rush, I just don’t want to put these things off so long that we end up getting married, having children, and then never end up getting around to it at all. We can afford a laundry list of big projects now that we’re young and have no responsibilities besides the mortgage, but circumstances may be different in a few years. We’ll just have to see what we can do and deal with the rest!</p>