Just when you thought it was over

This just in, the basement at the old house flooded with the torrent of rain we had last week.

Naturally I get a call from Rob: the buyers agent for our old house called and they want us to pay for repairs to ensure that the basement doesn't get wet again!

They are getting a mold analysis today and they already have a quote to fix the sidewalk $930!

So the good news is that Rob and his lawyer don't thing we are liable as that area of the house was never wet while we lived there. We also disclosed when the basement did get wet while we lived there, so what would our motivation have been to hide an alleged wet basement...

Just another chapter in a book we thought we had finished.

Old House is Sold

Well our old house is officially out of our hands now. We closed last Friday, went pretty smoothly except that our realtor didn't show up, didn't call us to let us know he wouldn't be there and didn't get us the settlement statement before hand.

Jen called him today, here is what he said:

• Guys I was at a family reunion, I sent Shelly in my place. She said no one asked about me. Fact is that we definitely asked about him, we made fun of him for probably about 10 minutes, with the other realtor... She might have been there, we weren't sure. There was a woman there that we thought was from the bank, because she didn't introduce herself and defend Rob at all.
  
• Sorry guys I forgot to call...
• Guys the settlement statement should be given to you by the title company... Maybe, I don't know. But the woman who was there said that our realtor should have given it to us...
• Bonus point, he said he would charge us 4.75% commission. But had to write it up as 5% for Keller Williams. Of course talking with him today, no guys that was only if I sold the house by myself... However, he also told us that he would not do that because of the conflict of interest.

So anyways, we won't be using him again. It is too bad, because he is a really nice guy and good at drawing houses. But clearly, we can't tolerate him lying to us.

We ended up paying the 5% ($10,000) for realtor commissions, then about 1700 in other bullshit fees that get piled on.

Also, we had to go recover the old fridge, the buyers didn't want that... Anyone interested in an old fridge?

Sad

On Friday we stopped by the post office to send a package off to Sister, and we thought to forward our mail to the new house while we were there. Of course they are going to stop delivering to the old house immediately, but it will take 7-10 days to get the mail at the new house. On Saturday we stopped by the old house to do some cleaning and painting and found this.

Mice !!!!

Well, I thought I would add a word about the problems we are currently experiencing in our current house... MICE.

Every fall it starts, we hear them climbing around in the walls and it freaks us out. I don't know what you can do it keep them from coming in, but our only solution at this point is to set up the trap lines.

My wife loves to set out the traps and check them in the morning, she won't however remove the dead mice from the traps. That is my job. Not such a bad deal in my options, except when you find a live one... ohhh.

We started the trap lines on Monday, found 4, 3, 0, and one this morning, does that add up... Nope I guess we put them out Sunday night. We are hoping to not have as many problems with the new house, at least for a couple of years.

Open House

Today from 11 till 1 Rob is having an open house, mainly for realtors so that the buzz on our house can build. At least we might finally get some feedback on our house.

We had our third showing last night from 8-9. Luckily, Jen was at a wedding shower and I just left the house for an hour. Still no feedback on any of our showings. That is pretty lame.

Our first house showing

We just received word that we are going to have the first showing of our house this evening. This is exciting and we are looking forward to hearing the comments that the buyers have.

Jen is all worked up about getting everything ready, she only has 4 hours...

The only concern is that if by chance they are interested in purchasing it, we will be out of a home for 4 months, until our new house is complete. I think it would be worth it, just to have the worry of carrying two mortgages off our back. Of course we could probably crash at Jen's aunt and uncles for awhile or at our parents houses, but that would increase our commute considerably.

Garage Door Repair

Monday morning as I was leaving for work, the garage door gets stuck halfway down. Damn. I get out and with my vast technical know-how determine that the wire that runs up to the "drum" from the bottom of the door has jumped out of the track. Whew no big deal...

I get out up there in my work cloths and try to just pull the wire back onto the drum, no luck. Now I actually put the torsion spring on the garage door the last time they snapped so I had a pretty good idea of what I had to do, however after talking with a co-worker decided to just have someone come and fix it.

I called up a couple of places, one was $99 for the service call, one was $40. So which did I have come out, the $40 place of course. Reliant Garage out of St. Paul. James was the man's name.

I should have guessed how this was going to go down, but we are putting our house up for sale and I needed to get this fixed quick. James gets to our house about 15 minutes early, so I rush out of work to meet him. James walks into the garage, looks around for a minute then tells me:

• He can't re-tension my spring (company policy), so he will have to install new ones (299)
• He touches one of the rollers on my door and tells me the ball-bearings are shot and will need to replace them all (199)

Actually, I can't remember all the stuff because it ended up that it was going to cost me 600 dollars. Gut check. Um, James, I don't think so. I just installed those springs 2 years ago, so I am not going to replace those.

James looks all concerned and reports that he will call his office and check to see what he can do. He reports that he can re-tension my springs for $99, but then he can't warranty the work, as long as I replace the rollers. End cost $300.

Again, um, no James, I don't want to replace the rollers. This is getting pretty annoying at this point. James calls in again and reports that with great concern for my satisfaction he will re-tension the spring for $99, oh plus the original $40 service call... At this point I agree, because I am getting tired of arguing. This has taken about 10 minutes, it is now about the time of the original service call.

At this point I describe how I was planning on doing this repair myself, to which he replies that I will definitely hurt my self and should not do it myself. So I let him proceed.

He raises the door, loosens the screws on the drums, lowers the door, reattaches the wires to the drums, loosens the screws on the springs, re-winds the springs, done.

He was done with this work in less then 5 minutes. Walks up to me and asks for a check, I ask if I can check the operation of the door openers first, yeah, yeah. Writes me up a receipt. I ask how what I described earlier was any different then what he did. Oh, you wanted to leave the door up and rewind the wires on the drums. No I didn't. Oh then you described how I did it. WTF.

$139 dollars later and a working door. No tax charged, hmm. Anyways, I am happy to have a working door, but I wish I had had more confidence in my ability. I told my co-worker, that I need to start a garage door repair business...

In any case, garage door springs can be dangerous, however, I think that their danger is exaggerated and that a careful person can perform routine repairs pretty safely.