FINALLY!

It wasn't easy, but it finally happened. We closed on Monday at 4pm and I have to say that the best part is not even having the house, it's having all these morons and so called 'professionals' out of my life and my personal business. Closing was a bit FROSTY since the sellers are in the middle of a divorce. The best decision we made (other than the house), was our choice of realtor. He was my saving grace at the end. He was the one who kept reminding me that we loved this house, he believed when I had completely given up hope that things would work out. He was the one who fought for us to the end, and in the end, he sat quietly at the table for 75 minutes and said not a word while we signed our names over and over and over and over.....he is my hero.

The house is coming along. Three rooms are now painted. The master is dark turquoise blue, the guest room is green, and my work room is what I thought was plum, but my daughter calls it "toddlers and tiaras" as it looks rather hot lavendar going on the walls. It's clean, it's fresh and I'll love it.

Merry Maids on Wednesday did a great job getting the place de-greased and made it almost spic and span.

We had the carpets cleaned by Brad Woo, owner of Steam Master and he is simply a magician. They look brand spanking new!!! THANK YOU BRAD! You will hear from me again, and everyone I know will hear what a wonderful job you did.

I worked in the kitchen loading cabinets after washing dishes, taking plenty of breaks to look out the window at the geese on the lake and the blue heron I've seen at least three times this week.

My next door neighbor Beth works in structural cell and biology at UIUC and we know many of the same people. We had a wonderful chat already and I look forward to many more.

It will be a race to the finish to get everything packed (all the furniture emptied and boxed) so we can get the movers in here in the next week or so and finally call Mermaid Lake our home.

A week of misery

Hours to go before closing, (9am Monday Oct 26) or so we thought, but it won't happen. We plan to do the walk thru Monday morning and show good faith in our committment to purchase this house we have so much time, money, effort, and emotion tied up in. (Hell, we already have a paid insurance policy on it, not to mention earnest money we put out 6 weeks ago, the inspection fee, attorney fee regardless how this goes down at the end, etc). Anything more required of us by this bank, I'm not in for. This week "I" managed to get my verification of employment for the bank since they couldn't get the job done, even after I gave them the HR phone number. Took me 10 minutes max to call HR, get a letter and scan it and send it to the banker. Then as the week runs out, I find out yesterday morning that the HOA fee is an issue. Apparently the owner never paid his for 2009 (due Jan 1) despite the hounding from his realtor to get it done, and the underwriter and appraiser made it an issue. The treasurer of the HOA, at the hospital with a sick family member rather than at work, couldn't manage to get a signed letter to the realty company for the bank. I had tried to get this HOA Treasurer (an attorney) on the phone a couple weeks back to ask if this had been paid and what the costs were. She refused to take my call, so I brought it up with my realtor and attorney. Not really sure why it bugged me so much, I just had this recurring feeling I had to find out about it. Anyway, it was finally paid this past week, the check has cleared, but the bank demands a letter from the HOA Treasurer stating such. The whole mess should have been nailed down weeks ago, but our loan coordinator apparently isn't doing her job (so says the loan officer we're dealing with). It's all a load of crap and now the whole thing is in jeopardy as our documents expired on Friday and the loan officer got a waiver for them to fly on Monday. If we go to Tuesday, or Wednesday closing, we have to push everything back, cough up new 30-day bank statements, new 30-day paystubs have a new credit report run, etc. The signed letter did get to the bank, but that was very late and on a FRIDAY, so we know we don't close on Monday morning.

To top off the week, our cancer research group came under attack once again thanks to a story in the NY Times. Local media is bound to make an issue as it was already on the local news station last night. Oh the joys of feeling screwed in both ends.

One more week

I have to tell you that on Friday I was all but ready to just screw this deal, to just tell some bankers to simply go JUMP! I was so tired of people being in my personal business that I could scream. Just let me say that if I had done with their medical information what they did with my financial information, I would have been fired. (We need a HIPAA for financial info). Since when is it too much work to ask the person involved, who has everything to loose to provide a little more information for the underwriter? Why not just be honest, upfront and forthcoming about everything? Why all the phone calls to the wrong people, faxing things to an entirely WRONG phone number so that everyone you work with knows your personal information? OK, now I feel better, thanks!!!!! Lucky for me, my car was in the shop that day, so I was trapped at work, and at the end of the day, my husband was the voice of reason to calm me down.

Moving on.....the days are going fast now, the boxes are stacking up and I'm feeling the pressure. OMG, we are so surrounded by 'stuff' that we can hardly move. Off loading some of this will have to happen before the movers can come in and move the big stuff out. Anyway, I'm having such fun finding things I had forgotten about. Books that I cherish and want to re-read once we get settled. So many photos to go through and do something with, so much stitching that I need to sell, finish or just dump on someone else. Movies I want to watch again, jewelry I need to polish, computer files I need to clean, stories I need to write, and clothes I probably need to burn. But right now I'm being forced to pick out colors for the bedroom walls. That's my punishment for letting my husband watch HGTV. White walls don't do it for him anymore, he watches too much Color Splash, (thanks David!). So I pray I make all the correct decisions and can live with them once made. I promise to come and share pictures of the finished product once we're moved and things are put away.

Anyway, it will be a LOT more fun at the other end going through boxes and putting things away and really concentrating on things a bit more than I can now. I'm ready to let the decorating begin.

Fall is here, but you wouldn't know it. It feels a lot like winter out there. I shouldn't complain, as the northeast got snow and we did escape that, but I'm not ready for the cold just yet.

2 weeks to Closing, but who's counting?

Boxes, Boxes everywhere, and actually I don't have all that much packed up. Things still hide in closets, bookcases, dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets. It will take us what will feel like forever to get out of here I'm sure. Things with the closing are moving along and I'm just ready for it to be OVER already! Two more weeks at work and then I have a week off to paint, clean, pack some more and just move things. I actually can't wait to get to the other end and go thru things that I have completely forgotten I have. Let the decorating begin....at least in my mind.

Moving on...Literally

The decision was made, the house was found and in three weeks, we'll have a new address. The name of this blog will have to change from "On the Shores of Lake Vermont" (which was in reference to the lake we had in the street in front of our house when it rained) to something more appropriate now that we'll actually be living on a lake. (pic: the back fence at our new home).

Back in March we decided to find another place, and since then we'd been going to open houses, looking at houses online and just cruising neighborhoods in search of "FOR SALE" signs. Then suddenly we found a few places that interested us enough to contact a realtor we liked. So just like HGTVs house hunters we looked at three properties that weekend: 1) a beautiful brick ranch in Cherry Hills in need of some updating backed up to a lovely park with a loft and bedroom upstairs, 2) an adorable condo townhouse in Stone Creek with two bedrooms and bath upstairs and 3) in a nearby town where my grandparents lived when I was young child, a sprawling ranch in Crestlake with too many rooms, but wonderful flow, lake out back and a park across the street. Being in the same basic price range, nothing compared to the underpriced #3. Next summer the area along the back fence will be known as the flamingo garden. Let the mermaid windsocks fly!