Crazy Things on the Horizon

Uh, well... we sold the townhouse. For a little lower than we had maybe thought (not by much), but it sold before it was even listed, to someone who just saw the sign when they were driving by. The deal should be final on Friday, hopefully their financing goes through. As sort of a farewell to our pretty little place, we made a "before & after" picture page, here: http://frankandsharonphotos.blogspot.com/2006/03/our-townhouse-reno-befores-afters.html
And THEN, oh my. That other offer we put in (from the last post) fell through - lady countered at her asking price and said she wasn't going any lower. Well, I hope she's patient, 'cause it was kinda a piece-o-junk for the price she was asking.

So, we decided that maybe our first instict was the one we should have gone with anyways, and visited this house for second time, and then put an offer in on it:

It's pretty much exactly what were looking for: the perfect character home, and it's almost 1600 sqft! It really doesn't look like it, but it's 1.5 stories, and has 3 bedrooms upstairs and the master bedroom is downstairs. It has a big living room, a huge kitchen for this age of house, and 2 bathrooms. And, uh, we got it for less than we just sold our place for. Yeah. It, um, needs some TLC. Or maybe a lot. ALL of the walls are 1970's fake wood paneling. Every single one. Even the bathroom. And it only has 70 amp electical service. It has ONE gutter. It's been rented for years, poor thing - and the renters who just moved out let their ferrets run loose in one of the upstairs bedrooms (let's just say Frank can't even go in that room without almost passing out!). But is has sooo much potiential - it has a new roof, furnace, hot water tank, and many new windows. It has hardwood floors under the carpets, and is as solid as a rock. And we can just imagine it completely drywalled with refinished hardwood floors - it is going to be fabulous, and cost a lot less than any similar house we could buy. But it is going to take a lot of work. Either we're brilliant, or off our rockers. Pretty sure it's the last one - but hey, we enjoy it - and we figure we might as well do this while we're young and get it out of our system, right?

Anyways, we're moving in on April 15th, as long as the home inspection doesn't bring up anything SUPER huge that we don't know about already...

Of houses and wood paneling...

Sorry it's been so long...

So, the townhouse is on the market. Should be on the MLS listings today or tomorrow. The market is crazy HOT right now. We still can't believe how much we were able to list our townhouse for. But then, all the houses we are looking at are very expensive piles of junk.

We're probably going to put an offer in on a house today, hopefully it's not sold already :) They're kinda flying off the shelf if they're priced okay. Don't really want to post the picture, in case we jinx ourselves or something, but here's the description:

Sturdy, clean 3 bedroom home with finished basement. Rock fireplace in family rm with wet bar, OSBE (suite potential). Well maintained home with good layout. Call me about recent updates. Fenced yard. Good location within walking distance of elementary school, DP Todd secondary school, shopping and transportation. Room for RV parking plus 2 more vehicles on concrete driveway.

"Sturdy" - that means the inside looks like it came straight out of 1969. It's rented, but it's been well taken care of. Just never updated. Yummy wood paneling and everything. But the basement can be turned into a suite, which would mean extra income to help pay the mortage (which is good, because it costs a lot more than our current one).

This real estate stuff is all very stressful.

So, Sharon's job is going pretty good - it's a very relaxed work environment, and the people are really nice. There's been a lot of days with not much to do, but it's supposed to get busier soon... And Frank has been frantically trying to fix the townhouse up for selling, take a class at the university, TA a class, and work 30 hours a week for a prof. Suffice to say that we're both pretty tired...