So here I am in Columbia
Jun. 16th, 2012 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabA quick summary, for those of you who haven't seen daily Facebook posts and the photos I've uploaded there:
When last seen, I was getting the kitchen in the house in Catonsville touched up, repaired, minorly remodeled, in order to contemplate selling it. It got sold!
Finished the repairs and remodeling on the house a few days after my last post here, in March; listed the house on the market just before the end of March; got an offer 4 days later, and a DECENT offer a couple days after that, which I accepted - yes, that's an acceptable offer 6 days after listing the house. Acceptable in this case was $215,000, which was over 60% of what we paid for it - quite decent considering what home values in this area are like. The buyers are cousins of the people in the house across the street - right place, right time, what can I say?
The buyers had a home inspection, and here's what the inspector found: the furnace filter was dirty. That's it. I had forgotten to change the filter after 3 months, so it was about 6 months old. I went down the street to Home Depot then and there and got a new filter and put it in. That was all I had to do. And then we set closing for April 26.
Having thus arranged to sell the house so rapidly, I really had to scramble to find a condo that met my requirements, that I could purchase and move into as soon as the house settled. As it turned out, I found a short-sale condo that had a third-party lender who was actually willing to HURRY on approving the short sale - I offered exactly what they asked, and it was to be cash, from the sale of the house, so there were no questions of my being able to get financing, or whatnot. And so we arranged for settlement on April 27; I arranged to rent the house back from the buyers for two days so that I could settle on the condo and then move into it. This worked out nicely for them too, and everything pretty much fell in line the way it was supposed to. I used the same movers that Steve and I had used to move from apartment to house on Calyn and from house on Calyn to house on Old Frederick, and as a repeat customer I got a great rate and a couple side benefits. Movers showed up on time, nothing broke; special tech guys to unhook big-screen tv from wall and remount it on condo wall did their thing timely and correctly; Verizon FiOS guy did his thing on time... amazing.
The condo I bought wasn't perfect, but it met my essential requirements: first floor, large enough for me to have a guest room and with room for the critters, pets permitted, safe neighborhood. What I got was a 3-bedroom unit, built in 1982, so not too old by condo standards, though not new. It's in the Long Reach area of Columbia. And this coming Sunday, a Wegman's opens up in Columbia which will then be my nearest supermarket - how cool is that?
And, the kitchen in the condo was a mess; I knew as soon as I made an offer that I'd have to do stuff to the kitchen, and so I had the same guys who did the repairs and touch-ups to the house come in the day after I moved into the condo and tear out most of the kitchen, and it only took them 9 days total to get everything new in exactly the way I wanted it. The cabinets that were here had a sticky surface that didn't seem to be cleanable; the laminate countertops had cracks that were then covered over with Contac paper; the dishwasher was kaput and the microwave was dangerous. I got already assembled cabinets from Home Depot, along with the same kind of preformed laminate countertops I had put in the house, but in a different color, got a clearance dishwasher from the floor of HD as well, new ceiling lighting, reinstalled over-stove microwave correctly and safely, and repainting, along with installing a couple of extra pantry cabinets in the dining room, because the kitchen is REALLY small - all for under $6K. These guys did a great job for me, both on the house and the condo - and everyone who has seen the new-style laminate countertops at either the house or the condo has instantly coveted the same for their kitchen.
I am not finished unpacking yet, though I've been here a month and a half. There's still a lot I need to get rid of; cutting down from a house to a condo, even a large condo requires getting rid of a LOT of stuff. And I had been trying to do a bit too much, so the universe sent me a reminder last week to take it easy, in the form of a v-tach episode that triggered my defibrillator. One emergency room visit later, I have some pretty firm instructions from more people to take it easy, watch how much driving I do (I was forbidden to drive for a week), changed programming in the implanted device, changed dosages of my beta-blocker, which itself is making me tired, and pretty much nothing at all accomplished in the past 10 days.
So of course it struck me as time to whine on LiveJournal!!
And how are all of you?
I will try to post next week: my goodbye pics of the house, some pics of the condo, some pics of the pets, and lots more trivia. Maybe I'll even have time to read a book and mention it!
Could someone please let me know whether the cuts are working?
When last seen, I was getting the kitchen in the house in Catonsville touched up, repaired, minorly remodeled, in order to contemplate selling it. It got sold!
Finished the repairs and remodeling on the house a few days after my last post here, in March; listed the house on the market just before the end of March; got an offer 4 days later, and a DECENT offer a couple days after that, which I accepted - yes, that's an acceptable offer 6 days after listing the house. Acceptable in this case was $215,000, which was over 60% of what we paid for it - quite decent considering what home values in this area are like. The buyers are cousins of the people in the house across the street - right place, right time, what can I say?
The buyers had a home inspection, and here's what the inspector found: the furnace filter was dirty. That's it. I had forgotten to change the filter after 3 months, so it was about 6 months old. I went down the street to Home Depot then and there and got a new filter and put it in. That was all I had to do. And then we set closing for April 26.
Having thus arranged to sell the house so rapidly, I really had to scramble to find a condo that met my requirements, that I could purchase and move into as soon as the house settled. As it turned out, I found a short-sale condo that had a third-party lender who was actually willing to HURRY on approving the short sale - I offered exactly what they asked, and it was to be cash, from the sale of the house, so there were no questions of my being able to get financing, or whatnot. And so we arranged for settlement on April 27; I arranged to rent the house back from the buyers for two days so that I could settle on the condo and then move into it. This worked out nicely for them too, and everything pretty much fell in line the way it was supposed to. I used the same movers that Steve and I had used to move from apartment to house on Calyn and from house on Calyn to house on Old Frederick, and as a repeat customer I got a great rate and a couple side benefits. Movers showed up on time, nothing broke; special tech guys to unhook big-screen tv from wall and remount it on condo wall did their thing timely and correctly; Verizon FiOS guy did his thing on time... amazing.
The condo I bought wasn't perfect, but it met my essential requirements: first floor, large enough for me to have a guest room and with room for the critters, pets permitted, safe neighborhood. What I got was a 3-bedroom unit, built in 1982, so not too old by condo standards, though not new. It's in the Long Reach area of Columbia. And this coming Sunday, a Wegman's opens up in Columbia which will then be my nearest supermarket - how cool is that?
And, the kitchen in the condo was a mess; I knew as soon as I made an offer that I'd have to do stuff to the kitchen, and so I had the same guys who did the repairs and touch-ups to the house come in the day after I moved into the condo and tear out most of the kitchen, and it only took them 9 days total to get everything new in exactly the way I wanted it. The cabinets that were here had a sticky surface that didn't seem to be cleanable; the laminate countertops had cracks that were then covered over with Contac paper; the dishwasher was kaput and the microwave was dangerous. I got already assembled cabinets from Home Depot, along with the same kind of preformed laminate countertops I had put in the house, but in a different color, got a clearance dishwasher from the floor of HD as well, new ceiling lighting, reinstalled over-stove microwave correctly and safely, and repainting, along with installing a couple of extra pantry cabinets in the dining room, because the kitchen is REALLY small - all for under $6K. These guys did a great job for me, both on the house and the condo - and everyone who has seen the new-style laminate countertops at either the house or the condo has instantly coveted the same for their kitchen.
I am not finished unpacking yet, though I've been here a month and a half. There's still a lot I need to get rid of; cutting down from a house to a condo, even a large condo requires getting rid of a LOT of stuff. And I had been trying to do a bit too much, so the universe sent me a reminder last week to take it easy, in the form of a v-tach episode that triggered my defibrillator. One emergency room visit later, I have some pretty firm instructions from more people to take it easy, watch how much driving I do (I was forbidden to drive for a week), changed programming in the implanted device, changed dosages of my beta-blocker, which itself is making me tired, and pretty much nothing at all accomplished in the past 10 days.
So of course it struck me as time to whine on LiveJournal!!
And how are all of you?
I will try to post next week: my goodbye pics of the house, some pics of the condo, some pics of the pets, and lots more trivia. Maybe I'll even have time to read a book and mention it!
Could someone please let me know whether the cuts are working?
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Date: 2012-06-17 01:13 am (UTC)Stuff
Date: 2012-06-17 02:25 pm (UTC)