That's what we said. 11 months later we're finally in a house.

At first we were pushing to get into a house but once school started, and we were into the year, we figured it didn't really matter and took our time looking. In the end we found an amazing house for us.

Congrats JB.

 

Thanks!

It's a nice luxury to have to be able to take your time like that to find the place you really want. We're thinking about 6 months or so max. After that we'll likely pony up and rent until we find a place to buy. Rent down here isn't anything like it was in the Northeast, so we can find a really nice place for under $1k all in, so it's not bad. We'll see.

 

Congrats on the contract. Hope everything goes smoothly with closing and you find the perfect house.

 

^ Thanks

I just booked the truck for next Saturday, so I've been in packing overdrive. The storage is also booked as well. I'd say I got about 65% of the house done in about 7-8 days. Having my wife's help on Sunday was huge as she knocked out about 30% of the kitchen... which doesn't sound like much, but most of it was the pain in the ass stuff (wine, liquor, fine china, fine crystal, etc).

Anyway, we're moving along. Should hopefully be done with a day or two to spare for the incidentals.

 

Well, storage units were paid for on Wednesday and I moved a few things in already.

Picking up the moving truck tonight... have about 7 guys coming tomorrow morning... so we're in the home stretch. It's only supposed to be 98 degrees with 105-106 heat index... not too bad!!

 

I hate moving stuff. Are the guys helping you move your friends or people you've hired? If their just friends you better have a lot of beer and food for 'em

 

First thing I thought when I read the first part of that paragraph. What a horrible day to move. I'm not going to be too much better...I'll be sweating my balls off at Verizon. Good luck tomorrow!!

 

Obviously too late now Denis but did you look into using Pods?

We went with PackRat. They delivered the bin, we packed it at our leisure.
They take it back to their climate-controlled warehouse and store it as long as you need.
They've taken it out for us quite a few times when we've needed to get stuff out of it. They just put it in their yard and when we're done they put it back.
And when we were ready, they delivered it to our new house.

The cost was so low it almost didn't make sense. The cost of a truck, labor, etc. to load, unload, load unload made it a no-brainer.

 

Well, we're out. Freakin' brutal move. Read on:

Friends. We went through TONS of Gatorade and Water. Not much beer... too damn hot! Bought plenty of food for everyone too!


I wish it was one day!! We ended up needing 13 hours Sat, 12 hours Sun, and 10 hours Monday. Even worse it was hotter then forecasted with temps around 98-100 and heat indicies around 108-110 all 3 days!!

We had the U-haul Sat and Sun, but it was a small truck (17' was the largest they had locally), so we had to do like 7-8 runs to/from the house to storage on Saturday. We had like 8 people to start around 10am on Sat... but by 2pm we were down to 5. Sunday it was 3 of us, but we only had a few runs on Sunday, plus one to my parents house and a final run to drop off the truck at 9:30pm Sunday. Then yesterday I used the FJ and made a handful of runs solo... plus 2 to my parents then back to the house to clean the house for the buyer's. It was brutal and I am beat.


We looked into PODS. We must have received good pricing for our storage b/c I have 4 units totaling 650 square feet (so not counting the height of the units since both the PODS and our storage are 8' tall) for ~$475/mo. To get the equivalent space in PODS would have been ~$800/mo not including the pick-up and drop-off fees... which is why we went with storage. Even though it was a lot more work... it's all done now and we can save the difference

 

Sucks that everybody bailed on Saturday. At least it's done, and you can relax until you get your new place. Storage price seems good; must've gotten a deal for getting so much space/so many units.

 

^ Yeah, well... it's cool.. it was nice of them to even come help and every little bit counted. Can't expect people to give up their entire Saturday... especially since all of them have kids. Pretty much all stayed later then planned, so we're just happy they could help.

Believe it or not for the storage, they no longer do multi-unit discounts! In fact, we just rented a unit last Saturday and it was triple the price of the same size unit we bought a few months ago. Basically they're almost full, so they raised prices. Even so we're still in pretty good shape... so we're not complaining.

Now we're just relaxing, settling in at my parents, and soon we can begin the house hunt!

 

Junior, glad to hear its over. Pretty damn good time to buy if the market there is anything like here.

 

^ Yeah, we're looking forward to it. We have a list of about 15 homes... 5 of which we really like... so we'll see what we can make happen!

 

 

Congrats JB.

 

Well, we found a house back in October, went to contract on November 3rd and closed on Friday (1/28). So about 3 months, which seems to be about standard for short sales here (our land took 2.5 months).

Ended up buying an older home, but it's in a great community and has a bunch of land. House is a little bigger then the one we sold, however, most of the sq ft is on the first floor, so it's perfect for us, and perfect for entertaining. It needs some work, and we're doing a few major renovations before we move in. We're also having the entire place painted (except bedrooms), then cleaned top to bottom. Our goal is to be in by March 6th... so we'll see how close we get

Have some pics on CD at home that I need to upload... so once I do I'll get some pics up!!

 

Congrats JB!

 

Congrats JB.
Now you just need some kids to fill up all the bedrooms.

 

Pics!!!

 

Thanks all! Should have some pics soon. And as we do stuff, we'll have before and after shots as well.




LOL, not just yet

 

Maybe an airplane to fill up the tie-down / hangar / retired aircraft carrier in the swimming pool?

 

congrats...

and werd on the obigatory

 

Congrats. And wait as long as possible for the monsters.

 

Congrats!

 

Congrats sir! Need pics asap!

 

Congratulations.

 

Thanks all

Yeah, I'm slacking on the pics. They're on my mom's camera (she snapped a bunch when we brought her to see it... and she has a better camera then us ), just haven't had a second to download them.

This past weekend I finished changing all of the door handles on the exterior doors. Did the deadbolts last weekend, finished the handles this weekend. Twelve (12) exterior doors total... 2 entrance doors, 10 double french doors.

Also changed out all of the hardware in the kitchen. Wasn't planned, but Lowe's had a really nice handle on clearance from ~$4.50/ea, down to $0.89/ea, so we bought 45 of them and banged those out yesterday.

Next weekend will be deciding on paint colors and changing out a couple light fixtures. Should also have a contractor by then (waiting on one more bid), so hopefully we can get some of the work started

 

wow, 7 doors to enter. That's expensive just to enter the house.

I'm still amazed when people don't change teh locks.

 

Actually it's 12 to enter. 2 are entrance doors, 10 are french doors, but they are double doors where both open (but only one side has the locking handles and deadbolt)... so I count that as 10. I guess technically if they're all double doors... it's 20 french doors

The great room alone has 4 sets of french doors on each side (so 8 sets, 16 doors). Perfect house for entertaining

Am I explaining that right?

 

Ya know JB, pics would end all confusion

 

I heard this great quote once: "A picture is worth a thousand words."

....just thought I'd share.

 

+1 and congrats JB!

 

so true

 

Wise-ass.

There's this other great quote which started as a tagline on a commercial, but spread to everyday vocabularies: "Reading is fundamental". From yesterday:


I actually should have time this week... possibly this weekend.

 

Cars and Coffee this weekend

 

Woooooooooot

 

Congrats on the new house! Can't wait for pics!

That is a lot of doors

 

^ Thanks guys

Just saw that on their forum. I'll have to update the Regional forum as well. I'll be there!!

 

Congrats JB! Looking forward to pics.

 

Congrats Sounds like it was worth the wait.