Big plans for this day? Well, yes. For my birthday, we got a house.
And, here's where the frustration comes in, we have to get all new exterior doorknobs. After closing when we got the keys? Well, "the keys" turned out to be a single key for the front door. And that single key doesn't work on the other two exterior doors. Apparently, the sellers packed the other keys and put them in storage. Nice. And we need those keys to change the cores in the current locks. Well, we don't need them, need them. We could always pay a locksmith to pick the locks to change out the cores - it'll only take about 45 minutes to an hour per lock (and we have two deadbolts and two locking handles across three doors). I'm sure locksmiths are super-cheap when you have them come out for four hours at a time.
Yeah, new exterior door handles.
Also, we did our walkthrough Saturday. The sellers weren't exactly kind moving out but whatever. Touch-up paint will fix that. However in between the walkthrough and closing, the spring on the garage door broke. So we get the keys (sorry, key) and go to the house and the garage door won't work. Fun, huh? Naturally, the garage door is not covered by the home warranty. We went ahead and got it fixed (I seriously feel like our bank account has sprung a leak) and our realtor is seeing if we have any recourse about getting that reimbursed or anything, but honestly, I'm not going to hold my breath.
So yeah, the whole broken garage door, key-not-keys and "hey, look! they banged into the door pretty bad here while they were moving their stuff out!" wasn't the most exciting way to start the new home-owning gig, but whatever. I think once we get our stuff in there and start to get all settled in, we'll forget all of the initial frustrations and just be really pleased at our new place.
To end on a happy note, I will share pictures of the two rooms about which I'm currently most excited.
Of course, I'm excited about the kitchen/dining area and Dan's office, too.
The kitchen needs brighter lights (which is actually a general rule for me and lights anyway since I tend to go for supernova level of brightness) but I'm excited about it. And I'm really happy for Dan to have an office all to himself and not have to share with my crafting stuff! I'm sure he's pretty pleased, too!
Well, I'm going to go back to being lazy and trying to ignore all the packing we have yet to do. It's my birthday, after all!
Ugh sounds like once it closed they just stopped bothering to be careful with the place. :/
ReplyDeleteSince you mentioned the dishwasher, though, that reminds me of something I'm curious about. In Denmark, when you sell a house, things like fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, that sort of thing are generally considered part of the house, so they're left in for the next owner. Husband tells me that in England people tend to take these things with them when they move, so you can't count on them being there when you buy a house. What do you do in America? Are they usually part of the house or part of your possessions when you move?
Finally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! :D
Angrboda
First, thank you! I'm having a good bday so far - being very lazy. I need to break out some tea to make the celebration complete, though!
DeleteAs for appliances, we do a bit of both in the US. Usually owners take the refrigerator & washer/dryer. The stove, oven & dishwasher stay with the house. Sometimes a buyer will request the refrigerator stay, but they usually have to pay extra or use it as a bargaining chip in the house price.
For us, though, things are more flexible since our old house isn't up for sale yet. So we will take the dishwasher (and the stove, actually) from the new house and put it in the old house. Then I get to keep our (nicer) appliances and still have appliances in the old home to sell. Best of both worlds!