The chaos of buying and moving into a new house

Pretty much anything that could go wrong went wrong, but we're all moved in and we're happy little walking zombies.

Let's start with Friday, the day of my closing. I had planned on having a 9am closing so Harry and I could get to work ripping out those carpets. Didn't happen. My lawyer claimed he had court all morning, so the closing couldn't be until 2pm. Damnit. To top that, we had to make sure we picked Ellie up by 4:15pm two towns over.

On Thursday, I had called my lawyer to verify how much the closing costs were. He didn't know. He said he would probably find out Friday morning and call me then. How are ya gonna call me when you're in court all morning, Buddy? Hmmmm.

Friday morning, I got a call from my realtor telling me everything was a go and that he had just spoken to my lawyer's assistant, and, surprise, surprise, my lawyer was actually in his fucking office. So I called, and sure enough he's there. And he still doesn't have the closing costs. And it's 11am. He asks if I've done my walk-through yet, even though my realtor just told his assistant we were doing it right before the closing at 12:30pm. Ass. I give him the walk-through time, and he says he'll call me as soon as he gets the closing costs.

At 12:25pm, I still haven't heard from him. I call his assistant and tell her I'm going to do the walk-through, and he can reach me on my cell. At 12:35pm, I finally get the fucking closing cost numbers. Yeah, 1 hour and 25 minutes before the actual close. So we do our walk-through, I race to the bank to get the checks made out, and we arrive at the seller's lawyer's office with 5 minutes to spare.

Harry, Eric, our realtor, and I wait around for 10 minutes, wondering where the hell my lawyer is. I check my phone, and there's a message sent at 1:40pm. He claims the wire from the bank still hasn't come through. WHAT? Yeah, so he has to wait for that, then he has to go to the bank to get the check, then he'll be there. He's also 25 minutes away from the lawyer's office as it is. Yeah.

I call his assistant immediately, and she says he got the wire and he's at the bank right now. He'll probably be about 10 minutes late.

Try 50 minutes late. He waltzes in at 2:50pm, and suggests we do all the closing paperwork BEFORE we go over our mortgage stuff and numbers. My realtor completely flips. Basically, he's ready to call my lawyer a dipshit. His exact words are, "Don't you think it would be in your clients' best interests to go over the numbers first and make sure they agree to pay what they're asking to be paid?" Dude, thank God Eric was there.

The seller's lawyer was hoping we'd already be done by 3pm because he had to get the bank, and he was floored when we told him we hadn't signed our paperwork prior to coming to his office. This would be because my lawyer waited until Friday morning (the morning he was supposedly in court) to contact the bank for all the numbers instead of making sure it was all set on Thursday to happen first thing Friday morning. My realtor told us (and the seller's lawyer's face confirmed it) that this is NOT how a closing is supposed to go down.

So we go through all the paperwork, which takes almost an hour. We're looking over the HUD when the seller's lawyer knocks and says he's really has to get to the bank before 4pm. It's 3:45pm. The closing itself takes about 2 minutes. 2 minutes. We get the keys and jet out of there. We manage to pick up Ellie with 5 minutes to spare.

We are never using this lawyer again. Never. Eric said he's never met a lawyer so disorganized and unfamiliar with real estate law. And real estate is one of this guy's specialties. Holy shit.

By the end of the night, Harry has ripped out all the carpet, the plumber has been there to give us a price, Harry ran out and bought a new toilet, I lugged over a carful of stuff, and he and I managed to put a first coat of paint in one of the rooms.

Saturday, the plumbing got done, including a new water heater, new toilet, gas stove installed including new lines since there was an electric stove before, lines run for a new dishwasher, and a new spicket installed in the front of the house. The fencing company came down to take measurements for a quote (please don't let it be too high). Harry finished putting the second coat of paint on the wall, painting the dining room and master bedroom (which I helped with), pulled every last staple and tack strip out of the floor from the carpeting (holy crap was that a job), and changed the locks. My mom babysat for a few hours, so I was able to come and help him for a bit; I spent the rest of the day packing. I wished I could have helped all day, but I knew my mom couldn't have watched Ellie for that long. I got back to Ellie around 4pm; Harry didn't get home until nearly 1am. And he had started around 6:30am. Yikes.

I also spent a good portion of the day on the phone confirming this, that, and the other thing. Our furniture never came in. We had called on Wednesday, Friday, and again on Saturday. We finally found out that we'd get it the end of this week. It was supposed to be in the beginning of last week. I also called to confirm our moving truck rental for Sunday from 9am to 6:30pm. Yes they'll have the truck, but they've decided to open at 10am and they're going to close at 5pm. You've got to fucking be kidding me. I told them the website stated their hours as 5am-7pm on Sunday, and the guy goes, "Oh, you know, sometimes we shorten our Sunday hours." Thanks a lot, Buddy. He said we technically have the truck for 24 hours, so we could bring it back later, and just leave the keys in the dropbox. Yeah because I don't want a receipt when we drop it off, and I don't want to be there when you check the truck for damage. I'll just trust you on that. Jerk.

So Sunday arrives. Harry starts driving loads of stuff over in his car around 6:30am. At 7:30am, I get a call from the cable company asking if they can come out at 8am instead of 11am. Sure! Let's get this over and done with. So Harry makes another trip to the house with more stuff, a TV, and the cable boxes while I do some last minute packing. At 8:30am, Harry calls. The cable guy hasn't shown up. WTF? So I call the cable guy back and leave a message asking if something came up. 9am. Still no cable guy. Harry's been stuck at the house waiting for this guy instead of making runs. So I go over there to wait for the guy with Ellie in tow. A guy shows up just as Harry's making another dropoff at 9:25am. We're supposed to pick up the truck at 10am. Not gonna happen. The cable guy that originally called me got sick and went home. And didn't call me to let me know he wasn't coming. How nice.

So since we can't pick up the truck, I go grocery shopping. That was the plan while Harry was actually moving a load of furniture so we'd be out of the way, but now it'll cut into Ellie's naptime if we wait. So Harry stays with cable dude and Ellie and I go shopping. Did I mention we had thunderstorms all morning? Torrential downpours every time either of us walked out of the house. It was really quite lovely.

I finish shopping and return to the house just as the cable guy is leaving. Come to find out even though the cable operator told us they do in-wall installation, they actually don't. They just drill a hole through your floor and feed a wire up. Now that's classy.

We race to go pick up the moving truck. Harry tried to call them about 15 times to make sure they didn't give away our truck, but they never answered the phone. Luckily, the truck was there. The guy actually had the nerve to tell us that we should really call if we're going to be late. Fucker. At one point, he actually walked down the road to another gas station that they own to ask his boss something. It took us nearly 1/2 an hour to get the truck. So the furniture moving didn't actually start until 12:30pm.

The bright side was that Harry's friend, Raphael, from work, and his son, Josh, came to help out. And they're fucking awesome. We couldn't have done it without them. They got all the big stuff moved by 5:15pm in the rain. And yes, every time they went to load or unload the truck, it started to rain again and didn't stop until they closed the truck doors. Every time. And we missed bringing the truck back by 15 minutes. Oh well.

I spent the majority of the day unpacking my kitchen while Ellie napped. And just that small thing, getting my kitchen in order, made the house mine. And it felt good.

We all feasted on pizza for dinner, and then I went to go get the cat. What I thought was going to be a major chore ended up being the easiest part of the move. The cat was so terrified by all the moving furniture that she went happily into the cat carrier to get the hell out of there.

We had to come back to the bat cave for baths and showers because we didn't get a chance to clean our new bathroom, and then we went back to our new home so Ellie could go to bed for the night. Then Harry went back (with the truck since we still had it) and made a 4th run. I cleaned some more and finally got to sit down to watch The Next Food Network Star only to find out the cable had crapped out. I was on hold for nearly 1/2 an hour. They fixed it for me, helped me get my old phone number back, and transfered the credit I had on my old account to my new one. At least that ended up going right. We relaxed with a bowl of ice cream, watched a little TV, and ended up going to bed around Midnight.


We called in on Monday since we had to bring the truck back, and we had to finish getting all the rest of our crap in the bat cave. We finished the final load of stuff at 3pm. My niece came by to check the place out and helped me scrub my bathroom because she's awseome like that. Then we went to pick up Ellie, and she watched her for me for a bit so I could clean some more. We put in another long night last night, but it was worth it because we now have a fully functional house going on.

And it's amazing.

Eventually I'll post some pics. Maybe sometime next week. Just be patient:) Oh, and please ignore the fact that I use both past and present tense in this post; I'm way tired.