The First Two Days

Keys! Keys! I've FINALLY got keys!!!

The keys came on Thursday night. One hour later...

...and I'm already tearing up carpet! 

"I" obviously meaning my dad and brother. The real I "supervised". (Totally accurate use of quotation marks on both accounts.)

Three hours later...

...and, new carpet was ordered by midnight. Kimmy don't play.

The past two days have been devoted to shop vacs, tape measures, scrubbing bubbles and shopping trips. (Not the fun kind.)

Of course, that also means the fine cuisine of Home Depot.

And, way too much takeout pizza for a woman of my age and metabolism.

Some things I've learned so far:

• Always be born into a family of strapping men.
• Hoarding furniture piece by piece while paying for a storage unit paid off. It's so much better to spread those expenses out over time then to take one big stressful and bank-busting shopping trip at crunch time.
• Those dated dining room mirrors I once hated, I now realize I'll miss once the furniture is moved in and I'll have to discontinue the one woman dance-offs.
• Heavy lifting up several flights of stairs is about as much fun as I anticipated.

STAIRS!!!

MORE STAIRS!!!

Bonus: I fully expect calves of steel by the end of next week!

Extra tidbit for my regular readers: The drunk guy that fell into a bush and starred in one of my prior house hunting posts lives directly across the parking lot from my Florida room. This ought to warrant a binoculars purchase in the near future.

Top window, abode of the entertainingly drunk home owner.
You're welcome.

Accepted!

How to fall in love with something you thought you hated:

• Take some time away.
• Put the one who rejected you out of your mind.
• Ponder how things could be.
• Begin to daydream about it so much that you begin to wonder "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"
• Throw some logic into the equation.
• Convince your audience that your talking about real estate and not men.
• Take one all-important test selfie in the bathroom mirror. (See above.)

Yes. If your powers of deduction are as great as my knack for double entendres, you'll have deduced by now that... I'm buying the Poopy Carpet Palace!

I made a smart bid to a "motivated seller" that was actually accepted! I've laid down my earnest money and my inspection is completed. Once the bank finishes up with the underwriting and their appraisal... barring unseen events, disaster or acts of God ... I'll have a set of keys in my hand by mid-June!

A set of keys to a door that sits only a couple of buildings down from the "dream place" I lost out on this past fall.

Am I bummed? No. This twist of fate has saved me five figures for the swap of about 100 less square feet and a not-as-great view. (Although, my new view faces directly into the Florida room of the drunken host I dealt with this past summer in another viewing at the same complex. Free entertainment anyone? I'll provide the pizza and patio chairs!)

I'm not focusing on what this place lacks. I'm just ready to put an end to all the address-changing that's been going on for almost a year now. (Fourth time's the charm!)

So instead of dwelling on:

The nasty carpet that I'll be replacing anyhow.

The decade old mayo, Manwich, beets and sauerkraut left in the cupboards.

The fact that the current owner "fixed" the broken door buzzer we complained about with scotch tape. (Spoiler alert... It still doesn't work!)

And, the creepy red robe that's still hanging in the bedroom closet.

I'm choosing to get excited about:

Floor-to-ceiling natural light!

Reacquainting myself with the concept of not having to share a bathroom.

Kicking my storage unit lease to the curb!

A possible adoption in the works. (Do I look like a fit "mother" here?)

 And, daily brushings with Batman and Catwoman. 

(Uh huh. They're already purchased, packed and ready to be hung.)

Most importantly, I'm looking forward to moving this blog out of the House Hunting chapter and into the "Watch How I Mess up a Renovation" one.

I aim to please, people. I simply aim to please.

Well, the goal was to own property by the time I was forty. If my closing date doesn't change, I'll be 40.75.  That's not yet 41! Mission accomplished?

Holy, property cherry, Batman.... I'd say mission complete!

The Interim: Apartment Life

The house hunt continues.

Or... make that condo hunt.

My realtor and I have come to the conclusion that my small budget will go further in a condominium living situation rather than in a traditional home.

His line is that a condo offers "more bang for its buck". (My realtor may possibly be related to Ned Flanders.) And, my argument agrees that---while the month-to-month out of pocket would be higher---the condos that we've looked at so far are definitely in much better condition than the houses (ie. possible crime scenes) that are listed at the same price point.

Further proving my point is the fact that none of the houses and their beautiful yards had a lawn mower, a snow blower, and a husband to employ use of such devices bundled into the titles. So, a condo it is!

In the past week, I've had one condo showing sponsored by a drunk homeowner who shamelessly insisted on being present. Well, he was mostly present in the bush he fell into on the way up the two flights of stairs... and then later on the couch on which he slumped sideways while spouting out numbers that made no sense mathematically to the sober.

Not the guy.

If there was ever a time and a place for obnoxious Google Glass, this showing was the appropriate setting! Since I didn't have a spy cam at the ready, this picture I found online can paint a somewhat accurate picture of my experience. Except my guy manage to hit the bush completely dead center. None of this sloppy half-miss stuff I found on Google. (Whose search engine, by the way, had an alarmingly varied amount of "drunk in bush" images to choose from. Although, half of which were just pictures of former president George W. and Laura Bush, for some reason.)

The showing was co-hosted by the drunkard's wife/girlfriend who was under the influence of a greater than or equal to substance of choice. She traipsed through piles of dirty laundry while trying to persuade my mother to take off her shoes to "feel how soft the carpeting is!" Unless the place is actually carpeted in the six inches of used socks, tees and undies... I could not even tell you the color or texture of the actual flooring. (There was, however, beige Berber wall-to-wall carpet in the full bath for some strange reason.)

Needless to say, I'm still searching.

In the interim, my parents and I have holed up in a short-term apartment rental that has been a crash course in shared-wall living for all of us. This crash course being a necessary one, though, seeing that the final landing pad for all of us will be our own respective condos and/or townhouses.

Here's a short list of lessons learned so far:

• On move-in day, as we carried the first load into the apartment, the neighbor kids decided to climb into our U-haul to peruse what kind of neat stuff we own. Lesson learned: We no longer have a private driveway. Your belongings are not your belongings until you play a good defense at your vehicle and a speedy offense to relocate them indoors.
• Two weeks in and I'm still swearing there's a raccoon on the roof. Lesson learned: We're on the bottom level of three stories. Those are your neighbors.
• No matter how cautious you are with setting the water temperature in the shower, it will not remain constant. Lesson learned: You now share a water heater and pipes. Every cleansing risks burn or frostbite.
• There are train tracks that run behind our apartment complex. I'm not used to living near trains. The first night, I thought, "How nostalgically American!" Now, they're just unnecessary alarms clocks at ungodly hours. Lesson learned: At least they keep away from my morning and evening commute!
• Our apartment community is a very large one. Every cluster of buildings seems to have its own large decorative rock. Each large decorative rock seems to have assigned to it one fifty-something-year-old alcoholic. They sit on their designated rock each evening, with that night's six-pack disassembled around their feet. Sometimes they even visit each others' rocks, which is kind of sweet. Lesson learned: You can't pick your neighbors, so be grateful when they're nice ones.
• I have never before had to share a washer and dryer with anyone that I wasn't related to. This is also the first time in my life that I've had to scrape up quarters to do so. I must have become jaded somewhere along the line, because I'm convinced that everybody's trying to steal my clothing. I've even taken to counting my panties after every wash to be sure there's no perverts lurking around the shared laundry room. Lesson learned: When you purchase your underwear in packs of four, nobody's probably interested in them.
• As I mentioned, we're on the lower level of three stories. Our apartment is 50% submerged below ground. A neighbor kid was running along the side of our building and "fell down" right next to my bedroom window. He laid there moving his head in vain at every angle trying to peep down into the apartment-issued horizontal blinds that I don't completely trust, while I sat on the bed staring back at him in disbelief. Lesson learned: Get undressed only in the windowless bathroom.
• Everything I do, I must do from my bed. These are very close quarters that only a bed and a long dresser fit into.  My bed is now my seat, my dinner table, my bill paying station, my reading nook, my couch, my dressing area, my hair-doing station, my laundry table and, oh yeah, I sleep there too. Lesson learned: I'm sure glad I have a bed! Or I'd be seatless, tableless, nookless, couchless and sleepless too.

Here's to more adventures in making it work! *clink*