Yesterday I closed on the sale of the house where for 7, almost eight years, I had run my underground dining club. This morning I woke up worrying if I’d have to drop my CSA share next year, when not only will I have no dining club, my older son’s girlfriend, Megan, won’t be living with us any more either….
A Stevie Nicks, Landslide, can I handle the changes in my life moment. A song I first heard performed not by Stevie, but by Gene Corbin, a folk singer I knew in Pittsburgh, who I think lives in New Mexico now. One of my old boyfriends, Dave Kreimer, played soprano sax with Gene for awhile. And, as Ed Feeny, another of my musician friends, but here in Madison, rather than Pittsburgh, calls her, Stevie Nicks is the amazing pig nose woman, a snarky reference to her appearance and cocaine habit back in the ’80s, the type of thing that record store guys, like Ed used to be, are allowed to say.
I got up and made pumpkin scones.
My scone on Saturday morning
I’m not sure where to start the saga of selling the house – with the new cork floor, installed in July?
Old floor – the worst spot, out in the old sealed porch with the fridge and Thelonious the cat’s food
New floor
With the fact that if Stephen my renter paid me the back rent he owes, it would pay for the floor with almost $300 left?
With all the work I got done in July and August, windows washed, yard de-jungled, a little over $4000 worth of painting?
With all the trips to move my stuff out, and take leftovers to the the city drop off recycle site, cleaning up the shattered glass table top that we left on the sidewalk when the renters moved out?
Once I finally got the house listed, I got one low offer within the first 5 days – while I was still in the midst of answering crazy questions from one set of lookers:
Q. Why does the basement floor go up at the bottom of the stairs?
A. Gosh, I don’t know – I never noticed that in 9 years of owning the house.
Q. Why don’t the lights in the front hall and the basement work?
A. The switch for the basement lights is actually on the wall in the kitchen, so you can turn the lights on before you go down. If the front hall lights are not working, they must need new bulbs – I’ll get those replaced as soon as I can.
I was up on a step ladder – that I had to bring over, because everything else to stand on had been moved out – replacing the front hall light bulbs when I got a call from the realtor that we had a much better offer.
Then came inspection, over Labor day weekend. I think they had an inspector who didn’t really know old houses. The report started off by recognizing that it’s an older house and some “deferred maintenance” was to be expected – and then proceeded to point out every worn tile and broken sash cord and de-laminating countertop. The three big things were they thought there was an old, possibly leaking, oil tank under the house; they thought the insulation was asbestos; and there was knob & tube wiring that should be removed.
Obviously the oil tank was the least fixable. There’s a big clean dry hole behind the house – accessible through a hatch, that’s like a mini slanty basement door. Everyone else who ever looked at it thought it was probably a cistern, which were common in Madison in the 19203 and 30s – and the house was built in 1924. We got the inspector to come back and agree that there wasn’t an oil tank.
Kind of the same thing with the insulation – they took another look and agreed it had been safely encapsulated.
That left the knob and tube. My realtor got one estimate, and the buyer’s realtor got a cheaper one, so I went with that. Neither bid specified any amount for dry wall repair. I set it up from Canada, calling on Skype while I was there for TIFF, and went to let the electricians in on the first Wednesday I was back – having gotten back on Monday night (must’ve been Sept. 23). All seemed well – except it seemed to be taking them long time. I went over on Thursday a week later, to try to figure out how to move home the big black pedestal table. Megan was just finishing up work at East High, and came in with me. To discover plaster dust absolutely everywhere, and holes bashed equally everywhere. The estimate had said “access holes will be required” – but sure seemed like they weren’t very careful. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, they knocked out three pieces of lath and just stuck them back in the hole. So much for my $4000+ worth of paint.
Most egregious hole punched by electricians
I woke up at 4:00 AM Friday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep fretting about it. I called my realtor and she talked to the buyer’s realtor. I called the electricians, and got them scheduled to come back and clean the following Tuesday. And, then in the late afternoon, I got a call from the realtor, and evidently the buyer had seen the electrician’s aftermath, and said, “I thought there’d be more holes”. So that was settled.
The next thing was the weatherization stipulation. There’s always some crazy last minute document that you need at the closing. I had signed something when I bought the house that I would get a weatherization inspection. I remember going over to meet the inspector – he got up on a step ladder, measured the insulation, came down and said, “You’re fine”. But no one, not me, not the realtor, and not the register of deeds, could find the certificate. I even found an email to my renter that I was coming over to meet the inspector in the afternoon, on Friday August 17th, 2007. But no certificate.
So I just had to get another inspection, cost $250, but it was actually kind of fun. The inspector liked old houses, and was pretty impressed with mine. So that was settled.
I’d gotten the electricians to move the black table into the garage, and Megan and I went over there with a zipcar SUV but it didn’t fit. For a little while the closing was going to be moved up to October 9th, so I thought I needed to get the table out – but the buyer needed to wait on some money, so the closing went back to the 16th and I had more time. Mark and Megan and I went back with a zipcar pickup truck and got the table in that, no problem. So that was settled.
I couldn’t find the keys the electricians had used when they came back to clean – I thought they were going to leave them in the kitchen – turned out they hidden them under some cushions on the wicker love seat on the porch. So I went back to get them the day before the closing and had my own farewell walk through.
The closing was completely uneventful. The buyer is a nice young guy, first house, an engineer – why he wasn’t worried about the holes in the walls. He really wanted this cat foot stool – it used to be my mom’s, and when I had the supper club I had it by the front door. It got moved to the basement while my renters had the whole place, but when I cleaned up to get the house ready to sell I put it back by the door. I told him I had another – there’s a stripey one too – but the tail always falls off. He got out his wallet, but wasn’t seriously interested.
I took the check from the closing and went directly to the Credit Union to pay off Kendall. I was at the corporate offices/mortgage services building – not a regular branch There’s a reception area, with a receptionist, a woman at the time I walked in, stuck there, all by herself surrounded by closed doors. The payoff must’ve been the most interesting thing she got to do all day. And coincidentally, the mortgage guy who helped me buy the house in the first place wandered through, too – knew me right away, said, “hey, did you get tired of the supper club?”
No, I’ll miss it – have to think of what to do next. Bye old house.
