So, today is closing day…on selling the house in Morton, and buying the house in Coatesville. I joked that we would be HOMELESS (between the two places of settlement). We left the hotel to be in West Chester at 10am…took about 30 minutes to sign papers and hand the keys to Joe and Lexi…when we left there, Raz needed to come with me in my truck, because she was plucking Jen’s last nerve, we met Mike at the house in Coatesville for the walk through and then we had lunch at the purple diner (across the street from Amkor Karate) with the parents before we headed over to Exton to buy our OldNewHouse at 1pm! This took so much longer, everyone knew each other, the soon to be ‘former’ owner and the title company folks…and our finance guy…they chit chatted what felt like hours…it kinda was.

Our friends, family and the movers were all there at 2pm waiting to start moving things in and we hadn’t signed yet…

As soon as I stepped out the door, I called them and said go for it…start unloading! This went semi-smooth, but the 20+ minutes it took to get HOME, I probably got 5 phone calls…where does this go? where does that go? Once we pulled in, it got a little less hectic, but now the speed factor has kicked in. The movers were unpacking the pack rat container also…so Paul, Katt, Shirl, Jen, mom (Janice) and dad (Richard) were all directing traffic and keeping the dogs from being under foot…Jen had also ordered an insta-cart and pizza to be here when we got home…this was an awesome idea!! TP, cleaning stuff, napkins, utensils, etc

Little Guys were gone by 4pm, Paul and Katt had left to go pick up kids, the parents went to their hotel and Shirl hung out with us for a couple hours trying to get us somewhat organized.

The next few days will be hectic, PackRat will be picking up the “dumpster” first thing tomorrow morning…McHugh Roofing will be here on the 6th and I need to empty the storage bin in Downingtown before the 8th.

tomorrow morning the movers come, bright and early…so EVERYTHING needs to be boxed up and ready for them. Guess what, I need to work today…the 2nd phase of this big project is going to be put into production today…we start at 7am and the goal is to complete 7 customer moves. As much as I want to say we are ready, I don’t think anyone is feeling confident…but we will push through with high hopes! done by 2pm is the hope!

The house packing…I feel like we are in a good place with that…but every time I turn around my thought is…oh, we cant forget that.

UPDATE : we did not get done work until 5-6 pm, it was borderline brutal! The good thing is…work pays for dinner…no matter what we want (within reason)…so I let Jen choose, since she has to put up with me working and not getting anything else done. We had filet mignon at Outback! But again, I didnt get much packing done! I’ll get up early tomorrow!

for Mitchell Ave:

Home Inspection 11/15 -LIBERTY INSPECTION GROUP -Chris- got to meet the potential new owners…I like them!!

The things that he chose for us to fix seemed weird to me, not because the attention wasn’t needed, but because there are bigger things I would have thought were more important. The biggest thing was a split rafter in the attic on the back side of the house, this was probably caused by the leak we had after we re-did the kitchen. Scott spent an hour up there adding a sister rafter…DONE! The new attic fan wiring needed to be put in the junction box…DONE! A GFCI outlet needed to be installed near the washer (even though this was not even close to the laundry tub…DONE! The toilet needed to be tightened…DONE! And the weirdest thing, the Inspector said that the sump pumps needed backflow prevention installed. The sump pumps come with the sump pumps…Scott tested them and everything is in working order…DONE!

FHA Inspection 11/21 -Leo– Everyone is telling me that this is the Inspection that I need to worry about…

They normally don’t tell the homeowner what needs to be done until the report comes out, but since the timing was critical, he was nice enough to give me the “list”

The basement throne needed to be ‘removed’, but we can just remove it and sit it on the floor and temporarily plug the flange. Reason being, partial privacy walls and no exhaust fan. This is something that will NOT matter once the loan is underwritten for the new buyers…they can pick the toilet back up and put it back in place…

We will need to cover the wires in the hallway that are dead, but go to the emergency OFF switch to the heater. This has been that way SO long, it wasn’t even on the radar (should say, my radar)

We may need a railing to the attic, but since this is a ‘storage space’, it may not be an issue. Turns out, he didn’t even add this to the report.

Paint the exterior of the basement windows…not sure why the exterior paint would be a health and safety issue considering that licking the paint chips would probably be impossible…but go figure!

The new owners came over and did the painting, I pulled the toilet, covered the outlet box…Leo came out the next morning and ‘re-inspected’…we are good to go!

UOC – Ridley Twp – waste of money!

This is just another way for Ridley Twp to put the screws to you…occupancy inspection/certificate. They check the ‘public sidewalk’ (not one), driveway (gravel) and railings on steps. so who gives a shit what’s on the inside…what if all of the copper was stripped…or sewage pipes filled with cement…you know, unlivable?? And to top it all off, we are being charged double because the side lot is considered it’s own ‘parcel’.

as of 12/1…we are ready on the Mitchell Ave side! am closing on 12/4

For 2 weeks, we did one showing after another to the point where we couldn’t get any packing done. We were concentrating all of our efforts in staging/showing the house and getting the dogs out. Just about everyone that came through said it was too small for what they wanted. But everyone loved the kitchen! We knew if we didnt get an offer soon we would need to do a large mortgage on the new house…so I was trying to get used to the idea and find some good in it…like the pod could stay until we move, we could take our time getting out and I wouldnt have to move all of the outside stuff to Paul and Katt’s.

So we decided to go treat ourselves to a nice dinner.

This is when we got the call that we will be getting an offer tonight. The offer came in with a letter…it said ALL the right things! We can move things fast so that we can do the settlement on Dec 4

We set a goal to get the sign in the yard and our house on the market the Tuesday after the Yard Sale…we were not ready!! We were NOT ‘staged’ enough, so we just kept plugging away, doing a few things a day WAS making a difference!

Jen’s boss went on vacation the last week in Oct, so Jen had previously decided to also take a vacation. It was definitely a working vacation!! She worked her ASS off getting the house cleared out and staged!

One week after our original goal on Halloween, we put the sign out.

After putting in an offer on the Montgomery Dr house, we were countered…and we accepted their counter. Once this was on paper and we signed our lives away, we needed to set up the home inspection. We hired Eagle Inspections to come out on Saturday 10/14/2023. The house is empty so it was easier to move around and check things and take measurements. (now we need to figure out what’s going where).

The biggest concern in the home inspection was “the roof”…this will be the first project and I am sure will get a few posts.

The background is, the owners knew that a new roof was needed, but it was ONLY near-end-of-life, so we were thinking that we had a couple years to deal with it. Well, we found out that the roof was END of life, there are leaks, some damage from what may have been a felled tree and the attic fan no longer works so there is some moisture in the attic crawl space.

This was something that may have changed the whole deal…we were told by the inspector that we were looking at $25k (minimum)…this wasn’t something that I wanted to put up first thing…there are too many other smaller projects that would be put off too long!!

They got an estimate and allowed us to get an estimate…the real numbers were a lot less scary. They came back with an estimate from an Amish Roofing company and Rich McHugh came back with a number that was in the same range.

We OFFICIALLY bought a house on 10/24/2023 – Settlement is on 12/4/2023!!

A big part of de-cluttering is letting things go…and boy are we letting things go. We rented the 16′ pod, and when I look around, I think, we are never going to have enough room for everything! Even IF we decide to NOT do this move, we will have SO much less clutter!

Today is the day we sell or donate!

Earlier in the week, we thought it was going to rain. I am so glad we didn’t change the day, it started out cloudy, but it’s turning into a beautiful day!

The last time we did this…people were walking in our house trying to buy stuff before we even got it out the door. So far the only weird things that happened is…

I put out ‘full’ state quarter books ($10.50 in quarters) and this guy wanted to buy them in bulk cheaper than face value…sure just give real money away. I was so mad about it, I decided to give 3 of them to Amanda for her kids! If I am going to give them away, it might as well be to the kids next door!! The kids that I like 🙂

It is weird the things that are selling…single measuring cups, cup racks, a couple very plain planters…we made some $$ but we took much more to the GoodWill!

This was exhausting! I am so glad it’s over! NEXT…

let’s put in an offer

N. Lake Drive, Downingtown, PA – this house was just adorable, but it was smaller than what we have now. There was a sign asking us to remove our shoes or put on paper shoe slippers. They even warned of recordings in process.

Goosetown Rd. Coatesville, PA – we didn’t even go in this house, the driveway was like pulling into a golf course, nice feel to it, but the garage door was slanted…but then it looked like the entire garage was slanted (like it was falling backwards).

King St, Downingtown, PA 19335 – this place was interesting, it was big enough and the price was right, there was a cute little breezeway and a pool. But there were some concerns about the integrity of the pool so we couldn’t even tell if it was usable. Some of the other oddities, the toilet was elongated but the seat was for a standard. The bathroom was too small for an elongated. There were curtains hanging in the basement area (but no windows)…and everything was Christmas…so we think they either some sort of a Christmas vendor or someone was completely obsessed.

Montgomery Dr. Coatesville, PA – loved the drive to this house…it felt like we were in the country! We walked through…liked ALOT about it, but saw alot of ‘projects’, so when we left, we were at yes/no.

Debbie Dr. Coatesville, PA – none of us liked this one…no matter how much we wanted to. Everything about it felt ‘sterile’…the floors had the thin wood veneer, the walls were white…there was no real ‘heart’ to this house…even the yard was questionable.