The Last Grandparent Visit

After a long, daunting, often-times frustrating, and mildly-infuriating selling process, Kris and I finally sold our home.

Hallelujah.

I won't go into a long discussion with the particulars of said sale, but, long story short, we ended up walking away with quite a little nest egg in our pockets.  Not too shabby for less than three years of ownership.

Now that our house was sold, there was only one, last thing to do:  pack up the last moving truck and head north to Michigan.  Fortunately, Mom and John flew down and offered to help us in this last chapter of our move home (which was incredibly appreciated, as we weren't sure how we would have done it otherwise.)  Of course, my Dad would be coming down afterwards to drive the actual truck north (a feat, I'm sure, that I'll be discussing at a later time), but in the meantime, we had to load the damn thing.

Here's how it happened.

Mom and John flew in the morning of the 11th, and would prove to be a big help in helping us pack up last-minute items around the house, cleaning crap, etc.

The first day they were there we didn't do much - more or less hung around and visited (the kids were big fans of having their grandparents in town again.)

The next morning we started boxing up more crap and stock-piling it in what was formerly the girls' play room, now serving as a makeshift staging area for truck loading.

Not sure what she's doing here with her arm.

John was taking a nap in one of the bedrooms, so Abby decided to post a sign on the door for him.  'Cause she's considerate.

They requested a 'fancy picture,' since they had done themselves up in make-up.

Mom went to war with this kitchen.

Functionality over aesthetics at this point.

On Kris' last day at Sunchild, one of her coworkers put together some activity bags for the girls for the long, drive back to Michigan, which was thoughtful and very much appreciated by the girls.

Coolers for the road (we didn't end up using the little one, and the second biggest one would go in the van with Kris, Mom and the girls. . . the remaining two would go in the back of the truck, holding what was left of the fridge contents.)

Stories before bed.

They requested to sleep in the same bed for one night.  Whatever.

Kris and John picked up the truck the morning of the the 13th, and it'd have to sit in our driveway for two days before Dad and I drove it out.

Boxing up crap in the girls' room.

Unlike last time, where I had previously stacked a mountain of boxes and what-not in the garage, ready to go, this time around we had to load things onto the truck as they became available.  A lot of stuff was already ready to go - like my vinyl collection, the boxes previously shown in the 'staging area' above, etc. . . but it wasn't as smooth-going as the last time.

The first wave is loaded.  John and I moved our stuff onto the truck in 'waves,' with about an hour or two between each wave, giving us time to further pack up stuff around the house.

What's left of my Study (most of what you see here would be loaded into my car (the turntables, the vintage TV, the stereo receiver) and Kris' van (the djembe drum, the ukes, mandolin, etc.)

The girls' room, just about cleared out.

The staging area, cleared.

Wave 2, done.

Wave 3, done.

Taking a breather.

Watson is not amused.

Our bedroom, back to how it looked three years ago.

Master closet.

Girls' room.

Women cleaning/packing up the kitchen.

Girls' bathroom

End of the Study.

The Master bathroom

Living Room/entryway

Kitchen

Dining room/patio

The morning of departure (well, for everyone but me, that is.)  The previous night, Mom and John took the girls to a hotel down the road so that we could load up all of the beds on the truck (Kris and I used the air mattress and stayed behind in the house.)  This morning, once everyone came back, it was time to load up the car and the van. . .

This marks the one and only time this Vietnamese neighbor of ours spoke to us (though her husband, RJ, was always incredibly friendly.)

A family picture in front of the house sale sign (a little disappointing we never got one of those 'SOLD' signs, though.)

John and Watson would be taking my car up to Michigan, loaded up with all of the fragile stereo equipment and crap from my Study. . .

. . . while Mom and Kris would be taking the girls, some overnight bags, Kris' computer, my djembe drum, ukes and mandolin up in the van (that stuff was too fragile and odd-shaped for the truck, and had to be temperature controlled.)

The convoy set out around 10am, destined for the great Mitten in the North.

Later, Watson.

Leaving Ginger Mill, one last time.

- Brian

The Offer

Hi, Nation.

Hey, remember when I said we were moving?  Back up to Michigan?  Well, a big step of that process, in addition to the packing and moving and getting jobs and all that crap, is the selling of our current house.  The housing market has improved somewhat since when we bought the house three years ago, so we were optimistic about selling our home relatively quickly.

But we had NO idea just how quickly it would go.

We hired a realtor named Ken, who came highly recommended from one of Kris' church friends and happens to be one of Central Florida's Top 100 realtors, and he came over and snooped out our house.  Now, we're not slobs or anything, but we didn't realize our house was as well-maintained and clean as it was - Ken looked around, asked some questions about the property, and informed us that our house was in amazing shape and we should be able to get what we wanted for it no problem at all.  This was indeed good news.

See, three years ago the couple that owned the home (the only people to ever live in the home, by the way - they built it) put it on the market at a pre-appraisal rate their selling agent recommended.  We checked out the home, loved it, and put in an offer for that was about two grand less than what they were asking for, as that was all we could get from our lender at the time (despite our excellent credit rating, we had no money for a deposit, having not all that much saved up at the time, thank you very much second child.)  Despite our lower offer, the elderly couple liked us, thanks to our 'adorable' little kids who we brought along with us to view the property, and accepted our offer.  When the property appraisal came in, it valued the house a little less than their initial offer, which is what we ended up paying for it.

(Hooray.)

Don't ask me what the hell's up with our tree.  I won't miss it.

Fast forward three years to Present Day.  In the couple years we've owned the joint, we've paid off about $7,000 on it, and it's valued at over thirty grand more than what it was when we bought it.  Ken decided to list it at that price, based on comparable properties in the area, and see what happens.  We figured we'd generate a few bites in the first weekend, but none of us - Ken included - dreamed of the amount of frenzy our modest, little house would generate.

The ad went up Thursday morning, and within hours Kris (who was the contact number for the property) started receiving phone calls from buying agents like crazy.  She showed the house to one set of buyers that morning, before she went to work, and scheduled six showings for the next day, during that hour between when she had to drop the kids off of school and when she went to work.  Then, on Saturday (when Yours Truly was dealing with alligators, six-year-olds, and oppressive Florida sun with the Daisies, if you'll be so good as to recall), our house was bombarded with a steady stream of buyers.  

Long story short, we received over a dozen offers - some generous, others comically awful - and lost count of how many people viewed our house, but by Sunday morning we had narrowed down all of our offers and interested parties to two buyers.  Of these two, one ended up being cleared right away, and we pounced on it.

And so, dear readers, we have now begun the so-called 'closing' process once again, this time on the other side of the bargaining table.  We'll be walking away from this whole house-thing with a considerable nest egg, having nothing more than the dumb luck of buying a house when the market sucked, taking care of the place, and selling it back when the market was awesome.

To say we're happy about this turn of events would be. . . well, one hell of an understatement.

As our good friend John "Hannibal" Smith used to say. . .

- Brian