OK, this is a little better

Still kinda messy, but everything left is hitting the road with us. Finished up in time to avoid a heat stroke, too! Already been to Goodwill, off to the dump now...

How are we celebrating Independence Day?

Well, Rhonda's working until 6:00 p.m., but I think she got the better end of the deal. My mission is to channel the spirit of the day into cleaning out the garage (Freedom From Clutter!). We plan on using the garage to stage some of our packed boxes, so my goal is to have nothing in the garage that isn't going to Greenville by the end of the day. A tall order, to be sure. Take a look at what I'm dealing with:

Oh, and it's supposed to 94 degrees today! Don't worry, though, I have lots of frosty American-made beverages onhand to keep me cool.

Repairs on Greenville house next week

The inspection revealed a few contractually obligated repairs (modified joist under bathroom remodel, support post under dining room in contact with soil, one outlet not working) plus a couple of additional fixes we requested (modern wiring spliced to old 'knob and tube', a plumbing supply pipe under house not secured to framing). The seller agreed to fix everything and contractors will begin repairs Monday or Tuesday.

We're running out of things to worry about housewise. Now we're concentrating on getting quotes from moving companies.

Quick update on the houses

We did a little post-inspection negotiation with the buyer for the Portland house and signed off on the final addendum to the contract last night. We should be good to go on the sale now, and are scheduled to close on Thursday, 7/23. Oregon law does not require the seller to be onsite for closing, so we'll be able to sign the papers before our next trip to Greenville.

The inspection on the Greenville house was completed yesterday. There are a few things that came up that we'll discuss with our realtor. Nothing of a 'deal-breaker' nature, but potentially a couple of opportunities to negotiate some concessions from the seller there. Still scheduled to close on Friday, 7/24. The appraisal was just completed today, and cleared up a couple of things for us: official year built is 1963 and official square footage is 1,510.

Found a new house!

Well, waddya think?


After a marathon 2 days of househunting (plus another day of negotiations), we found a house we love and are now under contract to buy it! Hard to believe we were able to sell one house and start the buying process on another within a few days of each other. The Portland house is scheduled to close on July 23rd, and the Greenville house is scheduled for the next day.

A funny story to embarrass Courtney (the 4-year old) with when she's older: she helped pick this house out by giving one of the bathrooms a "test drive" when nature (urgently) called...

It's a really cute 3 bedroom/2 bathroom 1940's house on historic Earle Street. It's actually quite small compared to most of the stately brick houses on the street, but it should be plenty big enough for us. We definitely sacrificed property size for location, but the proximity to downtown was impossible to pass up. We can drive to the heart of downtown in ~3 minutes. It's also easily walkable, and there's even a free trolley with a stop 1.5 blocks from the house that we can take downtown or to the baseball park.

Downtown Greenville sure has grown up a lot since we last visited. There's tons to see and do (plenty to blog about in the future). Here's a few more pictures. Rhonda can hardly wait to start throwing some paint up on the walls!

The house sold in 2 days!

Hard to believe, but we accepted a offer on the house roughly 48 hours after it went on the market. Full price and the buyer is paying their own closing costs, too. We actually had 3 other offers as well, including another full price one, and that was all before the open house today! There were, I believe, 10 different official showings between Thursday afternoon an Saturday evening. The buyer is shooting to have the inspection done this week while we're still in the Carolinas, and closing should happen in late July.

Our realtor interrupted our hard-earned weekend of R and R hanging out with Mamaw and Papaw, Candy, and Jason's gang to get the process underway, but it was certainly worth it.

Heading down to Greenville early tomorrow for the first of 3 days of neighborhood explorations and househunting. If we don't find something we love on this trip, we've got another planned in late July. Nieces Katheren and Courtney are sleeping over with us and will be our assistants during this process. After a big afternoon of playing in the hotel pool, they're out like a light right now. So's Aunt Rhonda, who's not been sleeping too well worrying over all this real estate 'stuff'.

We're torn between living right in or close to downtown Greenville or being further out of town with more property. Hopefully being down there in person for these few days will help us figure things out.

Putting lipstick on a pig

If our house was a farm, our bathroom would definitely be the pig. Without the funds or the time to put together a sweet remodel like we did with the kitchen, we opted to slap some lipstick on that pig to purty her up a little bit before the house hits the market.

Rhonda most of the work this weekend, which included a thorough scrubbing, de-molding (we're not filthy people, but there's no exhaust fan and mold can hide in steamy corners), new caulk, priming and painting the walls. I also put together a hillbilly fix with the broken faucet handles with Gorilla Glue. I'm putting a quick coat of paint on the ceiling this evening. After that, all that's left is for our plumber to replace the broken overflow/drain plug assembly on the tub Thursday.

It was a busy weekend for me, too. While Rhonda had her hands full inside, I mowed, trimmed and edged the yard, pressure washed the house and walkway, scraped and repainted the old peeling trim underneath the gutters. Since the gutters are brand new and shiny white, the trim was sticking out like a sore thumb. Took a good days work up and down the ladder Sunday to get 2 coats on.

Should get some interesting information tomorrow. Our Portland realtor has spent the last few days researching the market- sales of comparable houses in the last few months, etc. She lives and specializes in real estate in our neighborhood (and is a friend of a good friend), so we're pretty comfortable with her. Tuesday afternoon we're meeting to discuss her findings. At that time we'll find out a number of things, including what she suggests for an asking price on the house.

So, what do you think of the pig? If you quickly look at it and say, "that's not too bad", then mission accomplished!