downsizing · Moving

How to turn your excitement into drudgery

So, we started the process of buying our awesome log cabin back the first of July and the original closing date was July 31… that didn’t happen. I know everyone says closing on a new home is stressful and they have stories, but this has just been more than the usual I feel.

We are now on our fourth date to close. Allegedly we are closing tomorrow, Aug 28 – I say allegedly because at the moment I don’t have a time to show up and sign papers, only a date. And until I am sitting at the table with my husband signing papers I don’t trust it. (see the first sentence of this paragraph that this is our fourth closing date…)

The septic system was tested roughly the second week of July, realtor went out of the country on vacation and had someone else in the office supposedly handling her business in case anything came up. Realtor gets back in country on Wed, Thurs she reads the report from the test (and I have my suspicions that it was there prior to her leaving actually) to find out the septic system failed. We were to close that following  Tues.

Finally get a perc test done, we pass, and a new septic system is going to be put in, but first 3 trees have to be taken down. Nothing for 11 days. When questioned the realtor then says – I had no idea on the trees to know I had to schedule someone to remove trees before work could start on the septic system. So, she basically checked out for almost 2 weeks and we were at a standstill. Finally the trees get taken down. Now the contractor for the septic system is fighting wet areas and putting a mound system in at another location and has to finish that before working on our higher/drier location. When questioned he says, well I can drive by to see if it’s dry enough to work the location and possibly put it in while I’m waiting for the other location to dry some. Pardon me but – Duh!

So now we get the new septic system in, with the distribution box now sitting about 5-6′ into what was our driveway with an access pipe sticking about 6″ above grade in the middle of the driveway and the distribution box then spans out to the drain field the other side of the driveway in the area that used to be where we were to park our vehicles – oh, and there was no driveway to speak of. Well, my husband says that’s not correct because we have the two top sections where you come in and leave, it’s just all that in between stuff that’s gone.

Realtor gets another contractor out there to work the driveway when my husband contacts her to say, I really need a driveway. Contractor goes out there. Starts to work, gets pissed at what work the septic contractor left behind and stopped. Driveway contractor called the realtor to say he can’t work with what was left behind and the septic guy has got to fix things. Now the realtor knows my husband wasn’t being a pain for asking for a driveway… So sometime today (no time on this yet either) my husband, the realtor, the septic contractor, and the driveway contractor are all supposed to meet out at the cabin to figure out what the heck will be done to give us a basic circular driveway. At this point we don’t care about parking, we’ll figure that out after we’ve been in the cabin for a bit and have lived with it and know what we want then, but right now just give us a driveway that we can use, okay???!!!

Supposedly this is not to hold up closing tomorrow. All parties have agreed that the work will happen/continue even after the sale of the cabin. sigh But this is the kind of crap that has just been constant and non-stop since we began this whole process of buying the cabin. I knew there would be hiccups, but this seems to be extreme!

Part of the stress also comes from the fact we need to get in there and stain the inside logs before my husband heads out of country for several weeks now days after closing.(since maintenance on the logs/chinking/etc. fell to the wayside as the owner got older and she couldn’t keep up with it) With the original closing date we had a month to accomplish work and get furniture in there before he left. Now, we can get staining done, but then I’m stuck doing little stuff here and there and waiting for him to return to finish the move. I have plenty of family and friends who have offered to help with the move, but I really don’t feel like doing this by myself. I did enough of that type of thing while he was active duty Navy and I’m not wanting to let him off the hook this time. He needs to “share in the joy” with this as well. LOL It’s his home too.

sigh

So, what should be a joyous, happy time has just turned into a chore to just get done and checked off a list. I feel cheated.

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