We sat in a little, windowless room and filled out the paperwork. There was the woman who stood in for the closing attorney. He was on vacation.
There was Shane, our realtor, with whom we’ve become friends. Our financial guy, who’s been steady and awesome and terrific throughout the process. He’s married to one of Shane’s colleagues, who was supposed to be our realtor, actually, but she had her baby just as we began shopping.
Across the table there was the nice woman who was selling her house. We got a good deal. She’s leaving a cute little move-in ready house in a terrific neighborhood. She’s getting married and has already moved out of town. We compared notes. Her realtor was there, too, on crutches. I was sitting opposite her, pushed way back from the table. It isn’t that I’m disinterested, I said, I don’t want to kick you.
We chatted. She signed her paperwork. We chatted some more and then she left. And then we had to sign our paperwork. This is enough to make anyone feel bad for famous people. Autographs just aren’t that fun.
Though, to be fair, most autograph seekers aren’t thrusting mountains of legalese into your face. The financial guy remarked that no one had read it all before, and I had to give him something to go back to the office and tell his colleagues, so I read it all. I tend to read a bit on the slow side typically — because I enjoy sentence structure — but especially so when reading something in legal language. This made the process run a bit longer than it should have, but we’re homeowners.
But that’s not enough for one day, no. We’ve decided to paint a few things and get it ready for the big move. So we took our new keys, made our way into the neighborhood, convincing Boris, the heavily armed gate guard, that we live here now.
The very nice lady from whom we bought our home left us take out menus and a list of places that deliver. The last menu was from Applebee’s. I question her taste.
We bought groceries. The Publix is just down the street and has been here about 15 minutes longer than we have. Also, it is huge. There are guides on all of the carts.
We made a list of things we needed from Lowe’s. We have a wonderful friend who is overworked at Home Depot, so we figured it might help her out a bit if we shopped at the competition. Also, Shane thoughtfully gave us a gift card there, so it worked out.
Having shopped online in every store in town and Amazon, I bought four ceiling fan lights, the most affordable ones I could grab. We picked up paint supplies. We ordered a carpet cleaner.
They came out this afternoon, two guys from the Stanley Steemer office in Columbus. I realized, after we got off the phone with the booking agent where I’d erred. I cleaned carpets in high school and as a former employee I accidentally ruined their commission. Here’s how to help them and get the best deal. Call and ask for the minimum. It is usually a two-room package. When the guys get to your house, tell them you are willing to upsell with them — for extra rooms or scotch guard (which I suggest) or deodorizer (if you need it) — and then haggle. You’ll get a little more out of them. He’ll get the commission. The person sitting in the nice, climate controlled office answering phones won’t take his money. You’d be surprised how much the guy is willing to haggle in this set up. Everybody wins.
And he gets to stand inside, in nice conditions, and haggle. Those trucks aren’t built for comfort. We were talking with the guys that visited us and they said they’d never had an air conditioned truck. That’s about right. At the much larger office where I once worked there was one truck with air conditioning, and that was the boss’. So we fed them plenty of water, apologized profusely for making the mistake that deprived him of commission and talked shop.
One of the best parts about cleaning carpet are the stories you hear or the places you find yourself. One of the guys that worked for us today was a college student doing this as a summer job, so he didn’t have many stories, but he’d heard about them. His colleague was a company man, and he had stories. We spent a few minutes trying to one-up one another. We settled on a draw.
After they left we wiped down the walls for paint. Already, serious progress has been made.
I borrowed a six-foot ladder from a friend’s grandfather who lives nearby. Installed two ceiling fan lights before it got too dark to see. By chance they just happened to match the lights already in place on other ceiling fans. I replaced all the locks on the house. (And only locked myself out once in doing so, simultaneously proving levels of both ingenuity and stupidity I hadn’t realized I was capable of achieving.)
It rained.
The neighbors, were they listening, were probably a bit concerned about the mix of Korn, Queen and Abba they heard coming from the new people. I blame The Yankee.
She made a delicious dinner and we sat on the floor in our future library, eating on a stack of shelves I’ve removed from a wall we’ll paint tomorrow. It was wonderfully romantic in that way that everyone forgets when the furniture and the boxes interfere.
Tomorrow, we paint in earnest. (That’s a great shade, by the way, you should look into it.)
