A month of firsts and a dumpster could sound good or bad depending on your age, perspective, general outlook on life and where you currently fall on the intoxication scale.
This past month, has been full of ‘firsts’ for me. So many in fact that I may need to break this topic down into installments, but off the top of my head, here is a preliminary list of firsts for me this past month:
1. Closing on the purchase of a house (our previous home belonged to my husband when we got married);
2. Organizing and arranging and actually moving an entire house (and storage unit) full of stuff;
3. Watching my eldest son (18) pack his stuff and ‘move out’;
4. Procuring a dumpster and filling it, after realizing that we purchased a home from someone who never threw anything away and didn’t take all of his stuff/garbage/crap with him;
5. Dealing with Animal Control to capture the EIGHT feral cats, said previous owner left behind;
6. Dealing with Animal Control to arrange to borrow a crate for the one tame (and pregnant) cat that said previous owner abandoned;
7. Finding some scary looking lumpiness in my breast and going for a mammogram and ultrasound in short order ( good result, but anxiety-inducing nonetheless);
8. Learning to drive a John Deere lawn tractor and cutting the front lawn (and NOT dying from crashing or fear!);
9. Looking around at my home and surroundings and feeling really and completely *happy* and content with my life;
10. Really saying what I mean and meaning what I say. This has been very, very hard for me for quite a few reasons, mostly having to do with not wanting to upset or hurt anyone’s feelings.
I have taken pictures over the past month. Not as many as I would have liked to, but whenever I remembered and the moment existed to grab my camera (have I ever mentioned that I love, love, love my camera?!?) and take some shots, I did. I’ll share as many as possible with each post (where reasonable / G-rated. Read: No boobie shots!).
“First” Number 4 – It’s Dumpster Time!
I wish that I had some good pictures of just how much ‘stuff’ (read: complete and utter shitty garbage) was left for us to deal with by the previous owner, but the pictures that I have really don’t do it justice. Well, the pictures that I have aside from  the pictures I have of the full-to-the-brim dumpster that took us three days and three to five grown people to fill, that is. The end result of all of our hard work? A mostly empty house, 2.86 metric TONNES of trash and a $500 bin rental and tipping fee bill (although there is some  talk about the bill being picked up by the seller, but since it’s been a month and we haven’t seen a dime so far, I’ll stop holding my breath now – not nice to try to kill me like that, dude). Sooooo, not exactly in the ‘broom swept condition’ that was written into our Agreement of Purchase and Sale, is it? After being basically told to fuck off by the seller and his agent (who also, incidentally we were told wasn’t “our bitch” niiiiiice!) when we expressed our very LEGITIMATE concerns over the condition of the house with respect to the clean out, we gave space and even gave our seller an extra eight hours after closing to get it done. This is after having a firm closing date, that all parties knew and understood for THREE FULL MONTHS.
It would seem that our seller didn’t use his time wisely (or at all), because had he, Mr. KB and I would not have a DUMPSTER in front of our new home the day after closing. Would we? Hmmmm. Nope, I most definitely would have opted for some nice hanging flower baskets or something similar instead, me thinks.
So, here we are, one month later, in the house we love that is now completely (or is it?!?) devoid of the former owners hoard and while we have discovered more things about this house that need immediate(ish) attention and things that are going to cost more money that we hadn’t counted on, we really do love it here, as we clear the years of debris and neglect and reveal the beauty of the house and land again.
Excellent find, Mr. KB. I love, love our new home, (now that our dumpster days are done!) thank you for finding it. And I have no idea how you’re going to top this one!
I feel your pain. We recently bought property with a mobile home on it that we, despite agreements with the seller, had to clean from top to bottom. I’m talking one whole year of rodent infestation and abandoned garbage we had to clear out. The mobile home hadn’t been lived in for over a year. Then we (my husband, actually) had to fix up the illegal 55 gallon drum septic system which, not surprisingly, started backing up. All so we could temporarily live here on site while we build.
Yep, totally feeling your pain. While we had no where near the crap that you have in that dumpster, our house was FILTHY when we moved into it 6 years ago. Is this a typical Keswickian thing to do???!!!! And we even had the same reaction from the realestate person. Sorry. No dice.
I hope you are able to quickly reveal the house’s former glory. Good luck to you.
I have no idea if it’s a Keswickian thing or just a bad luck thing, honestly. I’m sorry that you had to move into a filthy house, that’s never fun.
We’re working our way slowly towards making the house into our vision and we really, really hope that we’ve uncovered and exorcised all of the demons now! (Demons not in a religious/spiritual sense, but in a please-don’t-let-this-be-the road-to-bankruptcy-money-pit way)
On the upside, our agent has offered to pay half the cost (and apparently the selling agent the other half) of our dumpster and tipping fees out of his pocket if they can’t get the previous owner to ante up 🙂
Restores my faith in the real estate business a bit!
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