Laughter is Good!

The other night at dinner, our youngest daughter was making fun of me, the blog and the house project. She's not nearly as excited as the rest of us about the house, but she is very excited about having her very own shoe closet. She was laughing at me and said, "Day 1002. The Shoe Closet Renovation." Go ahead and laugh, Little Girl! One day you'll absolutely LOVE this house. And, if you don't, well, you'll probably be ready to move out, anyway!
Shown here, the closet goes in and turns the corner to the left. It measures about 5'6" wide and 4'7" deep on the left side. As I said in an earlier post, this walk-in shoe closet in in addition to her already 3-times-the-size-of-her-current-closet.

I promised you pictures of the front. On the left side of this picture you can see a little bit of fence showing. That is the main gate (the one that doesn't easily open right now). The hedge has taken over the fence, and in places I think the fence has disintegrated and the ivy/whatever-else-is-in-there is all that is left. Another surprise for us to find!

Moving to the right...

 And now we come to another interesting aspect of the property. This 'indentation' in the road is apparently county owned. But sometime in the past someone carved out enough space to park about 3 cars here. They also put down gravel. The building(s) you see on the right belong to the previous owner of this house (the one that lives next door - on the other side). The property the buildings are standing on, as well as the property in front of the white car parked there, belongs to the railroad and is being leased by the former owner of the property we're buying. The neighbor's daughter is trying to talk her dad into letting the lease go. If/when this happens, we are hoping to be able to lease the property. Then we can make a little more room for parking - we hope. In the meantime, street parking is the local choice. The street is just wide enough for one car to pass a parked car - a little wider in some spots. Up here, though, that's not really a problem since there are only 7 houses on the hill, itself. Not much excess traffic.  :-)

Sometime in the not too distant future, we are hoping to take out the section of fence/ivy that you see directly to the left of the white car. We we would like to fill in behind the rock wall that's on the other side of the fence and pave a space for us to park one car/van. Placing some sort of carport or other covering is highly desirable for working on our cars (or unloading groceries, etc.). If you look at the picture in the header of this blog, you'll see what's directly on the other side of the fence. The shed will come down, but the stairs will remain and to the right-back of the stairs would be the cement slab with covering. I know it's hard to picture, but we will be updating photos as we go! Now, if we could only get started...

Our broker/friend called me a little while ago to say that the water meter has been approved and will be installed in the next few days. She also said that the county inspector had been out and made a punch list (absolutely has to be fixed) and that an electrician will be out in the next few days to take care of the issues (on their dime, not ours!). Then the electric meter will be installed and signed off. The seller's agent seems to think all of that will be completed in the next 10 days or so. Then we get to move ahead with our inspections! I was surprised at the speed with which things are happening and mentioned to my broker that maybe we actually would close about the 15th of September (as the contract states). She informed me that, yes, we will absolutely close by the 15th, maybe sooner! I'm so excited!!!! Apparently, the bank wants out from under this house. Should we take that as a warning??? Naw, didn't think so!  ***HUGE GRIN***

Day 19