Inspection Day at the New Home

This afternoon I picked the kids up after school and took them to see the new house. Violet was very excited to see her room, and the boys were very excited to test out the yard by playing football in it. We hired a home inspector to take a look around and give us some idea of what will need fixed immediately, and what we need to plan for in the future.

The good news is there were no "oh crap" discoveries. The front porch needs new shingles, the "leaning tower of pisa" chimney needs taken down, there are a few spots on the roof that need shingles, a couple windows may need replaced, and the biggest problem area is in the basement where we need a general contractor to install a steel beam to replace some crappy wooden beams to help level the house out again. Other than that, it's in great shape! Actually, it really is in good shape for a 116-year-old house. The inspector said a lot of good things were done to update the house, and that with each new addition (he thinks there have been four!) they did things the right way.

We discovered there's a big concrete room under the driveway where he thinks they used to store the heating oil -- perfect storm shelter!

I took a bunch of new photos but I'm having trouble getting them to download, so I'll share those later.

Other than that, we're just busy getting things ready for moving day! I reserved a U-Haul truck today. Shawn reserved a big dumpster for Saturday, when we're going to do a ton of major yard work projects to get ready to sell this place. I am going to be really optimistic and assume we will sell this house this summer. We'll get it all ready and fixed up for a new family and someone will fall in love with it. And then once we sell this house, we'll have some extra money to fix the things in the new house.

I'm so excited!!! Hope you all have a great week. We're looking forward to watching Mazy run in the Drake Relays on Saturday. He runs at 5 p.m. in the elementary school relay. He is one of only four students chosen from the Downtown School to be on the team. We're very proud of him -- fast and a good citizen!