I removed 31 more batteries tonight, from Jake’s electronic keyboard and Timmy’s 8 (count ’em: EIGHT) Shake ‘n Go cars. Wendy reminded me about each of those cars having 3 AA batteries! Phew, I almost forgot!
So the current battery count is 110.
“Oh my gosh, what on earth are you doing with that enormous pile of batteries?”
Um, yeah…this is one of those fine-print sorts of things they don’t tell you about having young kids while in the military.
You know all those cool toys my kids have? The various Christmas, birthday, “gosh, I’ve missed you” gifts? The “congratulations on potty training”, “Preschool graduation” and “You were good today at Target” gifts?
So many of those toys have batteries, and when you have a commercial mover coming in 2 weeks to pack up your stuff, you want to start early on the quest to get as many of those batteries removed as possible.
The packers/movers don’t remove the batteries…you do. When the packer comes across something with batteries…if they’re nice they’ll give you a chance to remove the batteries so it can get packed with everything else. If they aren’t nice, they quietly set the item aside and continue packing around it…and before you know it, Jake’s bedroom is full of sealed boxes with one Lamaze lullaby toy lying in the corner.
What you’re looking at in the picture is a view down into a plastic storage bin of batteries. The bin is about 1/2 full, and these are all the batteries EXCEPT for the boys’ GeoTrax and Tomy “Blue Track” Thomas the Tank Engine sets. Those two train sets will probably triple what I’ve already removed…but the boys are still playing with those sets at least daily, so I’ll wait until just a couple days before the packers come before I tackle that.
The bin currently contains 79 batteries. Most of which are AAs, not enough of which are rechargables. Most of our rechargables are in the GeoTrax, thank heavens.
Also, I came across at least a dozen corroded batteries, so those are discarded.
Ugh.
And let’s not forgot those other “illegal-to-pack” items: light bulbs, cash (i.e., the contents of my boys’ piggy banks), and liquids.
Back to work!
But just okay.
We got back from Pennsylvania around 5pm tonight. In Richmond, on I-95 right through downtown, a car in front of me rolled over a piece of tire and it whipped into the front end of the Prius. I wish I had more time to react, but I didn’t. Even though Dave and I were thinking about pulling over to check out the damages, downtown Richmond is NOT the place to just pull over anywhere. While our car was driving fine afterwards, two pieces of the 3-piece plastic grill for the air intake were destroyed.
There’s also a slight dent on the right side of the lip under the intake area. Just enough that we’ll probably have to get it repaired/replaced before we can replace the plastic grillage.
As if we didn’t have enough to do before we move… 🙂
Ya know, it’s always so wonderful when we’re in PA — and stuff like this always happens when we get home. In 2006 it was Jake’s broken leg…in 2007 Dave was wrapping up his changing of advisors/offices on campus. I guess this is relatively small by comparison…but certainly par for the course!
We signed a contract Monday night.
We’ll close on the North Carolina house on 21 July, and Dave is flying out to Omaha on 19 May to investigate military housing/rental options for us and perhaps get us into a lease ahead of time, which would be great so we could have an address with which to register Jacob for Kindergarten out there.
The contract we’re in here is for less than our asking price but appropriate for the price-per-square-footage in this area. The other contract, which we turned down, was offering $3100 MORE than our asking price…
“WHAT? Are you out of your #$%^@# minds?????”
We felt badly for doing this, but the higher offer was coming with a VA (Veteran’s Administration) loan that would finance 100% of the sale price and had a very very small “earnest money” check.
What many don’t realize about a VA loan is that the VA provides the appraiser and if the appraisal comes in lower than the contract price, the buyer can walk from the contract, or else come up with the difference between the appraisal and contract price. The difference cannot be in the form of another loan (i.e. it more or less needs to be cash). So in reality, the buyer could put any number he/she wanted on the offer. They are only obliged to cover the appraised value…which we may not know for 30 days, considering the VA’s backlog.
I know, I know, we’re Veterans and should have more sympathy. Unfortunately, the market isn’t what it used to be, and the VA has been appraising to the low end of the average costs-per-sq.-ft. around here. So a house in contract for $3100 more than the asking price, could appraise for $8000 less than our asking price. Throw in all the other seller’s obligations with a VA loan (many of the closing costs, termite inspection, etc.) and that lower offer was actually looking more attractive.
So…we wanted an indication of whether the buyer would be willing to provide the difference if the appraisal would come in significantly lower. Our realtor asked for more earnest money in the counter-offer…asked for another $1500. When the buyer asked if they could provide the first $500 in a post dated check, and the remaining $1000 at their next payday, all sorts of alarm bells went off in our minds. There’s a chance they may not be able to get the mortgage at all.
The other offer, although lower, was a conventional loan, the earnest money was appropriate for the transaction, and they were flexible on the closing date. Dave and I, with our realtors, weighed both options very heavily all day Monday and our realtors spent over 3 hours here over dinnertime running numbers, options and placing phone calls on our behalf with the two buyers’ agents.
So there you have it — we finally signed something at about 10:15pm on May 5th. We’re coming out about $124 per square foot, right now most houses in our development are closing for $123-124 per square foot.
We commend our realtors, Gloria and Robert, for their hard work and late nights working with us.
This York Simpson Underwood Listing is a much better website than what’s on Realtor.com.
I have to brag a little about the pic of the outside of the house. We asked that the photographer come in the afternoon to minimize the shadows — the sun shines directly on front of the house in the afternoon and that day couldn’t have been better! Bright sun, azure blue sky!
Hi!
Let me catch my breath…
“Phew!”
The photographer just left — she was here to take pictures of our “staged” house for the MLS listing.
So now we can mess up the house again! Just kidding…
I will admit that I feel like if I BREATHE too sloppily, the house will get messed up again…I don’t think I can use my kitchen or bathrooms anymore!
Enjoy some pictures from my adventures in cleaning:
Here’s the UNDERSIDE of our stovetop. One of those places I never think about when doing ordinary cleaning.
Before (those white streaks are from Formula 409 working its way through the stains):
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| From 2008 04 26 Pr… |
And AFTER:
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| From 2008 04 26 Pr… |
As you can see, the 409 did a pretty bang-up job!
So as not to steal my realtor’s thunder, enjoy a sampling of pics from our really clean house. I need to show this off, I’m so proud! I didn’t do it alone, though…Dave was very helpful with many of the outside items, keeping our trashcans empty, and for throwing out his old valet in our bedroom. He now has to drape his clothing somewhere else 🙂
Living Room:
Kitchen:
Dining Room:
Master Bedroom:
Master Bath:
I’m going to pour myself some frozen Margarita. I have some leftover from my jewelry party last Thursday. I know it’s only 3pm but I think I deserve it!
I’m stoopid tired again.
It started with another yard sale this morning. So once again I was up at 6am on a Saturday. It was lousy this time around: $20 in 3 hours. Compared to $300+ in 6 hours last Saturday. We ended up giving away our two largest items — Dave’s old model train layout benchwork and a La-z-Boy recliner, since they went to people we knew. I guess my double Baby Jogger’s goin’ on Craig’s List this week.
At 10:45am we took the boys to a birthday party at one of those bouncy-house centers, got them there a little after 11am, where the Bucklers (their daughter was also a guest at the party) kept the boys while Dave and I took off for…
Well, Dave did most of the drinking. He behaved very well, I’m proud of him! I enjoyed some tastes for the first 90 minutes or so…over 100 beers to taste! I was definitely most impressed with the Warsteiner flavored malt liquors. The lemon flavored “mix” tasted like Mountain Dew with a kick! Yum! I’m not as much a beer girl so I was okay wrapping things up early on so I could drive Dave home.
Got to enjoy some fried dill pickles! A distinctly North Carolina thing…
It was a great time, except for when I was buzzed I charged right into a porta-potty and went potty before realizing there was no toilet tissue! EEEWWW!
I did come out of there with a cool Blue Ridge Brewing Co. t-shirt featuring this pic of their Hurricane Hefeweizen label, which I thought was neat.
After a yummy fried seafood dinner with the boys, and the boys went to bed, I tackled cleaning closets. Stuffing linens and clothing into Space Bags and hauling them down into our near-cleaned out garage shelves. Just now finished. My closet looks pretty darned good now. Let’s hope potential home buyers think the same thing.
Tomorrow? Mowing the lawn, shampooing carpets, grocery shopping and helping Dave package up his model train layout to store it while the house is on the market.
Okay — while I was writing up this post, I must have downed about 10 Hershey’s Cookies & Cream Kisses. Oh so yummy in my tummy, but I must stop now!
That’s my fridge. I love it. I think stainless steel is sexy.
But…over the past 3 years, my boys have had a field day playing with their letter magnets, their Thomas and Friends magnets and their keeping-up-with-their-chores magnets.
So the front is now pretty beat up.
Again, in anticipation of the house going on the market next week, I’ve been cleaning up the clutter, which includes removing all the magnets and pictures. So I’m left with all these scratches on the front of the fridge in plain view:
The area in question is closest to the door handle. The other light further to the right spot is a reflection.
I’ve use these products to try to clean up those scratches, to no avail:
Yes, you even see a Scotch Brite pad and a 380-grit sanding block! Those were BAD.
The stainless steel cleaners do just that, clean.
The Scratch-Out in the yellow bottle is actually for automotive uses, it didn’t seem to make a difference on our big scratches. Maybe I’m not using it right?
The “winner” in this batch, unfortunately, is the WD-40, which merely cleans up the scratches enough that they aren’t so glaring. If you scrutinize the surface, all the scratches are still there.
If you have a personal favorite for keeping your stainless steel scratch-free, do tell!
Today I was continuing to prepare for our house to hit the market by applying Olde English oil to all my wood furniture.
I guess this was the first time I had ever oiled all the furnishings at once, for I realized, 90 minutes later, that we have a LOT of wood furniture.
All of the living room, dining room, master bedroom, both kids’ bedrooms. All wood.
My arms are quite sore, which led me to think about this:
Enjoy the trip down memory lane…
Okay, so I fell off the scope for a bit.
This week was pretty darned busy for me, so a couple things had to fall by the wayside, the blog being the first thing. Photographs of my life were next.
Then paying attention to my boys, the poor babies.
This past weekend I had a pretty big yard sale. So for the 10-14 days leading up, I had been working room-by-room, assessing and clearing out extraneous crap.
Sometimes they were old items, like books Dave and I had both read. Our Lazy Boy chair with a gaping hole in the upholstery right at the crotch. The too-small Crock Pot. The Rival 2-cup Hot Pot from college. Air Force BDUs, stripped of the patches (10 — count ’em — TEN sets!).
Sometimes they were things we’d outgrown: infant toys, size 2T clothing, double jogging stroller, diaper pail/changing pad (YES!), baby monitor
Some of our items were simply excessive: Did I really need 3 tricycles?
But many of our things for sale were items that I didn’t trust would make it through another move. Several of our Little People play sets, for example. They were large and I could see many of the plastic pieces getting crushed between here and Nebraska.
How about one of those garden hose wind-up reel thingies? Wouldn’t make it to Nebraska, either!
Anyway, Saturday was the big day, and we ended up making over $300! I was impressed! $50 of that is a wash because of my hefty advertising budget: online, print and signage in the neighborhood.
Next weekend is the neighborhood yard sale and I’ll put the remants of the stuff out this Saturday for a little bit…everything else will go to a local thrift store in Fuquay-Varina.
So I’ve been busy with all that.
The realtor was here over the weekend, also. She and her partner did a walk-through and made some suggestions on how to stage the house appropriately. I was disappointed to hear that they prefer all my horizontal surfaces (dresser tops, mantle, tabletops) EMPTY…I’m currently putting away my Asian knick-knacks and Hummel figurines.
We also took down our swingset. It was an illegal swingset. We bought the house with the illegal swingset, then about a year after we bought the house, we received a letter from the property manager indicating we had an illegal “improvement” to our property and it had to be removed immediately. Dave appealed the letter and eventually got approval for the structure, but the letter of approval states that the swingset needs to be removed when we sell the house.
So as not to mislead any potential owners, Dave solicited to some of our yard sale customers that the swingset was theirs for the taking if they could help remove it and haul it away. In about an hour on Saturday afternoon, it was gone! Wow!
What of the Weather Station that was mounted on the swingset? It’s still in our backyard in an alternate location. The data is still pretty accurate, except the wind measurements are taken about 2 feet closer to the ground than before.
As of today, I’m finally calming down a little. This week I can relax some…it’s too soon to start the uber-cleaning cycle before the house goes on the market (why bother? the kids will dirty it up again!). By this weekend I’ll be ramping up again…
Ta!
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