Ancestral Pile

Today at 10 AM we became one house poorer, and seventy thousand dollars richer. It's a little weird to think that pretty soon, somebody else is going to be moving their stuff into this house, making their bed in the master bedroom, hating our paint color choices as much as we hated the previous owner's choices, saying "Honey, do you think we should think about re-doing the kitchen? What could we do to improve the upstairs bath?", cleaning the oven, complaining about the water pressure, choosing drapes, doing homework, writing papers, taking naps, cooking dinner, and hanging up their clothes. It hit me sort of suddenly yesterday, and I maundered around the house for a while trailing my fingers dramatically along the furniture and the like, but I'm pretty much over it now. I was never so attached to this house that it would be a tragedy to move out; we never planned to stay forever. It was the first house that we stumbled across that we could afford that was in a decent area for school and work. The new house is a house that we chose, not just one we were able to buy. So I'm not upset. A little weirded out, but not upset.

At any rate, settlement went fine. We knew as of yesterday that we would not be settling on the new house today; the standing water issue raised by the appraiser must be fixed. Our realtor scheduled three contractors to come in and give us estimates; one today at 1 PM, one tomorrow at 2:30 PM, and one on Tuesday at 10 AM. But the seller asked us to cancel the contractor appointment for today, because the husband wanted to go to the house and take a look and see what was going on and if he could determine if there was just a sump pump problem (from the pictures we know it isn't, but whatever). Apparently the couple are getting divorced, and he no longer lives at the house. The wife does live there, but is apparently almost always out of town (which is probably why she's not keeping such a big house). So the husband went to the house today and took a look. We have no idea what his reaction was, or what he said; we haven't heard anything since we said goodbye to our realtor at 11 this morning. We will be heading up to the new house tomorrow for the 2:30 contractor appointment. Hopefully he'll say it's a fairly minor problem. Whatever he says, we have to be out of the townhouse by the 16th, which really means we need to settle on the new house by the 13th. If we can't settle by then for whatever reason, we'll have to put our stuff in storage and move in with Don's parents (again!) until we can settle. We'd prefer to just get it over with.

We went to both Columbia Kitchens and Home Depot today to look at cabinets for the kitchen. A bit preemptive, but we didn't really have anything else to do since so many things had gotten cancelled. We disagree on a lot of things about the kitchen; I'm hoping we'll be able to compromise enough to get a kitchen we both like, though Don doesn't seem willing to compromise at all (eek!). We do have some similar ideas; we both want dark cabinets, though he likes brown and I like rich red tones (for a while I wanted all white cabinets, like Giada DeLaurentiis on the Food Network, but after both Don AND my mother pointed out that I wouldn't ever clean them, that idea went down the tubes. What can you do when they team up on you?). We also are both on the same page about hardware color-- brushed steel-- though we disagree on styles. Another thing we disagree on is the stove: I want an oven with a stovetop, and one separate wall oven. He wants a countertop stovetop and two wall ovens. We both agree that whatever we get should be gas, though. And we definitely agree on what fridge to get, which is good.

What comes next? The appointment tomorrow, and probably bickering about washers and dryers. Wish us luck!