Jump to content

Moving, mortgages, and renovations


Cerina
 Share

Recommended Posts

OLD PEOPLE, YOU GUYS.

We did barely get everything in the truck. My dad was shocked he had so much stuff, he thought for sure we would have room to spare. His friends and a neighbor thankfully helped us unload when we got there. But then it's been hard to convince him to unpack. He keeps saying he's exhausted and taking naps, or just needing a break after minor tasks. I put his 2 beds together and it was like pulling teeth. It literally took 10 minutes and 5 of that was dusting the wood. No tools required. He has been sleeping on the floor on the mattress and springs for the last 5 years. I did it for 3 nights and I slept so much better after we built the beds. I dragged him to Costco to order a washer and dryer, knowing that they were likely not in stock and that he really needed to order them online anyway, but I ended up ordering it on my phone right there in the store just to get him to do it.

I'm concerned, y'all. He is very much still living in an analog world. He needs to talk to someone to do anything and no one is prepared for that anymore. He needs to get a new license and the courthouse is literally within walking distance and he thought he would walk down there to ask what documents he needs. This stuff can all be looked up online in advance, and I told him he will wait 30 minutes to ask a question that could've been answered looking on the internet in advance.

Are your parents like this? I'm honestly concerned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

100% yes. My mom has long convinced herself she can’t figure out any technology (aided by my dads insistence she can’t when his biggest reason is because he doesn’t want to pay for modern tech), and the dementia makes it work. My dad will call a place 700 times to ask the same questions—or if it’s shopping, call 700 places to get price quotes. He’s a little better than he used to be, he at least knows how to google now, but is still very stuck in the boomer mindset of decades ago while being convinced that having an off brand prepaid-minutes-only smart phone makes him current.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear God, this was my Dad, too. Took my brother and I nearly 10 months to clear out the house for sale, and now that the market is tanking, selling the house has become a pain.  And now I have a storage unit full of stuff I don't particularly want.  Also, my brother wants to have an asking price far above market value.  I literally had to tell a buyer no today.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Long story short, my parent's didn't properly take care of grandma's house when they inherited it and it ended up getting flooded when a pipe burst and they didn't find out for a month. After it was all said and done they lost around $180k, plus whatever money they should have gained renting the damn thing out for 10 years. I ended up fronting them thousands for two 40 foot dumpsters and an independent contractor to do a cleanup of the interior. I'm sure things will eventually come to a head with their house too. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

So, it looks like at long last, I have a buyer for my Dad's house.  It is an investor company who will rent the house out.  I docusigned some documents initializing the closing process.  I had to come down in price by $16K from the previously agreed figure (which was a steep cut from the original asking price), as they wanted a bunch of things fixed, and I didn't want to pay for the repairs myself.  We listed the house right at the peak of the market at the beginning of July 2022, and now things are getting hairy with the interest rates going up, stock market down, too much inventory on the market, and people just overall nervous.  I am 99% sure this will go through, so I am glad to be done with this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

This has been a fucking nightmare, y'all. Not the house itself so much as dealing with these particular family members. For 2.5 years now we've been trying to get my mother-in-law to homestead this house. She's refused. The taxes on it are now absolutely insane, and they're making buying this house a damn nightmare. The tax value on this house has almost doubled since 2020. Homesteading it would have capped the increase to 10% per year. Now we're running into lender after lender being scared to finance us because the monthly tax bill is larger than the principal, interest, and insurance combined. And my MIL and her brother (the two people who own this damn house) are throwing regular hissy fits because it's taking us longer to find a lender than we'd originally anticipated. All because they refused to listen to us about the taxes. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Today is the day I divided up the money from my Dad's house with my brother.   I made sure he got more money than I because he was a great help to empty the house.   The reason it took so long is because I waited until we did the taxes, and there was a loss to claim.  That was good because we both ended up with refunds.  I feel the weight lifted from settling my Dad's estate now.  I am so glad it is now done. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

So I am soooo pissed. 

There is a local charter school that is moving out of its modular and to a new building.  They told us weeks ago we could have their old ramp.  We are putting up a new modular unit--we paid movers to move the ramp so I emailed the principal what time the movers would be there and the principal is all, "whoops--we sold the ramps after we said you could have them".  The issue is, we had our architect draw up plans built to that ramp size and redoing the plans will cost us upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

Story time!! 

We moved out of that house back in April. The taxes completely priced us out at the time (since then Trevor's started a different job that came with a significant increase in pay), but it was mostly dealing with my MIL and her brother that led us to leave. So we said "screw it all!" and moved into a 3 bedroom apartment - not having to deal with maintenance was the clincher in the house vs apartment rental debate. 

Since we'd already put so much work into that house, my MIL and her brother agreed to let us sell it for them in exchange for 20% of the profit. We'd be splitting the money 40/40/20, and they'd be getting more than they would have at the price they agreed to sell it to us for. So I contacted a realtor/investor I know, and she and her husband/flipper agreed to buy it. We got all parties to sign the contract and all was well. Until...

One of the women from the title company asked who I was and why I was being included in all of the transaction correspondence, and I responded "I'm Diana's daughter-in-law. Neither she nor Greg have bought or sold real estate in Texas, and I work in the industry. I'm just here to assist when needed."

My MIL cancelled the sale the next day. 

I waited until Trevor came home that day to call her and ask "WTF WOMAN". The only things she would say were various of "I don't have to explain myself to you", "I can't help how you feel", "I'm the parent, I don't have to explain myself to my child", and everybody's favorite "y'all are just mad because you're not in control anymore!". 

I fucking LOST IT. This woman had been making our lives difficult for over a year. Her anger was/is out of control. You can refresh yourself with this thread. There was also an incident where I had to stop working in the middle of the day to come downstairs and send Trevor inside the house because they were on our back porch SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER. My MIL just kept saying "GO TO HELL!!" and Trevor kept replying "OH MY GOD! DO YOU EVER HEAR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!?!" I then spent EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS downstairs listening to this woman rant and rave about absolutely everything she now hates about her kids and about how she doesn't need grief therapy and about how she can't drop her shitty friends because then she'd have no friends and how she's the "Don of the Family now!!" and how we're keeping her from having a relationship with her formerly estranged son and how we're only mad at her because she was grieving and couldn't do anything with the house and so so much more. But anyway, she cancelled the sale without giving anyone a head's up or a reason. 

Shit went downhill from there. We stopped talking to her. My sister-in-law tried to reason with her, but she's going full narcissist refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part and doubling down on all the previous bullshit. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Holy shit, how much do you think you sunk into that place? Do you have receipts you could take her to small claims court or something?

We are getting ready to do a kitchen/bath remodel downstairs. We have a half bath downstairs, and we have a laundry room with a giant hallway and you have to go through the laundry room via the hallways to get into our back room/den. It's currently where my husband hangs out playing video games or watching TV most evenings. It's also our guest room and has a wallbed. We're going to get rid of the hallway and move the laundry to where the bathroom is now, create a mudroom, and add a shower so that downstairs has more of a 2nd master suite. This is in case my dad has to move in with us and it will just make a nicer guest room. We are also going to get a small desk to put in there because pandemic promises did not happen (my husband thought they were going to let him wfh forever because he was super productive, hah!) and we do not need a dedicated office with a giant corner desk that is actually hard to get into. We will probably move the treadmill into the office and let the kids use that room to put their toys and crap so they stop dragging them all over the house.

For the kitchen, we are going to gut it and rip out the center island because it's so crowded you can't open the fridge/freezer without standing to the side or unload the dishwasher and put dishes away in the cabinets on the island. We are going to add a bar and cabinets on the other side. My husband also wants this built in bench and table that I think is unnecessary, but sure more seating is good. This means changing the entrance to the backyard as well. We dreamed of having 2 big sliders coming out of the parlor, but the contractor is really hesitant because he doesn't know what the header looks like on that wall without essentially ripping into the wall. If they can't do it we are going to have to redo the whole bench seating thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/3/2023 at 8:46 PM, Cerina said:

Story time!! 

We moved out of that house back in April. The taxes completely priced us out at the time (since then Trevor's started a different job that came with a significant increase in pay), but it was mostly dealing with my MIL and her brother that led us to leave. So we said "screw it all!" and moved into a 3 bedroom apartment - not having to deal with maintenance was the clincher in the house vs apartment rental debate. 

Since we'd already put so much work into that house, my MIL and her brother agreed to let us sell it for them in exchange for 20% of the profit. We'd be splitting the money 40/40/20, and they'd be getting more than they would have at the price they agreed to sell it to us for. So I contacted a realtor/investor I know, and she and her husband/flipper agreed to buy it. We got all parties to sign the contract and all was well. Until...

One of the women from the title company asked who I was and why I was being included in all of the transaction correspondence, and I responded "I'm Diana's daughter-in-law. Neither she nor Greg have bought or sold real estate in Texas, and I work in the industry. I'm just here to assist when needed."

My MIL cancelled the sale the next day. 

I waited until Trevor came home that day to call her and ask "WTF WOMAN". The only things she would say were various of "I don't have to explain myself to you", "I can't help how you feel", "I'm the parent, I don't have to explain myself to my child", and everybody's favorite "y'all are just mad because you're not in control anymore!". 

I fucking LOST IT. This woman had been making our lives difficult for over a year. Her anger was/is out of control. You can refresh yourself with this thread. There was also an incident where I had to stop working in the middle of the day to come downstairs and send Trevor inside the house because they were on our back porch SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER. My MIL just kept saying "GO TO HELL!!" and Trevor kept replying "OH MY GOD! DO YOU EVER HEAR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!?!" I then spent EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS downstairs listening to this woman rant and rave about absolutely everything she now hates about her kids and about how she doesn't need grief therapy and about how she can't drop her shitty friends because then she'd have no friends and how she's the "Don of the Family now!!" and how we're keeping her from having a relationship with her formerly estranged son and how we're only mad at her because she was grieving and couldn't do anything with the house and so so much more. But anyway, she cancelled the sale without giving anyone a head's up or a reason. 

Shit went downhill from there. We stopped talking to her. My sister-in-law tried to reason with her, but she's going full narcissist refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part and doubling down on all the previous bullshit. 

Holy hell...my blood is boiling just reading that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

This is what it looks like now.  Not entirely decided on cabinet colors, counters, sink, etc. Of course we are over budget and have to order cabinets by Friday. We have not done much work on the 2nd bathroom but I think we are already going to have to go kind of cheap on the bathroom. Gonna be the Home Depot bathroom.

Also have to rip out the fireplace, hence the very naked back wall. We tried to change it out and the only way to bring it up to code was going to be very expensive. We might turn it into a closet instead of just closing it out. 

 

 

11-10-2023 Wise Bar 3D_231113_114801.jpg

11-10-2023 Wise Kitchen 3Da_231113_114821.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/13/2023 at 12:53 PM, Destiny Skywalker said:

This is what it looks like now.  Not entirely decided on cabinet colors, counters, sink, etc. Of course we are over budget and have to order cabinets by Friday. We have not done much work on the 2nd bathroom but I think we are already going to have to go kind of cheap on the bathroom. Gonna be the Home Depot bathroom.

Also have to rip out the fireplace, hence the very naked back wall. We tried to change it out and the only way to bring it up to code was going to be very expensive. We might turn it into a closet instead of just closing it out. 

 

 

11-10-2023 Wise Bar 3D_231113_114801.jpg

11-10-2023 Wise Kitchen 3Da_231113_114821.jpg

I am confused--are either one of these the new plans or are they just views of the same room from different angles?  Is that a wine cooler on the right side of the bottom picture?  Do you have to rip out the fireplace?  What kind of flooring is going in?  I like all of the colors and the overall design and all of the storage.  I think it could be a bit more open--for example, there is already a ton of storage there--do you really need both tall cabinets?

I love fireplaces.  I think we are having a gas fireplace put in our living room.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, they are the same room (kitchen and parlor) from different angles. I think we need the tall cabinets because those are our pantries. This house actually sucks for storage. We are currently using a linen closet as a pantry plus another small pantry. Right now that whole space just has a banister between it (yes, like stairs) and it's dumb as heck. The parlor is 2 steps lower than the kitchen. Maybe the original floor plan was an entertaining stage? In any event, we are losing some of the kitchen storage as well because we are knocking out the island because it's too crowded (can't open the refrigerator drawer without standing off to the side, can't load pots and pans from dishwasher because when the dishwasher is open, the door can't open). I also have a huge box of China that I haven't unpacked because somehow I ended up with 3 sets of China (mine, my grandmother's, and my parents because they were both being petty and didn't want the other one to get the China in the divorce).

Yes, its a wine fridge. It holds 250ish bottles and it's already full and we have 6 cases in boxes, too. You can't say I'm an alcoholic, more like a hoarder because I have more alcohol than I need. We are still working our way through our 2016s and we are starting to pick up 2020/2021 wines lately.

Yeah fireplace is gonna go. The mantle is oversized and we need room for the door, and I'm not sure we would be able to meet code for the hearth width and fit the door. It's also very inefficient and right now I avoid turning it on because it makes my heating bill insane. We do have an electric fireplace that will probably be moved out of the back room and into the living room as part of the remodel and turning that back room into more of an office/guest suite instead of den.

So, black, white or gray countertops?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Destiny Skywalker said:

Yes, they are the same room (kitchen and parlor) from different angles. I think we need the tall cabinets because those are our pantries. This house actually sucks for storage. We are currently using a linen closet as a pantry plus another small pantry. Right now that whole space just has a banister between it (yes, like stairs) and it's dumb as heck. The parlor is 2 steps lower than the kitchen. Maybe the original floor plan was an entertaining stage? In any event, we are losing some of the kitchen storage as well because we are knocking out the island because it's too crowded (can't open the refrigerator drawer without standing off to the side, can't load pots and pans from dishwasher because when the dishwasher is open, the door can't open). I also have a huge box of China that I haven't unpacked because somehow I ended up with 3 sets of China (mine, my grandmother's, and my parents because they were both being petty and didn't want the other one to get the China in the divorce).

Yes, its a wine fridge. It holds 250ish bottles and it's already full and we have 6 cases in boxes, too. You can't say I'm an alcoholic, more like a hoarder because I have more alcohol than I need. We are still working our way through our 2016s and we are starting to pick up 2020/2021 wines lately.

Yeah fireplace is gonna go. The mantle is oversized and we need room for the door, and I'm not sure we would be able to meet code for the hearth width and fit the door. It's also very inefficient and right now I avoid turning it on because it makes my heating bill insane. We do have an electric fireplace that will probably be moved out of the back room and into the living room as part of the remodel and turning that back room into more of an office/guest suite instead of den.

So, black, white or gray countertops?

Sounds good...tell me more about your fireplace?  Like I said we are getting one--probably natural gas.  Is it inefficient because it is an older model or just electric fireplaces in general cost a lot?

I am always a fan of darker colors, but since your cabinets are so dark I would say a lighter color--gray seems nice and neutral. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The in wall one that we are removing is gas. The one at our old house (built 2005) was not this bad. I'm convinced our house (built 1995) is not well insulated. Or it's just a shitty unit. We could've replaced it with electric and no issues with code, honestly. My husband just doesn't like how electric looks so fake. And we do already have the electric insert in a really nice entertainment center so I think we will just use that one. So we are just going to Cap the gas line and drywall over the space in case someone wants to put one in later.

The cabinets are actually a little more red. We went with the Cayenne stain, with Alder wood (similar grain to Maple).

Screenshot_20231117_185621_Chrome.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/17/2023 at 7:53 PM, Destiny Skywalker said:

The in wall one that we are removing is gas. The one at our old house (built 2005) was not this bad. I'm convinced our house (built 1995) is not well insulated. Or it's just a shitty unit. We could've replaced it with electric and no issues with code, honestly. My husband just doesn't like how electric looks so fake. And we do already have the electric insert in a really nice entertainment center so I think we will just use that one. So we are just going to Cap the gas line and drywall over the space in case someone wants to put one in later.

The cabinets are actually a little more red. We went with the Cayenne stain, with Alder wood (similar grain to Maple).

Screenshot_20231117_185621_Chrome.jpg

Nice-that’s my favorite.  What color are the floors?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.