Little update

Things are moving really fast for us right now. On most fronts except one.

As of May 31st we have to be out of our rental house BUT the sweet woman in charge of our loan on the new house has informed us we won't be able to close on the house until LATE JUNE.

See the problem?

Just as I was about to call the land lady and let her know we'd need the house an extra month she called me because she has someone she wants to move into our rental on June 1st. So they came by, checked out the house and decided it was perfect for the new renter.

Uh-oh.

If we were still in TN we'd simply couch surf or stay with friends. And we had arranged to stay with some friends if we had a week or so of overlap between moving out and closing on the new home. Now it looks like that might be a month or more. While I love our new local friends staying with anyone for a month is a good way to trash a friendship.

We've considered lots of options (Tent camping? Me returning with kids to TN? Living in friends barn?) and even asked everyone we know if someone has a lead on somewhere we can live 30 days.

Another local friend has a house two hours away that is empty and on the market. So that's an option. Someone at work contacted D on Friday and let him know that her boyfriend has a two bedroom one bath house that he's remodeling if we wanna live there for a month. We said yes, can we see it?

I lived around demo most of my years living at home. It doesn't phase me at all. However little man is very... curious. While I trust his 7 year old self to keep his hands to himself most of the time I want to make sure we're not agreeing to rent somewhere that is a little more than I feel like constantly monitoring. We go to view it tomorrow afternoon and I have fingers and toes crossed that this is where we're suppose to be.

What a roller coaster.

Housing has been a major issue here in the North Woods! First no rentals, then we found a rental, then the rental sold (!) and now trying to just close on a house I love.

I don't think I've shared photos of the house on this blog, so lets get everyone up to date.

The house is 3700 square feet, a foreclosure and needs work. But not structural work. Just the amount of work that you'd expect a foreclosure to need. Well and a little more. We'll cover that in a moment.

Here it is!

The first time I saw this photo I thought the real estate agent was insane. See how it looks like the road goes up to the porch? Yeah. This photo is kinda terrible. Every time we visit though I park directly in front and then go... oh right. I can't. Yeah. Err.

So here's a side photo.

To get from the parking spots to the front door you go down a few terraced steps with plants on both sides to a little flat almost patio area and then up a few stairs to the front door. Not the best thought out plan but still functional and cute.

It's on a decent size yard in town with lakes on both sides (walking distance) and it's also walking distance to the library, grocery store, hardware shop and "downtown". 

There's a few reasons why we're getting such a good deal on it. One was because of a paint job that has now been repaired.

Before:

Castle foyer!

Upper walls of foyer with airbrushed skies and clouds! AND GLITTER. SO MUCH GLITTER. 

Only almost decent paint job. Almost.

Watermelon bathroom!

Then the bank offered to paint the entire house white, even after accepting our offer!

The painters had to scrape the glitter in order to repaint.

Bathroom looks ok in white. Needs some new fixtures and flooring, but not cry worthy!

Soooo much brighter with white walls.

And now... we wait. Wait for the bank to approve our stuff. Wait to see where we'll live the next 30 days. 

Seems like the whole Wisconsin experience has included a lot of hurry up and wait. At least we have some leads this weekend on where we might be living. I don't want to include "living out of car" to our experiences list.