Saturday, July 9, 2016

Come H*** Or High Water

How have y'all been???

I haven't updated in a couple of weeks because we've moved!  
Yep, we did it! 

Right now we're up at the mountain cottage biding our time in between house closings.
Thought I'd share about how life has been going on behind the scenes  - at least, I'll share the first part...

It's been a crazy, busy, 6, going on 7 months now getting our big house picture perfect, ready to sell, packing and moving. 
I'm talking about working 5-10 hours a day on our "Get the house ready to sell" list. The week we moved, we worked at least 12 hours a day or more.


I'm not exaggerating.

Of course I took breaks every hour and and a half or so(y'all know I'm still recovering from chronic lyme disease and I'm not 100% yet). If I was tired and didn't have the energy to stand up, I would work on something where I could sit or kneel down.
Either way, the list was getting done. By April 30th. And the house was getting put on the market on May 12th. 
As my mama used to say: "Come hell or high water".
I was determined and we did it. (Sorry for the use of a four letter word)
My spreadsheet that I used to keep us on track

The photographer came on Wednesday and the house was on the market the next day. We decided to hold showings until the Open House on Saturday, which was a big relief because there were a lot of little things that needed to get done so that the house could look as good as it could.
As we drove down the street right before the Open House started, I couldn't hold back the tears.
They weren't tears of sadness that we were leaving the house we'd been in for 16 years, they were tears because we did it. We finished the list and I felt relief. We were ready to downsize from this big house that's too much for us to take care of!
The following day we had 3 more showings and offers started coming in Monday morning. We had 3 more showings on Monday and by that evening, 3 offers had come in.
photo credit: Brian Stogner

Those 3 days weren't easy.
Getting 3 cats out of the house + my husband being on call  over the weekend really made showings difficult.
As for the multipe offers, we collaberated with our realtor and decided to go back to each of the potential buyers and ask them to make their highest and best offer by Tuesday at 2pm and then we'd start negotiating with the one we felt was the strongest.

Back to how I'm feeling. Dang. Selling a house is sooooooo stressful.
Stress with chronic lyme is no bueno. There were a few sleepless nights because of "what ifs" and because I was experiencing gaps in my memory concerning the house. I just couldn't let it go and the gaps in my memory REALLY bothers me. I also have some gaps concerning a few other things not pertaining to the house and last year, when I was really sick, is a big blur.
Back to stress, I took HPA balance and l-theanine in the morning on the days when the stress was really bad. I wish I had thought of this sooner, as it helps a lot.

When the stress was really bad during the last month before our house went on the market, I was having some worsening of symptoms such as my feet feeling a little more numb, my balance was off more, my eyes bothered  me a bit more, I had/have some trouble finding words and I've started losing more weight.
Overall, I'm surprised I didn't relapse and have worse symptoms, especially fatigue, because I was really pushing myself.

To add to all the stress and probably due to it, I was having trouble sleeping. Anxiety seemed to blow everything out of proportion, but I managed to hold it together with the help of my husband and our realtor. After the offers came in and the contract to purchase was signed, I was able sleep a lot better.
photo credit- Brian Stogner


We still had some uncertainty when we were under contract as the house hadn't closed yet and not getting to closing is always a possiblility, but I wasn't stressed about that at all. I knew that if the buyer backed out that day or the next week, we'd put the house up again and we'd have another offer a couple of days after that because that's how things are going. That would have been ok with me because we hadn't found another house to buy at that time. This was causing me more stress, plus getting all of our stuff out of here in a few weeks.

We found a cute house in the neighborhood I was looking at and put down and made an offer the day we saw it. We knew there'd be other offers. It was a fixer for us and needed about $50,000 - $75,000 worth of work to get it to work for us. It was a small house, had a basement and needed a lot of landscaping.
The next day, I went to see another house...one story, not in the area I originally wanted, but did I mention it was ONE story? No stairs, except for the couple going up to the porch in the front and several in the back because the lot is sloped and the house in the back is on a high crawl, which adds a lot of storage under the house.

I had gone with our realtor to see it and my husband called and said he could come by. He liked it too.
We decided right then to rescind the offer on the other house because we just weren't up to working the next couple of years - at least getting the house renovated, especially because we're still in the middle of a whole house reno at our mountain cottage. 

This one story house had very little yard work - I estimate we'll spend about $200 less a month on average, plus it's only 3 years old and looks brand new. True, the kitchen is much smaller than the house we were in and the office and hall bath was much smaller, but every other room is the same size or larger than the house we were living in. The house is 2,700 square feet, where the main house we were living in was 3,100.Not much of a downsize, but it didn't have another 2,000 square feet of basement, nor did it have almost an acre to take care of. The crawl could be encapsulated and provide us with as much space as we need. Plus, it has a really big attic.
The house looks small from the outside, but once you get in, it's seems even larger than our big house did.

I'll continue with this story another time. The next couple of weeks were difficult to say the least.
I'll leave you with a sneak peek of the front of our new house...



Hope today is a good day for you

Pam





8 comments:

  1. Phew I'm worn out thinking about it all! I'm so glad you were able to pull through it physically and emotionally. I can well imagine the stress of packing up your home has got to be a major overload! Love the new home you chose- you guys did well! I hope you enjoying your mountain time!!

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    1. Thanks Liz! We are enjoying being up here. Our daughter is staying with a friend in Charlotte since she has to work, but came up a few times last week. Not sure how I made it through the last week, but I'm thankful I did!

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  2. A lovely home! And I agree with Liz...I'm exhausted just thinking about all that you did! Anxious to see the inside! Enjoy the mountains....I presume they are cooler? ;)

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    1. Thanksk Donnamae! It was exhausting! We are enjoying the mountains and it is a few degrees cooler with less humidity than in Charlotte.

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  3. Congratulations, Pam. Such hard work & stressful on so many levels to get to this point--sit back & enjoy some down time together.

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    1. Thanks Merri Jo! I took several days and did absolutely nothing.
      This past weekend I've been working on staining the kitchen countertops and Tim
      built a brand new door for the walk in crawlspace up here.
      He has to drive into Charlotte 2 hours during the week, but he said it
      was nice coming home to the mountains because it's so peaceful up here.
      Hope you had a great weekend!

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  4. Congratulations for making it through! All I can add is…imagine not selling your house for almost two years! That's what it took us back in 2010 while we had bought this new house down here! Stressful? Just a bit. So I do envy the multiple offers. The new house looks just perfect: enough space but not overwhelming. Enjoy your "time between!!"

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  5. I love it! Can't wait to see how you decorate!

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