Getting up to date

In the interests of getting this story up to date so I can begin tracking progress in real time, here is the condensed version of events from July 2008 to date.

After the post & beam inspection, we decided the house was worth investing in, we made an offer and it was accepted. But, the seller wouldn't sign the P&S, probably trying to cut a better deal elsewhere. And of course, supposedly there was another interested party. We wound up backing out of the deal when we couldn't get the timing of the construction loan to work, knowing that it could take a while to sell my current house. It supposedly it went under agreement to someone else at that time. A month or so later, I got an email letting me know that that deal was off, and were we still interested? And why don't we get a commercial loan? Here's my banker's info...So we did. We closed on September 30th 2008. A day that shall live in infamy. The anniversary of my insanity.

The weather turned cold quickly, and I'm a wuss about the cold so we made only a few more weekend trips to the house before the snow flew. We tried to cut the lawn with the riding mower - and wound up smoking the belt. We returned with a rented brush hog - and wound up smoking the belt. It's a jungle in there! 5 years of growth will do that, I suppose. At least we found the front lawn. My brother, Nick, and I also spent a lively afternoon chasing the pigeons out while Matt fastened hardware cloth (1/2 inch mesh) over the broken windows in the ell, where they had been roosting. Matt was standing on the beams in the ell to do the upper window while the pigeons dive-bombed him. I thought he was going to fall, and keep falling, right through the floor into the crawl space. But he didn't. This must be my lucky house.

That was our last trip before the snow fell. We managed to meet two sets of the neighbors on our various trips, and both were happy to hear that we had planned to restore the house and not develop the land.

We made a visit at New Year's to make sure there was no damage from the ice storm, and all was well. I did a drive-by on my way out to NY for business in February but couldn't get in to the driveway - too much snow, the driveway was severely plowed in.

We returned in March; Mom, Dad, Danny, Nick, and I, on a nice warm day (warm being a relative term), and after checking the house and finding the pigeons returned, in the attic this time, where a window pane fell out, we trekked out back. We went down the northeast side, about 1/2 way back, and were able to find several marked boundary points, as well as some nice timber and a tiny babbling brook. We then went across the property, where Dad and I split from the others on the way back, going all the way to the southwest side. We walked back along the stone wall, for a hundred feet or so on the stone wall, as it got too boggy to cross otherwise without a major detour. We crashed through the vines and thorns and re-emerged behind the house.

The following Saturday, Matt, Nick, and I went back again with a load of stuff from our garage to store, and went all the way to the back of the property, following the logging road. What a mess they left behind. Entire trees just left, mostly pine they had to take down to get to the hardwood. Hardwood tops left in the middle of the road. Still good for firewood if we get it out soon. Once we got to beyond where they stopped, the land got a lot more rolling, and the trees, even the pines, are magnificent. We could see the big brook, and the flash of sun off cars on the road beyond. There are no stone walls back there, making it harder to find exactly where the boundaries are.

So now we are up to date, albeit the extremely condensed version of events. I expect to have much more regular progress reports going forward, and I bought a new camera to document it all! Stay tuned!