Sold! (again)

Yup! It's happened!

We had three private showings of our current home this past week;  one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and one on Friday. The couple who came thru our house on Saturday made us an offer that afternoon. 

We amended the offer to change the closing date from late July to August 21.... they accepted it by noon today. What that means for us is that they're allowing us to stay living in this house until our new home is ready to move into on the 20th. That's huge!

So we cancelled the open house we had planned today. I saw at least 4 cars stop out at our driveway (one person came up and knocked on the door even) that apparently were planning on attending the open house.

So that's the big exciting news for the weekend for us! :)  Now we can focus on construction of our new home and not worry about working to sell this one.

Speaking of our new home, Friday's progress had several substantial things take place.

As you can see in the following photo, pretty much all the windows are now in place. The notable exceptions are the front entry window and the backside top window in the Wall of Windows. Both of those have arched tops, so that must have something to do with them not being installed yet.

The bathtub for the girls' bathroom upstairs was delivered to the site on Friday as well...

In the next photo of the living room you may recognize the piece of paper nailed to the wall. I mentioned in my last blog post that it is the drawing of how that wall is going to be framed.... the part of that photo that is new is above the fireplace.

There are going to be three "nooks" above the fireplace on that wall. Each will be about 20" deep and will have a small can light in the arch at the top.

Also on Friday, the installer from the cabinet company was on-site. He went through the entire house measuring things up (and drawing them on the plywood floors with labels on them) so that the cabinet makers can begin building our cabinets. This photo is of the floor markings in the kitchen, with the raised "snack bar" on the kitchen counter.

Rachel's bedroom window got installed on Friday.....

....as did the smallest window in the house (bonus room).

This rather odd looking photo is taken from down in the laundry room looking up, through the trusses, to an opening in the wall above from the hallway to the future bonus room.

That opening is going to be one of four "attic access hatches" in the house. The builder has to have access to all attic spaces in the entire place. When Robin and I were walking past this opening upstairs in the hallway we looked at it and both said "laundry chute" at the same time. So I called the builder right then and there and asked him about the possibility of adding that in. In the photo above the chute would go just to the right side of the hatch opening shown, and right down in between those two roof trusses shown there.

He said he could do it, and that we'd need to talk to the cabinet supplier (which we just happened to have a meeting on Saturday anyway) about changing one cabinet to accommodate the bottom end of the chute.

So while the private showing was going on yesterday (Saturday), Robin and I were up in Green Bay having our final meeting with the cabinet supplier. We had to pick out our laminate countertops and the door/drawer hardware for all the cabinets. While we were there we told her about our idea of a laundry chute. She gave us some ideas on how to make the cabinets below work and then said she'd throw that in without any additional charge for the cabinets (yay!).

We then left there and went the other side of Green Bay to select our granite for the kitchen countertops. The photo below shows the granite (it's outside in the bright sunlight, so it's a bit washed out) with our paint color for the walls and the cabinet sample.

Monday is our big contractor walkthrough at the site. Dennis, our builder, and pretty much all of the sub-contractors will be there for questions, answers, etc. Pretty much anything any of us come up with.

Then Tuesday we'll be meeting at the bank to close on our construction loan so all the subs who've already done work on the house can finally get paid.

Paul

WOOHOO!

Well, today has been a good day folks...!

That couple who came thru our house in the private showing this past Thursday night called our realtor and asked for a second private showing Saturday (today) morning prior to our scheduled open house Sunday afternoon.

They came thru for their 10am to 11am private showing and were gone by 10:45... Robin and I found it a bit... hopeful... that they'd want two private showings two days apart just before a scheduled open house.

Our realtor called us a bit later. She said by 12:15 she had a signed offer in her hands from today's couple!

She brought the offer over here at 3:00. We went thru it all with her and decided to counter offer for $2000 more than the couple's initial offer. She drove back to her office and prepared the counter offer and emailed to the couple and the realtor working with them.

As soon as our realtor (Lori) left our house, I called our builder Dennis to tell him that we had an offer, and subsequent counter-offer, in the works so we could be very close to giving him the go-ahead on the new house.

During the conversation between Dennis and I some very interesting news came to light:  Dennis doesn't have a home to build for the fall Parade of Homes so far this year.

(he'd been waiting on another couple to sell their current home so he could put their new home in the fall Parade, but they've had no luck selling their current home yet as it was quite a bit bigger than a "typical" home that's been selling quickly in the area). 

It would be Dennis' first year in 11 years without a home to show in the Parade... (Parade showings are huge advertising opportunities for home builders as they get to showcase their entire range of abilities to a large number of possible customers)

Just an FYI here if you didn't know... Robin and I had originally been considering the idea of having our home be in the Parade in fall 2012 for many reasons (some decent upgrades and discounts are to be had by us from subcontractors for the chance for them to showcase their product and services in a Parade home, and this would be a chance for us to get a few features we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to put into the design), but ultimately it came down to being able to come up with the cash needed to pay for the "extras" that Dennis requires in a home that he has in a Parade. Things like a driveway (which we would have waited until 2013 to put in), built-in sound (which we wouldn't have done at all) in 4 rooms, and an interior designer/stager who charges several thousand dollars to both stage the home for the Parade and decorate it (we'd get to select the decor/window treatments and then keep them after the parade) for the Parade.

So, back to that "interesting news" from Dennis....

Because he is in a position he does not want to be in (not having his biggest public advertising opportunity) he offered us several deals on the above items listed.

He's going to split the cost of the interior designer 50/50 with us, and only require her services on the lower floor of our new home instead of both floors (her cost is per square foot...so not having to pay her to decorate the upstairs cuts her fee by about 1/3). He's also only going to ask us to put in built-in sound in 3 rooms instead of 4 (several hundred dollars per room), and he's only going to require the front lawn be seeded (instead of the entire lawn). Plus a couple other much smaller things he'd throw in.

All this and the effect of it being a Parade home on the subcontractors means we can now go back to them, quote in hand, and look for all kinds of discounts on large ticket allowance items like appliances, flooring, cabinets (countertops), lighting, etc., since all the subs will want their products shown in the Parade as well.

So I hung up with Dennis and Robin and I discussed the stuff Dennis had just told me, and we decided to go with putting our new home in the Parade in fall (two weekends in mid to late August). So I called Dennis back and told him that news (he was very happy to hear that!). He was going to then get the building permit going and I called the septic (mound system and well , no city water and sewer at the new place) guy (Dion) and got him going on the permits for his systems as well.

About 5:30 tonight Lori texted Robin and told us that the couple accepted our counter-offer!!!

So after a somewhat hectic 4 weeks of having our house on the market it's sold!

The buyers will schedule an inspector to go thru our house and when it passes inspection the deal is done.

The closing date is May 17th, so we have to be out by May 18th. This means we now have to focus the immediate future on finding a place to live for the last three months of our new home construction. We'll be looking at duplexes (there are a ton of them in the area) first, then if we don't find any of those we'll be looking at apartments next.

Dennis didn't give us an exact date he'd start digging the hole in the lot today, but he had said way back in the beginning that a fall Parade home would usually start around the 10th of April or so.

This also means that sometime before late April Robin and I will need to begin having meetings with subcontractors to go over their specific bids and products and make our selections for a great many items. (the first of which, believe it or not, is to be the siding / roofing subcontractor)

We have an exciting and very busy next few months ahead of us!

Paul