We are ready for the off to Jekyll Island for our vacation. Yes, we're both retired. H O W E V E R, this past 8 months have been a near whirlwind of chaos. First, we decided to try to sell our home of 33 years in Baltimore. Our fears were we would have missed the housing bubble AND that it would sit on the market for an extended period due to its age as well as the fact it is in Baltimore. Thankfully, our listing agent made it all so simple sounding with the hard part getting the pre-sales work completed before listing. He was right; lots of work got done- stuff we had been putting off for years.
Jean had shoulder replacement surgery scheduled for late June/ early July and the expected 'to sell' date was approximately 6 weeks after we listed, based on the market at that time we were not concerned about any overlaps; the house sold in 2 days. TWO DAYS. Well, that just made our lives more interesting. We asked the buyer to rent back the house until Jean was fully ambulatory in late July which they had no problem doing. Then, after all the pre-sales work we did clearing out and paring down, the rest had to be packed by a two people with three good arms.
The move to The Estate was to relatively painless with professionals handing the big pieces of furniture for the final move out day. Now, we had planned on building a modular or stick built house on the property of The Estate; even had a building site selected. Between the time delay to build AND the costs [which were for all intents and purposes, the same] we decided to look at the existing housing nearby with three stipulations: no more than 20 minutes from The Estate [to act as a guest house]; roughly 1500 sf rancher/rambler; 'move-in' ready; and, less than building new with the 'all-in' costs figured. We gave ourselves 2 weeks to figure this out and commit one way or the other.
A couple of viewing later we recruited a local buyers' agent to aid the process. And she was a gem. Seriously, if you are in the market in the Cumberland-Romney-Keyser tri-cities area, talk with Taylor Kiggens- she is the best. She sent us a prelisting for a house just down the road from The Estate- literally just down the road, three miles, no turns. A lovely 1500 sf brick rancher built in the late 1960's for sale by the estate of the original owners who had the house built. It sits on about an acre and a quarter just off Patterson Creek with lots of recent improvements [metal roof, newish heat pump, etc]. So we put an off in and poof- it was ours. So now we get to hire contractors to do some painting and flooring
, maybe change our the dated kitchen counter; a collection of little things but nothing that would prevent move-in on closing day if we wanted to. Sadly, all the local contractors are busy so the earliest anyone could get in to do the stuff was January; we decided to tackle the stuff we could ourselves and farm out the complex things- counter, carpet cleaning, some plumbing updates, etc.
Before we left for our annual Jekyll getaway, the kitchen, main bedroom and sewing room were done-done with the basement and tractor shed as done as they're gonna get for now, AND we have a new backyard gazebo to screen in over the winter. The living room and guest room/office is next up on our return, but for now, we vacation.
