buying a house part 3

first of all, happy new years. i think i was afraid that 2008 would pass quite uneventfully because, after moving every year and making a major change (school to grad school to job to different job) this year was relatively stable. it's like i'm abandoning my life as an urban cowboy secret agent and *gasp* settling down to one lifestyle. but i guess if i did one thing to upset the status quo and prove to myself that i'm not becoming old and complacent (but still making some attempt to move up in life), it's to have jumped headfirst, almost blindly, into buying a foreclosed home.

today we had our house inspection, done by Mr. Paul Maida, a very thorough and well recommended inspector. he had a funny speech habit of sometimes ending the last two sentences with very drawn out, emphatic syllables, which made you really listen. we scheduled the inspection for 10 am for four hours, but my officemate herb had said that he spent a full four hours on a 1 floor condo, so he naturally spent about 7 hours on our 2.5 story building.

we found a lot of interesting notes about the house. first, when we came in that morning, the dewinterization process, which a plumber had done in 5 minutes earlier, revealed that there were some large cracks in the 2nd floor heating. ie, we saw that water had accumulated in the light fixture on the first floor and was flooding the living room, and when we went up to the 2nd floor, there was a cloud of fog basically because the steam from the boiler was continuously coming out and there was brownish liquid all over the 2nd floor kitchen. naturally we called eugene to complain, and he was fairly upset too. between paul and jordan complaining to him, i felt that i no longer needed to hire a real lawyer.

other problems we found were that the far room in the house had a mold problem stemming from the roof, which was relatively flat and not sealed right. unfortunately there's a nice deck which was not leveled, and also right on top of the sealing, so if we were to truly clean up the room, we'd have to demolish the deck and redo the ceiling. ugh.

but other than that, the inspection went very thoroughly and well. we were tired but satisfied that this house would be a lot of work, but probably still be a good buy.

so at this point, we've finished the inspection, signed and received a copy of the executed P&S contract, and locked in the interest rate with the mortgage company. let's take a break to celebrate the new years, and begin next year with a bang. as long as it's not from the full propane tank that was stored next to the boiler.