Fastest House Purchase and Sale Ever!

Remember me?! It's OK if you don't because I barely know who I am these days, either. I seem to hit the floor running and run until I collapse again.

Have you ever done something so rash and crazy that you're left sitting there wondering what the hell just happened?! That just happened to us recently. We were visiting friends at their cottage, and in the early morning wait for the rest of the world to wake up (seriously - this waking at 4:30am STINKS!!! Although by 8:00 am I've usually accomplished far more than the average person does in an entire day), I got online (yes, I broke the golden rule of cottaging and accessed Facebook) and saw a post for a house for sale. Against my better judgement, I clicked it...and I liked what I see. A LOT. A whole damn lot. So much that I gave up on my own, I'm NEVER even looking at another house" thing and showed it to My Other Half (MOH). Then I forgot about it. I had resolved that I was going to grow old and be removed toes first from the house we currently live in, and quickly returned to that mindset. It was MOH that brought it up the following week asking if I wanted to go and look at it. YES! YES! YES! I said no. I didn't want to be disappointed yet again. I just couldn't take that right now. I have NO idea what the hell people are thinking when they build houses around here, but last year we saw every 4+ bedroom house for sale within a 40 km radius and every single one of them had some form of bloody ridiculous and stupid unique design features or they were junk heaps. We saw a lot of homes back then, and we were left 100% discouraged - thus my, "I'm NEVER even looking at another house" stance. BUT...MOH said that he'd like to see it, so I jumped for joy and squealed right out loud reluctantly and cautiously agreed. So, we went that afternoon to see it. I walked in there with full intentions of finding all sorts of fault and things in various states of disrepair or some kind of major design flaw. I didn't find it. All I could come up with was the fact that there was wallpaper (subtle at that) in the master bedroom, and carpet in the living room.

MOH and I drove home in silence. In retrospect, I guess you could say that was the calm before the storm - because once we started talking, things went crazy. We put an offer in the next evening. It was accepted. We signed papers and started the ball rolling for selling our house. The next day we started the process of decluttering. Any idea how impossible hard it is to declutter when you've got 5 hoarders people and a dog crammed into a house designed for 3 people?! That afternoon, you know, as my house is in a complete state of disarray and disorganization, we had the stager arrive. She walked around doing her thing and making a 5 paged, double-sided short list of suggestions for us to make our house more sale-able. You know, like painting the whole main floor and the hallway upstairs and the master bedroom. Or painting the solid oak trim and the oak cabinets in the kitchen white. Yeah, we didn't do that. But we did everything else - most of which we were on our "to do" list anyway. So we quickly went to work readying and cleaning things, and a few days later, were ready for the pictures and video. A few days later, incidentally the same day we had the inspection on our new house, the realtor uploaded our listing and made it live. Almost simultaneously the sign was being hammered into the ground at the house. A few hours later we had our first showing, and a few hours later, we returned home completely stunned and armed with pictures of the sold sign on our new house AND to one on our current house. It sold in less than 6 hours. I guess it cleans up nice - and I'm certainly glad that I didn't listen to that NUTBAR stager lady about painting everything.

SO...we're moving. Looked, bought, sold and moved all within a 6 week period. NUTS!

There was some issue with closing dates that had me completely ready to losing my ever-loving mind. Seriously - I could have easily been committed in those days as we waited for confirmation us a little concerned, and although the final result sucks and is exactly what we didn't want and is still a sore spot with me is less than ideal and disappointing, the realtor came through and offered an olive branch by tossing in some movers and cleaners so we can achieve what we wanted to in one day. And of course, the timing of all of this was and is fantastic - as we needed to ready our house for selling, I had to study for and write a final exam. And then, we will be moving in the upcoming weeks, then I'm having some surgery the following week, and then it's Thanksgiving. AND...in between it all, we've moved Teen back to school (she's in an apartment this year), and have worked our full time jobs and such.

BUT...by Hallowe'en, things should be good. While the closing date for us to move is not ideal, we really are excited. This truly is our dream home. We're currently living in the middle of box piles, and are the true picture of living minimally, although, we have cable and internet, so aren't too hard done by. Speaking of which, internet and cable were the first things I set up for the new house - then I dealt with insurance and utilities. You know, priorities and all.

SO, now we're left wondering, Holy shit! What the hell did we just do? what happened. Things happened so quickly, but that was probably a good thing. Perhaps if we'd had a little more time to think, we may have chickened out at some point (Nah...this is a much needed move for our family - we wouldn't have bailed). SO, if you're looking for us in the next few weeks, we'll be buried in boxes...