| Photos: The progress in painting the farmhouse, and--the latest window to be removed from the barn The house in Palatine did not sell. I must have forgotten to post anything about that. The inspection resulted in the buyer backing out because of something he didn't like about the windows. The windows in the house are fine....the buyer was seeming flakier and flakier as time went on. We were starting to wonder if it would fall through. His mail was already being addressed to our Palatine address, before he even signed the contract. Jeff took the mail and left it on the kitchen counter, where the prospective buyer would need to have his real estate agent unlock the door for him in order to get it. Potentially, with our mail still being delivered to OUR address, this buyer would have been going through our mail in our own mailbox to retrieve whatever he thought he needed to have sent there. I went so far as to have the mail held for us at the post office, but the contract was unraveling by then anyway. When the contract was canceled, we found out that he had only put $1000 down as his deposit. We wouldn't have agreed to that if our real estate agent had told us the amount. Doesn't seem like an amount that someone who is serious about buying a house would bother with--if you truly plan to buy the house, you'll be prepared to pay the expected down-payment and not mess around, right? Next, we hired a rental agent, and had 3 contracts to look over by the end of the next weekend. We went with one family who the agent suggested, and they were going to move in by Sept 15. Nope....the dad will be in Korea (I think!) for quite a while, unexpectedly....so they don't want to move in after all. We then found out that they had never signed the contract! At least they offered (through the rental agent) to pay half of the security deposit that they would have needed to pay, but still.....the other 2 contracts were for families who would have moved in by Sept 1st. So now there are a few more interested renters, according to the rental agent. He has the incentive to get people in there, because he doesn't get paid unless there are actually renters in the house. We'll see.... I am SO glad that we didn't decide to try to find and manage renters on our own!!! Farmhouse: Jeff has been hard at work painting the trim and adding a cheery yellow over the old weathered house-color. You can see in one of the photos where the new paint contrasts with the old faded paint. Michael has been helping by power-washing the green mildew off of the siding, and blasting the accumulated dirt off of the white trim. We discovered that at some point, interior paint must have been brushed over the original yellow paint, and it just peels off in sheets, or blasts into paint-splinters under the power-washer's pressure. It's a much-needed facelift, and just in time to protect the cedar siding from the wetness of winter. Barn: Jeff shored-up the rat-gnawed supports that I uncovered in the barn wall, and the first sheet of siding is in place. Then the most incredible storm blew in, and we were very glad that the open side of the barn was covered in tarps for the night. Jeff is out of town for a few days, so the barn work will be whatever we are able to do while he's away. My parents have some windows that they are bringing this weekend, and, if they are close to the right size, that old window-opening (and others on the front of the barn) will soon have a used but new-to-the-barn window to fill the void. Hay: Michael and now Jeremy have been hard-at-work moving bales of hay from the first floor to the hay-loft upstairs. Chris and Michael rigged up a pulley system that hoists a 50+ pound bale of hay up through the hay chute and to the second floor. It still takes a bit of time, but (with 2 people), it's much faster than heaving bale after bale up the rickety stairs and around the corner to the hay loft! Progress! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/ |
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