After going radio slient on A Grateful Hearth while we worked through more sensitive financial and assessment portions of the home buying and selling process, it’s been an incredible rollercoaster. Out of all of the things in buying the homestead that we would have encountered, we would not have foreseen the inspection debacle!
The Inspection
The homestead we are buying is only 8 years old – its northern Colorado and lets face it, people lived there. So you expect to find a few things, there’s always something. Maybe hail has impacted the roof or something, but isn’t needed just yet. Maybe the dog scratched weather stripping or some screws are loose on something. Still, at only 8 years old, you don’t expect to run into anything that is truly material.
Surprise!
With a farm, animals dig holes. When holes are against the foundation, they let in moisture. Moisture over time can create problems in walls. Together with some HVAC stuff, and radon – we had some surprises.
Uh, oh. What now?
We had the chance to raise these concerns from the inspection. Yet, there are all kinds of thoughts that run through your mind as the buyer. What if they are unwilling to fix anything? What if there is something important they don’t want to do? What if we have to take on open-ended expenses to fix some of these things?
As you will recall, we recently sold our own house, so we are committed contractually to sell it. That means no “oopsie, we ran into a problem on the house we are buying, so can we stay here please” technically.
The mind does all kinds of things with ambiguity – imagining triumphant visions of conquering all the things and moving into the house, and a few breaths later illustrating the apocalyptical idea of not having a house and being homeless for a bit in an apartment or something while you find something else to buy.
Reasonable People
Thankfully, we have been blessed with reasonable people for the sellers and we were able to work through every single one of the major issues that were brought up. Some of them are not quite fixed just yet, but they are all committed to be fixed prior to closing.
That means that inspection and appraisal on both selling this house and buying the new homestead are clear!
That means that inspection and appraisal on both selling this house and buying the new homestead are clear!
Storage is the Missed Project
As we turn our thoughts to “what the next thing is” we are realizing that some of our investments over the last few years in storage – bookshelves, a cold storage room with metal storage shelves, and pantry cabinets – don’t exist in the new house, yet we depend on the space they provide today. This will probably be ok at first, but we have a few options:
- Do we do some Ikea cabinets?
- Do we just put some storage in the garage?
- Is it worth it to buy and install / retrofit semi-custom cabinets when we are not building the basement from scratch like we did in this house?
Have an idea? What do you think we should do? Watch the video and see our pantry cabinets today, and let us know in the comments below!
About the Author
Wayne, enjoyed the video and your description of the storage quandary. Thought:
If the existing custom cabinets stay, you could buy some less expensive modular cabinets and use them as temporary storage in the new house until you install better cabinets. When you select those those temporary cabinets, select them with a view toward the next place they will go (garage, other house or barn or outbuilding location) once you make the switch.