You Move Me

Saturday is moving day in Melrose. We got 16 or so small and medium sized moving boxes last weekend and started packing. We moved all of those items to Reading on the Monday holiday. There is a wall of boxes and blue bins in the basement. We are starting to put stuff in the bedrooms too.

Joni hired a local moving company that will be at the condo Saturday morning. Aside from furniture and clothing, there is not much else to move. I think they will be done by early afternoon. If all goes well, we will finally spend our first night in Reading on Saturday.

The house seems to be wintering well. The thermostat has been set to 50 downstairs and turned off upstairs. We have used just over 1/2 tank of oil since the cold weather started. I suspect we would normally be on our 2nd tank of oil if we were heating the house for habitation. There has not been any evidence of water in either the attic or basement, so the roof and drainage seem to be in good shape.

I shoveled and chipped away the ice and snow on the driveway and steps in Reading last weekend to prepare for the movers. Last night I finished the job, clearing the ice from front door steps. Of course today the forecast is for another inch or two of snow!!

You never know what you will find when packing. The big find in this move is the video camera. I had not been able to find it for months - since I video taped the "before" images of the condo before the painting, new shower doors, new sink, new curtains, and so on. I have am sorry I missed so many good movie opportunities with Henry. Time to start making up for the loss. I played the last few videos that were on the disk in the camera. Henry definitely looks a little older, but his movements and speech are much more advanced.

I will make sure I have both cameras this weekend to record the move. I want to get video of the "after" for the condo and the "before" for the house.

Contracted

Joni signed the Purchase and Sales agreement yesterday evening. The buyer had already signed. Our respective attorneys had butted heads and did a fair amount of name calling as they passed conditions and addenda back and forth. In the end they agreed to throw out all of their conditions and addenda and have both parties sign the standard P & S form!!

When I spoke to the attorney he apologized and joked about all the work and time that went into the final result of - - - ending where we started. Fortunately we are using the legal service benefit from Beth Israel. It pays for the reasonable costs associated with the sale, including the name calling, so we may not have any out of pocket expenses.

We did have one condition regarding the closing date. Because the time is so short, we have the option to close up to 1 week after 2/28 should the time be needed to clear the title.

Joni and Henry were taking Jim to a scheduled doctor visit today. I am not sure where Ellie is.

The roads are now in pretty good shape after the storm Wednesday. We still have to shovel in Ashland and Reading. I cleared a spot to park the car in Ashland but have not cleared the path to the door. There is about 5 inches of snow with a good bit of ice in it. I had to use a regular dirt shovel to break the crust and then scoop out the chunks of icy snow with the snow shovel. Slow and heavy. The forecast for Saturday is predicting a high slightly above freezing, so we may get some help from Nature clearing up the snow.

A Kitchen in Your Future

So we finally got an acceptable offer for the condo. Joni signed a purchase contract last Tuesday night. This will provide the cash for the kitchen remodel.

The buyer is an older woman who wants to move closer to family. And she has CASH. Without the hassle of financing and mortgage attorneys, she wants to close on Feb 28th. Fine with us, as it saves us another month of expenses.

The purchase and sales is supposed to be signed Thursday Feb 15th. The inspection was done last Saturday and our broker said he did not hear anything that was a significant problem (meaning that both the purchase should go through and the price should not change - or not significantly). We also had someone else who came to see the condo that was interested in making a possible back-up offer.

I retained the same legal counsel we used for buying the Reading house. I spoke to the son of the attorney we used previously. Father and son legal firm - sounds like a TV show. I faxed the draft P & S last Friday.

Joni booked a local moving company already. Turns out it is a family business and they live close to our new house. They will move stuff from Melrose to Reading and then we will move ourselves to Ashland during the time Reading is being renovated. We will probably stay in Reading too, especially on the days when Joni is working and Henry is going to Jim and Ellie's. Finally we will spend a night in our new house!

I put up the new combination CO and smoke detector in Melrose. All of the appliances and utilities are electric and there is no fireplace, so I had not been concerned about CO poisoning. The fire department inspection is scheduled for this Friday. The only other thing I can think of that we need to do around the condo is get the lock off of the storage unit. We have a bunch of mystery keys to try, but if that does not work we also have a hack saw.

Here are the Henry pics. These were taken Feb 8th. Only got a few photos before he took the camera. I am leaving out the thumb and eye-close-ups that follow these and are his self photo specialties.