Sunday, September 23, 2007

It's all over...

We moved at the end of August and got everything out of the house in time for our closing.

Although the closing was delayed twice. The main reason for the delays was the buried oil tank that we had to get rid of.

Nowadays, a buried oil tank is just trouble no matter how you look at it. In our area, all of them will have to be removed or replaced in the near future so as a condition of the sale we had to have that done.

Buried oil tanks are a potential environmental nightmare. All of them eventually corrode and leak so our state is very strict on how they are dealt with. The must be handled as hazardous waste, the soil around them must be tested and if contaminated are also handled as hazardous waste.

Basically, the sidewalk in front of my house (I live in an urban town outside of NYC) was dug up from the front of my house to the street and almost from one side of the property to the other. The hole, when all the digging was done, was 9 feet deep (down to bedrock!) and about 10 feet wide and 12 feet long. About 49,000 pounds of dirt was excavated and the resulting hole was filled by the same about of gravel.

The excavation, removal of the tank and dirt, fill and new concrete cost me $20k and took about two days.

The first delay in the closing was due to having this work done, the second delay was in waiting for the soil tests to return so that the remaining dirt surrounding the hole could be certified as non-contaminated.

All that took a week in time but once it was done we closed and got a nice fat check from the profit. I actually went out this weekend and spent a small piece of it buying a couple of toys for us (a Nintendo DS for the boy, new video camera for me and a Blackberry Pearl cell phone for the wife). We worked hard over the last three months to get to this point and we deserved it.

So, it's all done now and the bills are paid off and I feel good.

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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Moving Day Approaches

It's coming...

I can feel it like a freight train in the distance on a quiet plains night...

Moving day!

Our house has become more and more empty with the passing days.

All the pictures are off of the walls. Tchotcke's are packed away and moved to storage. Our clothes are packed in boxes and only the ones we need for the time from now till the move are out. The garbage men have been hating us for about a month now what with the piles and bags of 10 years of crap we have been saving for no real reason put on the curb twice a week.

I even paid a company to come clean a ton of old detritus out of our basement (I can't believe all the space we really had down there!).

We have a mover coming in about a week and I'm not sure we are going to be ready.

As far as the closing is concerned... We have tentative closing date that is about a week after our move but it is dependent on one major thing - we have to have the below ground oil tank dug up, removed, and any leakage remediated. This has to be done before we close. The contractor is scheduled to do this next week.

One other thing is that the bank that holds our mortgage has filed forecloser papers on us. Now it's a race to close and pay them back before they can get a judgement against us. I have to get the papers to the lawyer on Monday so that they can follow up on it.

I just can't wait for it to all be over.

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