House Hunting / Moving Again

We spent quite a while cleaning up credit and getting fit to buying our first house. In the early spring of 2005 we found a listing that seemed to be a great price. The house was quite small but the large lot made up for the size of the house. We inquired on the property but by then we were too late. Apparently within hours of the listing the house was flooded with inquiries and an offer had been accepted the same day. It was this that put us into the officially looking for a house mode. The realtor that contacted us on this property started showing us houses… What’s interesting is that the second house he showed us is the house we eventually bought. Our first impression was nice house, nice lot very private but a bit too pricy for us. It took a lot more looking for us to realize that the house fit our needs very well and with a ready-made apartment in the basement the prospects for income grew as well.

I won’t bore you with the details of mortgages and rates, of course there were all kinds of trials and tribulations to detail there. Instead, I will stick to the theme so far with moving. Ah, once again packing all the memories and accumulated trinkets up for another move. Although this one was at least just across town. Not too bad at all, not likely to have a head gasket blow enroute.

We opted for Ryder this time instead of U-Haul which we have since been boycotting with a vengeance. It seems the only time their vehicles get maintained is when they break down. Not exactly a model business plan to follow, in my opinion.

The closing was set for August 31st the day our lease was set to expire. We figured that we could pack everything up and move it all night long and have the keys ready to be left by morning.

I picked up the Ryder truck while Holly went through the closing process. I had Jonah and Brielle with me which made the pickup a little more interesting but not enough to write it all out for you now…

We started packing everything into the truck which was taking much longer than we were expecting. Much to our surprise a few of the guys from the mortgage company came over to help us move. Since we still hadn’t made any close friends that we could ask to help us move, they found it in the kindness of their hearts to come over and help us load up and move our house over.

It took us longer than we expected. We had to stop for a few hours and start again early in the morning when the help came back to assist us again. From 9:00 pm till 2:30 am I moved items to the house.

We were complete with the move by early afternoon and had completed the clean-up of the townhouse. I handed the keys to Rocko, who as usual was very kind. I bade him farewell and headed back to the new house.

The only snafu with the whole house purchasing process was our view from the back yard. Our house is situated on the side of a hill and all the times we had toured the property a large amount of trees filled the backyard. Our property is fenced in the back by chain link fence. The very back fence is taller with barbed wire. This is for the security of a portion of the sewer system and the power plant. When we toured the property this was all covered in trees.
The next morning after we started moving in I looked out the back windows to find no trees. Bare sand with construction equipment everywhere. Trees were still being ripped out as I watched in dismay.

We found out a little later in the day when the neighbors stopped by to greet us. They said that there was a three year construction plan to rebuild a state of the art sewer treatment station to replace the one currently there. This has been the only drawback to our whole process of the move. On one hand the trees that used to block our view of the Port Jefferson Harbor no long block this view. We now have a pretty good view of the water if you can focus past the dome of the plant behind us. We are trying to figure out several options for screening this view. It appears that Bamboo is a possible solution to our view. Within a short period of time we should be able to have the area hidden behind a forest of bamboo. We’ll keep you posted on this.