Happy Holidays to You and Your Family

Murphy’s Law strikes again!

That old adage “if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong” is alive and well. It currently resides in my house with me and my wife.

Earlier this year, in March, we decided to build a new home. This came about because we had a gentleman come to our front door and tell us he’d like to buy our home — it wasn’t for sale at the time. There was no tentativeness in our voices, and we thanked him and told him “No.”

He just stood there, pulled out a piece of paper and wrote his phone number down, just in case we changed our minds. Sneakily, he added another number on the sheet of paper, right below his phone number. It started with a dollar sign…$$$.

We said goodbye and went inside the house. Sue, my wife, hadn’t seen the number he was willing to pay us, so I showed her the note he had handed me. It was a rather large number for this type of house, in this neighborhood, in this small city.

If we lived up north, closer to Chicago, we could have expected such a gracious number, and maybe even demanded more. As we live close to Louisville, Ky, it was a very nice offer for this area. Luckily, the housing market was scorching hot at the time.

Since that day, our house has been a whirlwind of activity — no, wait, make that a cyclone of activity, because that’s what our house looks like right now. We did some serious soul-searching and decided we could sell our house to this gentleman, but only if he let us remain here until our new house was built. He readily agreed, we shook his hand and signed on the dotted line.

That started a process that has been non-stop chaos ever since. We have met with the developer of the new subdivision we are moving into, along with the builder and all the contractors working for the builder. They have assured us that our house will be built and move-in ready by no later than December 31st.

Then came the headaches!

We met with the interior designer in April to pick out all the “bells and whistles” we wanted inside: countertops, sinks, appliances, doorknobs, door handles, cabinets, shelving, flooring, lights — if it goes on the inside of a home, we had to select it.

Of course, with all these choices, we had to go to different vendors to see their choices. We had so many new people’s names and faces to remember that we had to constantly write down who we were talking with and which company they represented.

After sifting through all the choices, we selected those that fit our tastes. We even came to know all the vendors. But then there was a lull in activity at the house. We asked why there was such a delay and were informed that the vendors can’t install what we selected because it was on backorder.

With that, we had to meet with our vendors again and make some alternate selections. Ever since those changes were made things have been clicking. Our new choice of flooring has been installed, our carpet gets installed this week, our countertops and lights are now installed, and the whole interior of the house has finally been painted.

With less than 2 weeks left until we have to move, we are still waiting on toilets, and a handrail going down the steps into our basement. The trouble with that statement is they are supposed to be received on the 26th.

So, here we sit, packed with no place to go. That reminds me of a story from long ago where this mother and father had no place to stay, so they holed up in a barn so the mother could give birth to a child.

It’s funny how something as small as that story can wipe out all the angst we have about moving.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Thanks for reading this!