The Saga Continues

Home ownership is not for the faint of heart. 

As a Realtor, I see how hard it is to find "the home" and then get all the paperwork done before you are given the keys to your new home.  Right now, I have a client that is supposed to close on a house on Monday, but their paperwork has still not been cleared because the bank is waiting to get the appraisal report back from the appraiser (who completed the appraisal last Friday!).  To say my buyers are on pins and needles is an understatement.  Especially since they have to travel here to get to closing and they have a child in middle school that either needs to skip school or find a friend's house to stay while they are gone. 

I've seen it time and time again, no matter the stress leading up to closing day, the buyers are so excited to have a place to call their own.  Once those keys are placed in their hands, the troubles they just overcame are forgotten.  After all, they have a home that someone else can't tell them what to do (except if they live in an HOA where they restrict what you can do to the outside of the property), right?

Last fall I learned that's a bit of a fallacy.  My insurance company was able to force me to replace my roof (or else they would drop my insurance).  If I didn't have insurance on the house, my mortgage company would have forced me to pay for their policy (which cost 3X as much and only covered the structure of the house and not any of our stuff).

We closed on our house almost 3 years ago.  Since then, we have repaired or replaced:

• Pool pump
• Kitchen sink (rusting and ruining counter) and kitchen faucet (leaking)
• Roof
• Air Conditioner
• Carpet through pretty much the entire house
• Washer & Dryer
• Refrigerator
• Oven element
• "Storage Room" flooding with water when it rained heavily

And last night we had septic water start backing up into one of our showers.  We're praying it's a simple plugged pipe.  If it's not that, at a minimum we will need the septic pumped but we could also need to have our septic tank and or drain field replaced.  Add to that the fact that we have a detached pole barn that is beginning to fall apart and we've got more expenses on the horizon.

Like I said in the beginning... home ownership is not for the faint of heart.  We will get through this.  We always have.  But for those of you out there that think you'll get those keys and life will be easy after that.  Not necessarily true.  It takes work to keep the house in good shape.  It takes money (sometimes lots of it) to be able to sell your house a few years down the road and gain some equity (and that's not even guaranteed).  But it is nice being able to have a place that, for the most part, you can call your own and decorate it as you see fit.

The Insurance Saga Continues - Sort of

As my regular readers know, we recently had some issues with our insurance company.  They threatened to drop us if we didn't get our roof replaced.  When we couldn't get it done by their deadline (which was unreasonable mind you), they did in fact drop us.  I submitted proof of the replacement on the same day they sent us a refund check which meant I then had to send them payment for the rest of our policy year in order to get reinstated.  I'd even gotten a notice saying that our policy was reinstated a couple weeks ago. 

To my horror, when I got the mail today there was a refund check from the insurance company.  My first thought, "Oh no!  They dropped us for good this time."  As soon as I got inside, I called the insurance company and found out that not only had I paid for my insurance policy, so had my mortgage company so the refund was valid.

But.... that meant that my escrow is probably low, so rather than wait for the bank to call me, I gave them a quick call to see how quickly I needed to deposit the check and then send them their payment.  Much to my surprise, I was informed that only a portion of the amount of the refund check needs to be sent to the mortgage company to cover the shortage. It turned out to be only 16.5% of the check in fact.

This particular snafu, meant that rather than my insurance company refunding me the overage in my escrow come March, I got it today.  Wahoo!  Oh, and I also found out my mortgage payment will be going down soon (although only slightly), because our new insurance premium is going down as a result of the new roof.

Sometimes the thing in the mail that you think is scary isn't.  Sometimes it's God helping you out when you need it. 

The Saga Continues

Yesterday was a good day for our roof.  With the help of a friend of ours, we were able to put the water-proof barrier down over half of our roof.  We even got a little rain part of the way through putting it on, and were able to glory in how well the rain just rolled down the barrier.

That barrier stuff is AWESOME!

Because of hubby's work / sleep schedule today, we opted to finish the second half of the roof tomorrow afternoon so we left the tarps only on the half that was not complete.

This evening we were sitting in church and we heard thunder in the distance.  Hubby whipped out his phone and looked at his radar app.  After seeing all the red coming at us and our house, he went out to the lobby to see if there was a lot of wind with the storm.  He came back a couple minutes later and said there didn't appear to be much wind, so he didn't think we needed to worry that the tarps would blow off the roof.

Three and a half hours later (after church, small group, and dinner with our small group) we got home.  When we noticed small branches down on our driveway we were a little worried.  When we got out of the car hubby said he smelled wet wood.  After quickly changing, he went up on the roof.  I had something to do real quick inside, and when I went outside to see how things were, he yelled down that the tarps had come off.  Ugh!

Unfortunately, the tarps had slid down the roof about 1/3 of the way.  The roof has been re-tarped for the night just in case more rain comes.  The current plan is to take the tarps off as soon as I wake up tomorrow (provided no rain is coming) so that the wood can dry out before we are hopefully able to finish putting down the barrier before we get more rain.

I can't wait for this part to be done.  Aside from the barrier and some paperwork, the rest is being done by someone else. 

It's Raining Pavers

That was fun...

As we're wrapping up dinner before hubby leaves for work tonight we notice the wind picking up (obvious precursor to heavy rain).  Hubby decides to go onto the roof to make sure our tarps are holding up.  A couple minutes later Son and I go outside to check on him and watch a paving stone fall off our roof.  Son and I run into the house to get our tennis shoes on (we had on flip flops) so we can go and help him.  As I'm running back outside I get a text from hubby that he probably sent at the same time I was running into the house.  It said "Help watch falling stone."  That was an understatement.  I think we had 7 pavers fall off the roof and the tarps moved and uncovered close to 1/4 of our total roof.

It took us over 30 minutes to get the tarps back on in a semi-useful way.  Unfortunately, the pavers falling may have ripped some holes in the tarps so we're praying that we don't end up with a lot of wet wood from that (hubby finished replacing the bad wood yesterday).

In additional to putting the 7 fallen pavers back on the roof we added 18 other pavers that we had sitting next to the garage.  All those trips up and down the ladder with pavers... I had my leg workout for the day.

The good news... we talked to a roofer this morning and we've decided that we're going to do a little more prep work but we're going to have the roofer put on a metal roof.  By doing a bunch of the work ourselves we're going to get a metal roof for pretty much the same cost as having someone do all the work involved in installing a metal roof.

The bad news... we have at least 1 days work before we can have the inspector come to look at the roof.  After we pass that inspection we can put the stuff down that waterproofs the roof again.  The weather today called for a 20% chance of rain.  Friday and Saturday it's 40%, and Sunday it's 80%.  Did I mention hubby has off Sundays and Mondays so we were hoping he could work on the roof Sunday and get the inspection on Monday? 

Please pray for us... That no one will get hit by falling pavers, that the tarps won't leak, and that we can get this done soon.

The Clock is Ticking

A little over a month ago we were told by our homeowners insurance company that we needed to replace our roof or they were going to drop our insurance.  Finding insurance in Florida is hard enough as it is.  Add to that that our house was built in 1970 and it's even harder.

A week ago, we received the money from the home equity line we applied for.  We also got the permit to do the roof work ourself.  With the help of some wonderful friends and family we were able to get the old shingles and tar paper off in 2 days.  It was tough work, but from what I've been told it'll be the hardest part of the process.

Unfortunately, since then it's been raining every day so we haven't even been able to get our first inspection completed (there are 3 different inspections we need to pass).  Not only am I watching our deadline quickly approach, but we are constantly checking and adjusting the tarps to make sure they are covering the roof so we don't get any leaks.

With just over 3 weeks left till our deadline, I pray the rain stops long enough for us to get the roof done soon.

Bringing Things to Light

I have a thing about clean bathrooms.  I hate having nasty bathrooms.  I also hate cleaning them, but not more than I hate using a nasty bathroom so a couple days ago I spent about 30 minutes scrubbing my shower.  I. mean. scrubbing.  I used a course brush and even a toothbrush to get in the grout lines.  When I was done, I felt pretty accomplished.  My shower was "clean."

Or so I though...

Yesterday my hubby decided to put a new light bulb in the shower (you know those extra white ones), and now my shower looks like I didn't even touch it the other day.

Ugh!

Revamp or Give Up?

We have been visiting my in-laws and today they were out of the house so I decided it was a good opportunity for the kids to do some school.  The goal was to do a basic review and just get them both used to the idea that school will be starting in-force soon.
My daughter was excited.  She wants to start reading and doing math like her big brother.

Her big brother on the other hand, wanted (and wants) nothing to do with school.  He cried and whined about how much he hates school.  He told me he hates reading and writing and the only thing he likes is math and doing crafts.  I was able to get him to read a little and write even less, but it was like pulling teeth.

I've been reading around and getting advice from different people and I've heard the following:

• Bribe him (paying him something like $.01 a page or a larger amount like $100 if he does it every day till ____).
• Force him to do school.
• Send him to school so someone else is forcing him to do school.
• Send him to a Montessori school so it's at least a little less formal.
• Leave him alone.  He'll get with the program when he's ready. 

I have so many things running through my head right now that I just don't know what to do.  Jon was a reluctant learner till he was about 9 (so I have 1.5 more years).  I want to leave him alone and see if he will come around on his own, but I also don't want to get in trouble with the school system.

Any new suggestions our there?