Wow it has been a long time! What a messed up year I've had for this blog! Almost totally abandoning this thing, but not quite. I've been thinking about this a whole lot and trying to get back to it. Well here I am, back at last? At least I hope I'm back.
I've been working hard the last couple of weeks trying to stock my stores on eCrater, Etsy and Facebook. The stores have run extremely low without me having much chance to get new items listed. Like I said it has been a messed-up year.
We got kicked out of the house we were renting. In April we were notified that we had 90 days to get out. Well, the landlord first raised the rent for June by phone call and then sent us a letter verifying the rent raise. The letter also said, Oh by the way I want you out by July 15. So we went out looking to buy a house even though we had right of first refusal on the house we were renting. The landlord refused to give us a price he wanted to sell the house for.
Well within a week in April we found a house and put in an offer. The homeowners didn't want to move until July 15th. We got them to move their date to July 8th giving us a week to move. We started looking for storage units but none were available until about the 3rd week in May. We filled the first 10 x 15 unit within a week and tried to get another unit.
We had to wait until mid June for the second 10 x 15 unit and we pretty much filled that one in about another week. We tried to get another unit any size but none were available. We finally got a 10 x 15 unit in an air conditioned building toward the end of June, filling that unit by July 5th. All during this time our landlord kept contacting us and telling us we had to be out sooner!
The landlord's sister a real estate agent called yelling at us that her brother was being too nice to us and didn't have to give us that much time to get out. So the landlord tells us he wants to paint while we are still in the house, he would be there on the 6th of July to start painting, so we told him we would be out on the 1st of July. Because of all the problems with getting storage units we didn't quite make it.
Our landlord shows up on July 4th while we were still finishing up and wanted to know why we weren't out. We finished the next day on the 5th of July. We had moved out and into a cabin with a bunch of our stuff, our 2 cats and our houseplants on the 1st of July. By July 5th when we finished our 2 cars were full of odds and ends and things we couldn't get into our 3 storage units.
Part of the move very obviously involved moving my cast iron, cleaned, not cleaned, items for sale, parts of my collection, all kinds of stuff. I don't know how many pieces, but a lot, way too much, way more than I wanted to move. The cast iron probably easily weighed over half-a-ton.
I never shut down my stores and kept selling things all during the move and when we lived in the cabin. There was only one item that I had a lot of trouble finding that I had sold. We ended up living in the cabin for 15 days and not one of them was any fun. We were cramped for space surrounded by piles of our stuff in a one bedroom cabin with 2 adults, 2 kids and 2 cats. A friend or ours took care of our rabbit so we didn't have to worry about him and his cage taking up a lot of room.
We were supposed to close on the house on the 8th and of course that didn't happen. At the last minute our bank brought up issues that weren't issues. Our loan officer was out with 2 ulcers that needed surgery. The loan officer's backup took the day off for personal issues. We were left just hanging in the dark.
We ended up closing on the 15th of July after missing another date of the 13th. The actual owners of the house were traveling back and forth from NY to ME for the closing. The actual owners wanted to cancel the sale on us, blaming us for the delays after we waited for them for over 3 months because they wanted to throw a farewell party in the house. When we finally signed all the papers the owners refused to turn over the keys to us because they didn't want to be held liable if anything happened!
This turned into a nice little row in the lawyers office. There was me and my wife and our real estate agent, their real estate agent who was on our side even though she was friends with the sellers. They were an elderly couple and their daughter and daughter-in-law (who was living in the house). And stuck in the middle was the poor closer, the lawyer was gone for the weekend and couldn't be reached.
The elderly woman wanted her money right then and there or she wouldn't turn over the keys. Our real estate agent came up with drawing up an agreement that absolved the sellers of all responsibility which we signed so we could get the keys. The real estate agents all said it was the absolute worst closing they had ever been involved with.
Now I had to start moving all of our stuff out of storage and into the house! Week and weeks and weeks of moving stuff. I haven't finished yet we have a lot of stuff still in one storage unit and a lot of boxes here at the house yet to unpack. We are trying to decide were to put things in our new home.
Our old landlord kept our security deposit accusing of of all kinds of stuff. It was unbelievable the things he accused us of. He complained because he had to top off the oil tank because it was $17 below full, what is that 5 gallons of oil from a 275 gallon tank! He hasn't sold the house yet and is renting it again after holding out for five months trying to sell!
Then to top it all off, I had a little spot of basal cell carcinoma. The doctor proceeded to cut out a 4 inch strip from my back with 15 stitches, telling me to do nothing for 4 weeks. The doctor's husband is her partner and he removed the stitches, I thought I was all set at that point but my wife asked the doctor if I needed more time and he said to go another 2 weeks without doing anything.
That is about the point the depression really started to set in, 6 weeks with doing nothing! But now I'm finally back at it! I have a lot of ideas for blogs and a lot of things I promised in the past to write about. So there are many, many things to do. I've added a couple of things to my collection that I can write about. More book reviews, more auction reviews are to come! A blog about Griswold in general, maybe some amusing items about buying cast iron.
I've been working hard the last couple of weeks trying to stock my stores on eCrater, Etsy and Facebook. The stores have run extremely low without me having much chance to get new items listed. Like I said it has been a messed-up year.
We got kicked out of the house we were renting. In April we were notified that we had 90 days to get out. Well, the landlord first raised the rent for June by phone call and then sent us a letter verifying the rent raise. The letter also said, Oh by the way I want you out by July 15. So we went out looking to buy a house even though we had right of first refusal on the house we were renting. The landlord refused to give us a price he wanted to sell the house for.
Well within a week in April we found a house and put in an offer. The homeowners didn't want to move until July 15th. We got them to move their date to July 8th giving us a week to move. We started looking for storage units but none were available until about the 3rd week in May. We filled the first 10 x 15 unit within a week and tried to get another unit.
We had to wait until mid June for the second 10 x 15 unit and we pretty much filled that one in about another week. We tried to get another unit any size but none were available. We finally got a 10 x 15 unit in an air conditioned building toward the end of June, filling that unit by July 5th. All during this time our landlord kept contacting us and telling us we had to be out sooner!
The landlord's sister a real estate agent called yelling at us that her brother was being too nice to us and didn't have to give us that much time to get out. So the landlord tells us he wants to paint while we are still in the house, he would be there on the 6th of July to start painting, so we told him we would be out on the 1st of July. Because of all the problems with getting storage units we didn't quite make it.
Our landlord shows up on July 4th while we were still finishing up and wanted to know why we weren't out. We finished the next day on the 5th of July. We had moved out and into a cabin with a bunch of our stuff, our 2 cats and our houseplants on the 1st of July. By July 5th when we finished our 2 cars were full of odds and ends and things we couldn't get into our 3 storage units.
Part of the move very obviously involved moving my cast iron, cleaned, not cleaned, items for sale, parts of my collection, all kinds of stuff. I don't know how many pieces, but a lot, way too much, way more than I wanted to move. The cast iron probably easily weighed over half-a-ton.
I never shut down my stores and kept selling things all during the move and when we lived in the cabin. There was only one item that I had a lot of trouble finding that I had sold. We ended up living in the cabin for 15 days and not one of them was any fun. We were cramped for space surrounded by piles of our stuff in a one bedroom cabin with 2 adults, 2 kids and 2 cats. A friend or ours took care of our rabbit so we didn't have to worry about him and his cage taking up a lot of room.
We were supposed to close on the house on the 8th and of course that didn't happen. At the last minute our bank brought up issues that weren't issues. Our loan officer was out with 2 ulcers that needed surgery. The loan officer's backup took the day off for personal issues. We were left just hanging in the dark.
We ended up closing on the 15th of July after missing another date of the 13th. The actual owners of the house were traveling back and forth from NY to ME for the closing. The actual owners wanted to cancel the sale on us, blaming us for the delays after we waited for them for over 3 months because they wanted to throw a farewell party in the house. When we finally signed all the papers the owners refused to turn over the keys to us because they didn't want to be held liable if anything happened!
This turned into a nice little row in the lawyers office. There was me and my wife and our real estate agent, their real estate agent who was on our side even though she was friends with the sellers. They were an elderly couple and their daughter and daughter-in-law (who was living in the house). And stuck in the middle was the poor closer, the lawyer was gone for the weekend and couldn't be reached.
The elderly woman wanted her money right then and there or she wouldn't turn over the keys. Our real estate agent came up with drawing up an agreement that absolved the sellers of all responsibility which we signed so we could get the keys. The real estate agents all said it was the absolute worst closing they had ever been involved with.
Now I had to start moving all of our stuff out of storage and into the house! Week and weeks and weeks of moving stuff. I haven't finished yet we have a lot of stuff still in one storage unit and a lot of boxes here at the house yet to unpack. We are trying to decide were to put things in our new home.
Our old landlord kept our security deposit accusing of of all kinds of stuff. It was unbelievable the things he accused us of. He complained because he had to top off the oil tank because it was $17 below full, what is that 5 gallons of oil from a 275 gallon tank! He hasn't sold the house yet and is renting it again after holding out for five months trying to sell!
Then to top it all off, I had a little spot of basal cell carcinoma. The doctor proceeded to cut out a 4 inch strip from my back with 15 stitches, telling me to do nothing for 4 weeks. The doctor's husband is her partner and he removed the stitches, I thought I was all set at that point but my wife asked the doctor if I needed more time and he said to go another 2 weeks without doing anything.
That is about the point the depression really started to set in, 6 weeks with doing nothing! But now I'm finally back at it! I have a lot of ideas for blogs and a lot of things I promised in the past to write about. So there are many, many things to do. I've added a couple of things to my collection that I can write about. More book reviews, more auction reviews are to come! A blog about Griswold in general, maybe some amusing items about buying cast iron.
Our "Quirky Little "L" Shaped Home" my name for it anyway. I have started calling the "L" "The North Wing" to make it sound like we are living in a mansion. Ha, Ha! My store is eventually going to be in the"L" at the white door you can see.
