The offer on the house was accepted, but after viewing the house and property a third time with Phil, who spotted a lot of potential issues, we're rethinking the idea of getting it.
There's a room in my part of it (the basement) that's a fire trap and there's no way to fix it, so it would have to be off-limits as a bedroom, making it fit only as a den or exercise room.
There's a vertical, two or three inch square metal bar midway across the sliding glass door span that seems to have been placed there to "shore up" that part of the structure. The owner couldn't explain to us why it's there, telling Jackie it had "always" been there (something I find hard to believe). Getting a couch or other large piece of furniture past this bar into the basement might not be possible... and WHY IS THAT BAR THERE?!
Most of the windows would have to be re-worked and replaced to make them retain heat throughout the home, upstairs and down.
A down spout outside causes water to come into the basement where the sliding glass door is, we think (based on evidence), so bringing a tractor in and re-defining the draining pattern would have to be done.
We'd have to run a blacktop driveway into the back yard to make it possible to drive my car down to it when I get too old and feeble to climb the stairs.
All of that, and more, adds up to additional money after the purchase, and the windows, sliding glass door and other door downstairs would have to be done right away...
It has been bothering us quite a bit since last night, so we're in the process of seeing how we can either satisfy our concerns or cancel the offer.
The layout of the building is right; the location is lovely; the building itself is the problem. It just doesn't "feel" right, after a lot of thought and consideration. Our Realtor says we can get out of it if we want to. That's a relief. Now we just have to be sure we want to. I'm quite sure we do!
I slept half of the day away and feel almost human again. This four-day weekend has been a God-send!
The family really loved seeing AMAZING GRACE last night. They all thanked me for bringing it. Rent it and find out why. You'll probably want to buy it afterward and watch it every year or so. If I ever get to England I want to go by Westminster Abbey and pay my respects to Wilberforce and Pitt. Wilberforce worked twenty years to abolish the British slave trade against immense odds, and the way they finally did it ended it everywhere within a few years. It's a riveting piece of history. I have rarely been as moved by a historical movie as I am by this one.
The Realtor gave me a Casio keyboard he was going to donate to Goodwill. I had to get a 9V adapter for it, but that was all it cost me. I've ordered a Reader's Digest Keyboard Course from the Paragon catalog, so in about ten days I'll start teaching myself to play the piano again. (I played it as a seven and eight year old, but not since. I love the piano, and this Casio keyboard has a lot of bells and whistles so I can make the keyboard sound like a lot of different instruments and add rhythms and echoes and all sorts of fun stuff to the practice.)
I'm more than half way through Billy Graham's book about the Holy Spirit. Good stuff. The Holy Spirit has always been less well known to me, so this book has been an eye-opener. After all, it was the Holy Spirit who beckoned me into God's kingdom back in 1999 -- it's the least I can do to find out more about Him and what He does for believers! Since he's also called the "Holy Ghost" I thought he might be kinda spooky -- but fear not! He's One with the Father and the Son -- all part of the divine plan to prepare us for our eternal home and for our present and future earth-bound circumstances!
Phil got me the 19 inch LCD flat-screen monitor, so I'm looking at it now as I type this. Archie wants to lie in front of it, now that there's room between the keyboard and the monitor, so I have to keep pushing him back to his "old" place beside the keyboard, or I can't see the monitor!
He finds the cursor and the "creeping" letters endlessly fascinating on this new monitor. He didn't notice them before... Creating with cats can be challenging!
Ciao (or meow?) for now!
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