Where Has Your Mechanic Been?
Happy Monday everyone! I hope that you all had a great weekend. If you are a Hockey fan, then you should be pretty excited. Between Hockey, and NFL playoffs it was a fun sports weekend.
Today I need to talk to all of you about a few things. If you have been following the blog for a while, you know that I try to make about 5 posts a week. Over the last few weeks, that has not been happening. Because I am 100% open with you guys, I need to fill you in.
In early November, my wife and I decided to move. We wanted to get some more land. Something that we could do more with than our little lot. Plus have room to build a sweet shop. 😉 We spent about a month getting our house ready to go on the market. It took about 40 hours for us to sell our house. It was really awesome. We found a house we liked. The best part was, it had 5 acres. Plenty of room for a shop.
I am a pretty cautious guy when it comes to big decisions. We also had an awesome realtor that told us to do ALL the inspections. We did all the inspections and tests that we could. At first the reports came back pretty good. A few little things to be repaired, but nothing crazy. That is until the water test came back. We found out that the water had ~160% the acceptable amount of lead. We requested that the seller install a whole house filter system. The seller didn’t want to do that. He drug his feet and that gave us time to do a ton of research. In that time we found that the company behind the lot was polluting the entire area. Sadly we had to terminate our contract.
At this point we were 2 weeks from closing on our old house. We had back up houses, and no time. We could have rented an apartment, but with 3 dogs that is almost impossible. Jenn and I spent 5 days non stop looking at houses. Most of them were awful. If you have ever bought/sold a house you know how stressful all this can be.
It turns out the lady buying our house got a USDA loan. That is some type of government backed loan. Due to the holidays, there were really backed up. Thank goodness we were able to push back the closing date on our current house. We finally found a really great house. We had to sacrifice a few things, but I think it will be a great move. The garage is 22×28 and might be tall enough for a lift 😉 As of right now we are waiting to see if they accept our offer. I am ready for this all to be over
I hate that I have missed posted for you guys. Also, if you have emailed me and I didn’t respond, I am very sorry. Feel free to email me back, or contact me with that form. Once we know exactly what is going on with the house, The blog will be back to normal. I will also be able to get back to working on the Cabby.
I want to thank you all for hanging in there with me. It has been a incredibly stressful month. I really do appreciate each of you. So stick around, follow of Facebook or Instagram, or Pinterest. I am hoping that the blog will be back to normal in a week or so.
I am glad that things seem to be working out for you. When we moved into our house, we had issues with the house we wanted to buy first, it turned out the seller owed way more on the house than it was worth so that deal fell through. Unfortunately we had already sold our old house.
We ended up staying with my in-laws until we found our current house.
I hope everything keeps working out for you, and try not to get too stressed out by the whole process. In this market, at least you have already sold your existing house.
@Pat,
thanks! Someone needs to come up with an easier way to do this. Something like Carmax for houses HA!
Sounds good to me, and through in a free moving company and you are all set.
Wow! 40 hours to sell your house? That is awesome!
Wait a minute, isn’t the USDA a beef agency? “USDA Certified Prime steaks”. Anyway congrats on finding a house that worked for you guys, now lets hope they accept your offer! 🙂
Don’t get me started on all the desperate ways our wonderful government (and the banking cartel it’s in cahoots with) are trying to keep the credit bubble we’re in from deflating further.
Can’t agree with that more 😉
The people you were going to buy the 5-acre place from are fools. They should have installed the whole house filter system you wanted and gone through with the deal. Now that they are aware of the hazard, they have to disclose it to any other buyer that comes along. If they don’t disclose, they’re opening themselves up to a world of hurt.
Ok, I have a quick update for you guys. The accepted our offer on the house. We had to sacrifice a few things, but all in all it is a GREAT 3.6 acre property. The house is awesome and most importantly, my wife loves it.
We will be getting back to the normal posting schedule very soon. I will most likely add a section of the site all about the garage. Step on will be sealing the floor with an epoxy of some kind. We are SUPER excited. 🙂
Congratulations. I am looking forward to the day when I can have land that has a number other than 0 on the left side of the decimal point.
Have fun planning out the garage, it is always fun seeing something like that take shape.
@Pat,
Thanks! Getting out of the .18acre lot is a dream come true(about 3 years in the making).
I got some initial ideas about the garage. Thinking corrugated steal as wainscoting with a little shelf above it. Maybe yellow walls above that to (kinda) match my tool box.
I’d like to see photos of your new place… sounds cool
Hey Charles, congrats on the house!
I noticed you didn’t have a discussion forum on your site. If you are looking to host DIY, or hot rodding, or mechanic forum for your readers, Mortec is a community for car rebuilder enthusiasts, especially the Chevy small-block engine fans.
Please check it out!
Congrats on getting the offer accepted (AND the quick sale of your home)! I agree with Uwe — the sellers of your first choice property were very foolish not to install the filter. Now stuck with the disclosure, they may be sitting a good long time on that property. (And they’ll likely have to install a system for any other potential buyer or take a deep discount on the property to move it.) So glad it has worked out for you. Keep us posted and send us some photos when you have a chance!
I really hate being part of the US-lawsuit-mentality that has evolved over the past 50 years or so… but this is one time when it seems to make sense.
for those people now “stuck” with their house… I’d do two things, (1) I’d get some legal help and look to determine what damage has been done to the property and seek to either force the company to buy up my land and home at the fair market value WITHOUT it being contaminated, or make up the difference on any sale that comes along (which probably won’t happen now that people will know what they’re getting into). and (2) I immediately get physicals and any other tests done to evaluate my current health and research what future problems could arise from the high levels of lead in the water that has been ingested over the years. if something happens and that company goes under, I’d want to be protected from future devastating medical bills and be vigilant about monitoring things going forward just so there would be no massive surprises later.
I grew up in a town that was found, almost 50 years later, to have been a storage and dumping site for materials from the manhattan project as well as temporary storage from other things. they literally were in and under a building (a big steel quonset hut) just a cyclone fence from my backyard and our garden. we always wondered why we were capable of growing broccoli and cauliflower while snow sat on the ground in winter. we also had 3 above-ground pool liners rot with thousands of tiny holes all over the bottom in the two summers we had the pool (before we just gave up). it wasn’t until I was off to college (15+ years later) that a neighbor did some research and found out why. my mom will never be able to sell her house now without this kind of disclosure as well. she cannot even get home equity loans to make proper internal repairs because the value of the property is now so low since it was all published in local papers as well.
I hate everyone having their first thought being to sue someone, but these are the kids of things that should be covered by a lawsuit. people don’t need to make millions, just cover their losses and a little extra for the hassle because the company was being negligent, and create a fund to cover future health issues for the people of the area.