We had five days to move. We put the house on the market April 1st. We had our first and only walk through April 12th, followed by an offer on April 14th, 2014. Crazy fast. We had seen trailers in our neighborhood with "For Sale" signs for at least 6 months. One of our neighbors took two years to sell their place. We expected 6 months. It was on the market for about 2 weeks.
We signed papers and got the money April 21st... in cash. We were not expecting him to come with his girlfriend, two adorable little girls, and pay in cash. It was terrifying to have that much cash in our house overnight. After our buyer had left (around 11pm at night), we took turns holding the stack of bills. Our buyer wanted to move in Sunday afternoon because they needed to be out of their apartment by April 28th. If they had stayed another day they would have had to sign another one year lease. Since my husband is such a nice guy, we agreed to their terms. My Dad's opinion was "Screw 'em, move out when your ready to leave." We had experienced this before on the other end though. When J originally bought the trailer the little old lady who lived there took 2 months AFTER papers were signed and he officially owned the place to get her stuff moved out. J had to live in an extended stay hotel during the wait time and did not want anyone to go through that again. So that left us with only 5 days to clear everything out.
We had a small 5' x 10' storage unit that we had started filling in March. Getting the house ready to show we had to de-clutter a bit to make the space look bigger.
But our adorable 5' x 10' storage unit down the street had to be upgraded to a 10' x 10' to fit the rest of the stuff.
After 12 years you tend to accumulate a lot of stuff.
Our new storage unit. I need to thank
Atherton Storage for all of their help in setting up a unit. They are the nicest people.
More moving.
I got a PO Box up by where I worked at the University Research Park.
One many many many car trips to the storage unit.
Our beloved Lord of the Rings swords came with us of course. (In my home selling class I learned that, for those of you looking to sell, swords are not a selling feature of a home.)
But alas, our 10'x10' was not big enough for 12 years of stuff so we had to get another 5'x10' to shove it all in. This storage unit was stuffed full on Saturday April 26th, 2014. The day of the rain. Utah, being a scrub desert, does not get much moisture. Saturday was the only day we were able to utilize the help family members to move the big furniture items (bed, tv, futon, tv stand, dresser, painting table, etc) and their truck. This was the only day in the month of April that it rained. And rained. And rained. And rained. It continued raining all day, all night, and into the next morning. The only day we could move stuff, was the day it rained.
This is what was left of our home. Our sanctuary. Our little bit of postage stamp yard. Our trailer.
Our pink tree and our nearly dead but still clinging to life pine slowly being choked by vines.
Our front porch that only visitors used.
Our back shed surrounded by rose bushes.
Our master bathroom.
Our gorgeous soaking tub.
Our lovely wide bathroom counter.
Our now empty bedroom.
Our hallway.
Our second bedroom.
Toy room.
Painting room.
Our living room.
TV room.
Our kitchen.
I am going to miss my gas stove top so much.
The backsplash not so much.
The orange counters not so much.
The gas stove top and oven I am going to miss a lot.
We left our front window dragon.
We are going to miss our central air conditioning unit so much.
Our house key.
The weird 1970's fake leather, wood, and painted brick.... I don't know what this was supposed to be.
The second bathroom.
Our bathtub and toilet. I will miss them so much.
This was Takashi's corner.
I spent so much time in front of this mirror.
Yes, we miss our trailer very much. But it was time to move on and into a house of our own. But before that we spent the next month in a tiny basement bedroom at my parent's house while we were working through paper-work for the new house.
I started online house hunting December 2013, and intensified my searches to daily or near daily around February 2014. By the time we put the house up for sale in April I knew what I wanted, where I wanted it, and what we could afford. The trailer was "sold" April 14th and we knew we had about a week before we would meet with the buyer April 21st and sign the papers to finish the deal. That left us with one week to find a house. So we worked with our selling the trailer agent Kathy Jensen (nicest person in the world to work with) and our work schedules which ended up giving us about one day to hunt for houses. We saw six and picked one. Since I did not take pictures of the rejected houses, I will give their designated nicknames instead.
1 - The painted paneling basement house with the scary furnace room.
2- The crooked cupboard house. Everything about it was run down and in various stages of disrepair.
3 - The Grandma House. Complete with popcorn sealing, a laughably tiny kitchen, green linoleum floors, and brown shag carpet.
4 - The crazy Russian house. As we were greeted by a crazy Russian lady in her bathrobe who proceeded to take us on a tour of her dirty house, expect the room her brother slept in because he worked the night shift.
5 - The fixer-upper. When you walk in and see the refrigerator in the living room, you know something's up. There was also a tangled bird-nest of wiring in the back.
6 - The our house. The Fort.
$10,000 out of my price range (I'm the cheap one in the relationship), but move in ready and met most of our must haves.
The Fort was on the market 11 days. We put in a bid. Then three hours later another couple put in their bid and we got in a bidding war. With steel, skill, and heart we won that war and began the loan process.
So glad you won that war!
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