Has Tools, Will Travel, Needs Sleep

The Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Had To Do

First, let me relay a conversation that occurred between our loan officer and my wonderful, even-tempered significant other.

Loan Officer: We’ll everything looks good on your paperwork, except the appraisal is based on the condition that you “put the kitchen back in.”
MysteryMan: But we’re getting the loan to build a new kitchen.
Loan Officer: Yes, but the appraisal isn’t valid unless you meet the stipulations.
MysteryMan: Uh. But the house is appraised at $15,000 more than we need it to be to get this loan. Can’t they just knock off the cost of the kitchen? It’s only missing two cabinets and a sink.
Loan Officer: No, they chose to do an appraisal with stipulations instead of an as-is appraisal.
MysteryMan: Well can’t you call them back and get the as-is appraisal number?!
Loan Officer: By law I’m not allowed to talk to them. You should probably just put the kitchen back in.
MysteryMan: …
MysteryMan: …
MysteryMan: …
MysteryMan: …
MysteryMan:
But… that doesn’t make any sense. Even if we do, as soon as you give us the loan we’re going to tear the kitchen right out again.
Loan Officer: We can’t give you the loan until you meet the stipulations on the appraisal though.

Unfortunately I can’t relay the rest of the conversation to you, because at that point MysteryMan’s head exploded.

Here’s the thing. I get that people do stupid things with money and financing and houses. BUT. I would think that the reason that there are actual loan officers is because there are some cases in which lending someone large amounts of money requires common sense. More than entering Item A into Field C on the computer. If it didn’t require common sense, then a goddamn monkey could be trained to do the job. And I’m 98% sure a monkey could have figured out that financially we are way over qualified for this loan, we own the house free and clear of debt, and it makes no sense whatsoever to make us put a kitchen for the sole purpose of signing a piece of paper, when 5 seconds later said kitchen will be torn out again.

But… screw ’em.

Original Kitchen
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Kitchen with 15 Pounds of Rat Shit Exposed
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Kitchen being Reinstalled by One Very Pissed Off Woman Armed With Powertools and Beer
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Kitchen After 4 Hours of Reinstalling Cabinets & Fabricating A Counter
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I’m not going to lie. This entire set-up is held in place with one screw, a lot of friction, and the overwhelming force of my rage.

I admit to MY BAD for taking out the counters six months ago before we even knew we would look at getting a loan (MysteryMan wouldn’t consider it for a year) but we were also pretty fucking transparent with this guy about the fact that we’d been working on the house and were going to use the money to finish repairs. And he lured us in with chortles and “no big deals” and then tried to dick us around. Listen… don’t ever bring down upon yourself the wrath of a woman that owns seven different types of power saws. Trust me.

We’ll find out if this passes inspection by the end of the week.

An Anniversary of Sorts

Do you know what this is?

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This is utter chaos. Also known as, a picture of MysteryMan and I in our underwear, at 4:30 AM, attempting to remove a bat from our bedroom armed with a laundry basket and bed sheet.

At one point in this escapade when I was doing an army crawl to the window to get it open, and MysteryMan retreated into the closet. A 2×2 closet. And the door cracked open about two inches, and 30 seconds later the bat flew right through the crack and, no shit, hit MysteryMan dead in his forehead and then fell into his lap. Can you imagine being locked in a 4 foot square closet with a bat that just dive bombed your head? Yeah. On one hand I was scared for him. On the other hand I nearly peed my pants I was laughing so hard.

Decimated

Something in my life that did not have a happy ending recently was the harvesting of my tomato plants which MysteryMan swore up and down were getting eaten by birds. I was on the verge of sitting out there with my shotgun and firing into the air every 3 minutes for the next week so that I could have one goddamned tomato that didn’t have the top eaten off of it, when I found this.

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Yeah. A BIGASS caterpillar stuffing it’s face with my tomatoes.

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These greedy little bastards killed almost every tomato I had in the course of about 10 days. They are tobacco hornworms and apparently the only thing you can do to keep them off your tomatoes is the hunt-and-peck method of finding them. In my case I deposit them in the nearest ditch, because I don’t kill things and even though they ate all of my tomatoes I still think they’re kind of beautiful.

I’m so not cut out for the country.

Something I Had Almost Nothing To Do With

Look! The Station has a new floor!
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Colored, stamped, and sealed concrete. I picked out the colors and pattern, MysteryMan and his crew took care of the hard labor. It’s a little boring for me not to be involved in the actual work part, but hey let’s just take the professionals where we can get them. And the fact that I barely had anything to do with it doesn’t make me one jot less excited that it’s done and looks awesome.

(Look! I’m using colloquial British terms in my speech now! That, and the excessive exclamation points, are two ways you can tell I’ve surpassed my threshold of exhaustion.)

And That’s Not All…

There’s the Station window we built, the Station window we broke, the 101 recipes for what to do with your leftover sweet corn,  the house exterior picture gallery I put together, and my favorite new DIY web resource, all of which are going to have to wait because it’s after midnight and, sweet jesus, I need to get some sleep.

 

8 Responses

  1. Sorry about your loan; what an idiot. We had to tear out a moldy bathroom before we even owned our house, otherwise the appraiser wouldn’t approve it for the loan (we knew the owner, and knew he’d drag his feet, so since we planned to rip it out anyway he let us come in and do it). A little strange, but at least it makes sense to rip it out!

    We had a bat in our place too —twice–and I was able to snap a couple photos (from a distance of course!). Also no idea how it got in! From what I’ve read, seems common this time of year because juveniles have just started flying and exploring.

    Anyway, I’m bad at commenting, but I do enjoy reading your blog — good luck with the loan!

  2. I grew up in Bolivia, South America. I lived in a separate part of the house (would have been maid quarters I guess) and it was a second story room. When we first moved in I didn’t want screens on the windows because I liked feeling the fresh air (somehow screens prevented that?!?! Whatever, I was 16). One night I woke up to feel little claws climbing up my foot. I kicked out as hard as I could and jumped for the light….a freakin’ bat had been climbing up my foot! Needless to say, screens were installed the very next day. Now ask me about tarantulas…….LOL

  3. Loan officers can be idiots can’t they!

    I had to laugh at the bat story. We had bats somehow getting into our upstairs at one point. I HATE bats! When one would get in, usually at some ungodly hour, I would become one with the carpet, face down, with my hands covering the back of my head screaming at DH to get it out NOW! Luckily we’ve since figured out where they were getting in and no more bats, thankyouverymuch!

  4. hilarious stories – love the notes, the jots, the courtship and subsequent kick-ass relationship. reminds me of myself 🙂

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