The Rough Side of Closing

I forgot to leave the mail key.

Carrie had a copy, as well, but it's historically been lost. It was housed on a green, bungee-bracelet that Shane found amusing...

...and it was lost once again in the move. We had it and it disappeared. 

Carrie called me when she realized our mistake. Worst case, I would drive it back. I wanted to talk to our agent, Peg, first.

She recommended mailing it and that became the new plan. The nearest post office was a half-hour drive from the beach-house, but much closer than Charlottesville.

My job was easy compared to Carrie's. She went back on Sunday to clean up and clean out whatever was left in the house. I thought that the cleaning would help her feel less anxious about the sale, but I was wrong about how much was left. Carrie spent all day Sunday cleaning and filled up the entire truck for a dump run.

And here's where it gets worse: The buyers came for their final walk-through right before dinner time on Sunday. Carrie went to see Men in Black 3 as a forced break, but walked out of it 45 minutes in due to a phone call. The buyers were not happy. They did not like the condition of the floor, the refrigerator was disgusting, and we should expect a request for compensation.

It was everything Carrie feared. Her friend Gay had just gone through a nightmare closing scenario where the buyer held them up at closing and now it looked like we were going to go through something similar.

Carrie was stressed to the max. She left that movie and went back home and cleaned some more. I tried to drive back, but she wanted me to stay with Shane.

I figured the buyers were going to try and shake us down for money. They'd low-balled aggressively to start and had gotten a good price due to us needing to sell to finance the barn (Construction on the house was underway and Carrie's nerves wouldn't have handled too long on the market). Carrie said she'd already cleaned most of the fridge. She said she'd taken out shelves, scrubbed till her hands hurt, and been planning on getting to the freezer later.

When Carrie goes into full clean mode she views anything other than "looks brand new" as unacceptable. If these people were complaining after she cleaned something to her standards?

This is how I spent my Monday morning.

In hindsight, if I had known Carrie would do so much work on the house and go through so much stress I would have wanted to have been there with her. I was upset that she was upset and wanted to support her.

Closing was supposed to be at 8 or 8:30 AM, so I figured we would hear something, but hours of radio silence passed.

I found myself reading, praying, and looking out the window as kids played in the pool with Stu. I actually ran out while B started to get himself into trouble and four other kids were jumping all over Stu, so maybe God planned on putting me there to help watch.

We didn't hear back until near noon. The buyer's agent asked a single question, "What mailbox number are you?"

That was it.

We didn't hear more until 2 PM. Our agent sent us a "Congratulations!" email. I messaged Carrie and she called me back, because she never got the email (Their was a typo on her address).

It was done. Carrie was burnt out, frazzled, and numb, but the house was officially sold.

It only had to be "broom swept" clean by the contract but this is how Carrie left it:

It's a used house and not perfect, but she cleaned it up nice.

Carrie left spare toilet paper, bulbs, paint cans for sampling if they chose, and I think she left some garden tools under the deck for bamboo clean-up.

She did an amazing job.

What I have told you is while we were in radio silence, Carrie was at work on our  new house. The truck was full, so she rented a U-Haul to drive down materials from Lowe's for the barn builders They're over a month behind from starting and she was starting to worry they never would.

She sent me a picture of their breaking ground.

Only the next hit was our truck! It was squealing and something was burning and Carrie had to take it to the shop. Her preferred shop wasn't responding, so she had to go to a dealership and they quoted $1900 to fix everything!

Thankfully, we got news on the house while she was renting a car. Carrie was supposed to meet her mom in Richmond to look at granite for the new house. Talk about a busy schedule!

The good news is the house is sold. Carrie is worn and never wants to go through this process again, and I can't say I'm in a hurry to either. Hopefully, we'll be in our new home for the next fifty years or more. We're dispersing funds to repay builders, pay off the car, and all that good stuff.

Feel free to pray a "Thank-you" for things working out and pray a request for the selling stress to heal! Carrie's going to spend the next week in a work crunch mode with her parents while we're at the beach. She's not getting a rest break when I think she needs one.