Whew!

We are buying a farm!!  Well, so long as the well, septic, and other inspections go okay, we can get out of our rental lease, and the bank says yes to lending us money.  Lots to do yet but so long as that all goes well we'll be the new owners of the old Abner place!

Today has been a crazy run around day for getting paperwork done on my house in Oregon too.  That sale closes tomorrow or Monday.  Tomorrow is when it is planned but Monday is an in case paperwork gets hung up in the mail.  I will be very happy to have that headache relieved.  That has been about 2 years of dealing with lawyers, court crap, and spending a ton of money.  I don't think my aunt intended it to be any of that when she left the 3 of us the house.

For those that don't know and want to know:  My aunt left us a house with the stipulation that her partner be able to live there until he moved or died.  In other words a Life Estate.  That was great.  No big deal.  Right?  No.  We had it stipulated in the Estate Agreement that all parties signed when she died that he would pay taxes and utilities and maintain the house in good condition.  Well, then I stumbled upon the fact that he wasn't paying taxes about 1 1/2 into it.  So we have spent the last almost 2 years exchanging letters, great big whoppin' tall tales (from him), and later lawyer summons, judgements, quit claims, and finally an eviction notice.  And then he left us all sorts of wonderful crap and damage to clean up and repair.

No idea who is watching out for us but the day the house was listed an investor offered us a cash sale "as is."  Yes, it was way less than we were asking but the closing date was sooner rather than later and everything is in cash.  I'm good with that.  I am very ready to have that headache gone.

Now if we could just get our MT house sold.  I know my renters wouldn't like that but I would.  Either that or we'll have to see about refinancing the place so it can actually make us some money.  I really don't want to be a long distance landlord though.  Especially since we don't have a property manager.  We might have to look into doing that.

I'm excited to plan things out for the Abner place.  Red and white barn paint.  House paint, we haven't decided colors there yet.  Windows, a couple need repairs or replacing before winter.  A good scrub all over.  And last but not least we need to buy a refrigerator, a range, and a lawn mower.  Unfortunately the last three are not going to be cheap.  Even if we do a used riding mower it still won't be cheap.  We'll do new appliances though.  We've never had good luck with used refrigerators and I'd like to start with a new range.  Mostly because people generally want way more bells and whistles on their appliances than we like.  We don't want anything fancy.  Just functional.

Oh, I do need to shop for handles for the kitchen cabinets.  So far I've found some that match perfectly on e-bay but they aren't cheap and they were only sold in pairs.  I need more than 4 handles.  I'll have to see what I can come up with around here in the antique stores.  There are some great ones here.

Let's see, in other news.  The kids and I have a trip to take for a wedding next week.  There are all sorts of activities we have planned for this weekend.  Fiber Art Fair, Farm and Ranch Museum harvest fest, and who knows what else at this point.  When we get back from our wedding trip I'm signing up for a spinning (as in yarn, not on a stationary bike) class and a Zumba class.  I can do both as freebies, I think, because Tom is faculty at the school.  Kinda cool.  Speaking of that stuff I'd better see what I can do about signing up for that.  I'd also better get a couple things boxed up so I can mail them.  I'm not sure what happened to my free time this week but it appears to be gone.