A Bump...

I mentioned before that we were planning to have some work done on our house, to make it a little 'nicer' so we can enjoy the next 5-ish years there before we go live on a sailboat. I've had two hiccups come up, just this week, but I'm feeling better about them already.

The contractor who seemed very interested is suddenly very busy and has declined the project. We spent a bunch of time in the last two months revising our plan for the house work and then waiting on the contractor to return from a 2-3 week trip to the UK. We were a little distracted by our 5-year plan and I'll take responsibility for dropping the ball (since I've been the one communicating with him). It sucks because it means we definitely won't get finished until after the new baby is born, but we should still be able to move back in before my maternity leave (I'm planning on 12 weeks) is over. As easily as we have been distracted and continued to put this off, we just want it done... there are some aspects to our cute, quaint, shabby little house that we are just tired of dealing with after 10 years. We're more than capable of doing most of the work ourselves, we finished a renovation of our own bedroom two weeks before DD was born, but we're at the point of just wanting to pay someone else to fix it. We will probably do a lot of the demo ourselves, but if I don't have to lay tile or finish drywall evar again, I'll be happy. So, as of this week, we had to start over talking to more contractors. I've met with two and a third is coming by early next week. Two others, that I'd talked with earlier in the summer, are slowing down and are also semi-interested. This may actually get competitive.

I got in touch with the bank guy to refinance and the good news is the rates are great! The bad news is that everyone agrees and, so, closing will take 60-75 days. Crap. Fortunately, our neighbor has another mortgage contact and he has a much better outlook on closing, 30 days. Whew.

We celebrated DD's 18-month birthday last weekend. I'll gush more on how awesome she is later.