The Long Saga of...The House, Oh, the House.

My dad lived in a great little townhouse in Holladay. He sure had put a lot of love and style into his home - he actually had quite a bit more influence on the decoration and feel of the home than my mom did. He had a strong design sense of his own. I'm not sure if my mom just went along with it because she knew how important it was to him or if she was pretty much in agreement with what he liked. Either way, dad drove the design choices and although I know his finished product isn't what everyone would choose, it was a great space with a very particular sensibility to it. One of the first things we did after dad passed away was photograph his home because we knew that it would start to be dismantled pretty quickly, even with just taking down some paintings and keepsakes to display at his memorial service. (Just saying that is still so weird. I still am in shock a little bit that my dad is gone.) I'm so glad we took pictures because it's true, it did start to change almost immediately and I'm glad we preserved the space that he created.  He had so much art on the walls. So many pieces of pottery on the shelves. Looking at these pictures now is really tugging at my heart. It's like it should still be there but it's not.

In February and March I spent countless hours at dad's house. I mean, COUNTLESS. It was both good and tough to be there. It's hard to describe the amount of work it took to sort through all his things, deciding what to keep and what to let go of, even with the fact that my dad was a very tidy person who was the opposite of a hoarder. A home still just accumulates a whole lot of stuff. Luckily we four siblings were able to approach his possessions in a pretty organized way - making a list of everything we thought we needed to discuss and communicating quite well about who got what. You know, I don't think I mentioned in my previous posts about my dad's illness and passing what a great team we four Romney kids were. I mean, we really bonded together and got through this tough thing with no arguments. Even when it came time to choose what we wanted we did it. However, it took what felt like hundreds of hours though to go through every drawer, every closet and shelf. Going through boxes of photos and slides. Sorting everything into the throw away pile and the donation pile and the valuable-but-not-sure-what-to-do-with-it pile. The hardest part was letting go of dad's clothes - we didn't really want to keep many things besides his beloved golfers hats and some ties, but it was still hard to pack them all up and send them away. That was one of the first things we did and it hurt. We felt pretty uncomfortable, like the whole energy in the house was mad at us for starting to take it apart. But once we got the ball rolling it felt better and we each brought so many of dad's favorite things into our own homes that it felt better. I was lucky enough to get the grandmother clock, a lovely armchair that fits just right into our living room, and an antique sewing table that now holds our television. I love having these things in our home, along with many many smaller things like a great collection of Russian painted eggs. Having dad's presence safe in my house with me made it easier as we took load after load of stuff to the D.I. and even a trip to the dump with some ancient food storage. I'll never forget the day I spend going up and down the stairs a million times lugging #10 cans out to my van. I'm just trying so hard to convey the weeks it took to go through it. Some of that time was awful, like with the cans. But I'll also always remember the late night I had there all by myself, quietly going through every loose photo he had in this closet and finding so many treasures and gems and packing up a box for each of my siblings with pictures we either had never seen or hadn't seen in years. That was a great night.

Because it was so nerve-racking to have dad's house just sitting there with no one to look after it, all of his possessions just sitting in the quiet solitude day-in and day-out, we sibs wanted to move pretty quickly on selling the home. Yes, that can be painful, and like I said (and will keep on saying), SO MUCH WORK, but we did not want to drag it out and have that weight hanging over our heads for months. We hired a realtor, a good friend of my sister's, to help us get started right away. She helped us know what to keep in the house to stage it for when potential buyers came through to see it. She made trips to the DI for us. She helped us know what needed updating in the house - I mean, we loved the green and purple walls but that's not really what sells. We were taking away with us the big oak mantle that mom claimed she and her cousin Jim had dragged out of her grandmother's house just before it got demolished when they were around 14 years old. (Now that it took five adults to move it we are not sure we still believe mom's story but who knows. I should ask Jim.) With the mantle gone we would be leaving a banged-up wall so we needed to replace it with a nice wood mantle. All of these changes - I was sure I was going to hate it and feel like all personality had been removed from dad's lovely home. But we for sure got the right realtor.  She helped with the paint colors and the furniture arranging and when I went back to see it with the new paint and stuff I was just blown away. It was beautiful, and I knew that it would be tempting for anyone looking for a townhome. 

That turned out to be true - we held an open house in February I think and had three offers on it by the end of the first day. The details are boring, so I won't go into them, suffice it to say that within three weeks all three offers had fallen through. It was quite discouraging. One thing and then another just kept tripping people up and they'd rescind their offers. We even had one person just a few days away from closing and it didn't happen. Well, by the time the third offer had fallen through, Covid 19 had just started, and I was sure that we were in trouble. Who would want to go house hunting during a pandemic? It seemed to me that we might be in for a long haul trying to get the house sold. But, we went ahead and held another open house, this time with social-distancing guidelines and stuff in place. (Man the world got weird fast there in March, didn't it?) Before the open house began I took my girls over there to tidy up, dust, make sure things looked nice. We also took a few minutes to kneel in a circle in the living room and say a prayer together, asking for a blessing of good feelings to be in this home and for the right person to want to buy it. Lo and behold, by the end of the weekend we had another three offers. One of the offers was a very special one - it came with a letter attached. It was from a single woman with grown daughters and an aging father. She wrote to us about how she had not been looking to buy a house at all, but was driving up the road and saw the sign and stopped to take a peek. Her heart leapt - she knew this was the home for her. She described to us all the things she loved about it and all that she hoped to do there, all of which were things my parents loved too. Art, theater, growing tomatoes.... It seemed magical, like she truly had been guided there. Besides all that, her offer was the highest we had received. We were thrilled to accept her offer. 

Well, that was all fine and good. I am really enjoying looking back and thinking of all these positive memories that happened before the you-know-what hit the proverbial fan. The you-know-what came in the form of a break in the sewer pipe leading out from the house to the main sewer line. This break was discovered during the inspection that is part of the buying process. I don't know if it's worth putting down many of the details here - I'm not sure I want to remember what happened because it has been an absolute freaking nightmare. The good part is that the buyer and the realtor and my family have been on the same team. No bad feelings there, even though we made some big mistakes, such as closing on the house before the plumbing issue was resolved, just assuming that since it was in process it would all be fine. Well, it was not fine. I'll just sum it up by saying that we were dumb and did not get more than one bid from any companies and also did not research the company that was recommended to us. Definitely do these things, okay? The plumbing company basically hosed us. The main issue is that instead of ripping out the porch stairs which were over the break, they just threaded flexible pipe (not up to code, as it turns out) through the break, then realized that by not fixing the break they no longer had the 2% grade needed to go downhill from the house to the main sewer line. Then they told us that to fix this we would need a $4000 ejector pump to force the sewer contents to the main line. (This after our price had increased over and over again until the amount was staggering.) They did not tell me that this pump would be in a giant hole in the bedroom floor with a huge plastic lid that opened directly onto raw sewage and made a constant running-water sound. (And after the fact, we discovered that the pump, which was made for ponds and waterfalls, can be bought on Amazon for less than a quarter of that price.) Of course this all got installed after we had closed on the house. There was some serious sleep lost on my end over all this, especially when our buyer realized how bad it was and flipped out. We are pretty lucky actually because a) there are actual problems caused by this horrible company besides us just not liking it, so we have legal ammo against them and b) our realtor is so committed to her buyers and sellers being happy that she's helping us pay for a second company to come in and do it right if we end up not getting money back from the first company.

This has been incredibly stressful. We have a lawyer, the issue is not resolved with the first company, and I sometimes still get extremely anxious about it. It was horrible knowing that I made major errors that could potentially cost me and my siblings a lot, and I know I frustrated them. However, the good news is that most importantly our buyer now has everything totally completely fixed and done and just perfect at her house. I now no longer think of it as my dad's old house. A wonderful person has purchased it and we were able to make it right for her. That is a closed book and I'm very grateful for that. Also, we have the support of our realtor who will make sure there is a cap on how much money my family pours into this horrible situation. We have all learned a lot. I hope we don't end up paying the first company any more money than we have. I seriously doubt we'll get any money back, but thankfully, we have a lawyer having those hard conversations with them, not us. I look forward to the day it's all resolved and hope it doesn't cost our realtor much if anything. She has been so good to us even though we all made some errors in moving forward on official things without official understandings. Hopefully we have all learned the lessons we need to and it will be finalized soon.

As for now, I still feel tender about that town home. I spent more than 13 years going there to see my parents. It was my mom's last home before she moved into full-time care. And of course we surrounded my dad as he passed away there; so lucky to be home instead of at a facility of some kind. It's a special place. I had a chance to drive by it this week and discovered that I wasn't ready to see it yet. I had a lot of time on my own there feeling a lot of feelings. I'm so grateful that my prayers were answered and a deserving person found a place to make her happy and I wish her the best. I now am praying for a peaceful resolution to the conflicts with the plumbing company, and I have hope that that situation will come to a close soon. My nervous system would appreciate it a lot.