Welcome to the Gingerbread Diaries!

The Gingerbread Diaries

So, yeah, this happened:

jvanderbeek_theclosing-1

After, of course, a lot of this:

jvanderbeek_theclosing-2

(No, we didn’t sign that much paperwork at the closing, that stack happens to be the 7.5# of paperwork generated by the loan over the last 3 months, not counting the 140+ email threads in my House folder on gmail!)

I’d love to say we went straight to this:

jvanderbeek_theclosing-3

But, alas, Todd had to head back to work for the rest of the afternoon and I had to go do super-fun things like set up our utilities account and arrange for the all-important Internet! (While it’s true we’re not moving in for another couple months, we’ll be spending time up there before then and there’s no way we’re surviving with just our cell phones.)

I will give the City of Thomasville credit, though: they make it very easy to start an account with them. No hideous deposits (unless you’re renting, then it’s a flat $125); one-stop-shopping for electric, gas, water, sewer, trash, cable, internet, and phone; and no “window” to meet the service rep–it’s an actual appointment time thankyouverymuch!

Of course, now that we have the home, I’m just itching to put some of these to use:

jvanderbeek_theclosing-5

But I’m afraid they’re going to have to wait until these come into play:

jvanderbeek_theclosing-4

The house has been empty a few months, but before that it was used as a personal care home. Ironic that they didn’t care, personally, for the home, but nothing to be done about it now! Except clean every inch of the place, that is. And while some surfaces really are kind of gross (banister, I’m looking at you), it’s really the smell that’s the worst–hence the mega bottles of Febreze. It’s our best option at the moment considering none of the windows open so we can’t let Mother Nature do the airing out for us.

Also on the early to-do list is to change the locks (as the Realtor put it, ‘who knows how many people have copies of these keys’–joy!). So off to the hardware store we’ll go this weekend to take care of that, then we can make copies for the people we need to give access (aka our contractor) so that the renovation work can begin!

Thus begins the ongoing saga (hopefully more of a comedy than a tragedy) of our adventures as homeowners and caretakers to a century home!