hey MorningGlow, been meaning to ask...

[northernlights]

how's the home improvement going?

Seeing as how my r.e. agent interviews and house on market seemed aligned with your contractor interviews and home projects, I was just wondering...haven't heard a peep from you since work began!

[MorningGlow]

1. Hiya! It's been 50/50, I'd say--no, more 70/30

The inside guys (MM, if anybody's keeping score) have been AMAZING. They've been here for a couple of weeks--a small army--and haven't wasted a moment. They finished the downstairs powder room and mudroom in record time--and I had NO IDEA how much carpentry work was going to go into the trim and other niggly details. The tile work in the upstairs bathroom looks good as well. Then in ONE DAY they cut a ginormous hole in the outside wall of the dining room, removing a crappy door, "built in" china cabinet that was slowly dipping toward the ground, and window that never opened, reframed the wall, and put in three windows across. It looks great.

After I get back from visiting my brother in California, they're going to come back and put shelves under the dining room windows and finish the trim and closet doors in the bathroom upstairs.

Even better, they're polite, courteous, nice to my kid, and clean up after themselves every day. I can't wait to collect more money so they can finish my kitchen. (It's been left undone for a few years--another one of Mr. MG's "projects".)

The outside guys (OS)...uhhhhh...let's see...how shall I put this...oh yeah: NEVER AGAIN! The wife, who was the person who checked out our house to give an estimate, is really nice and very smart. Her husband, who does the work along with one employee, is a total weiner. Cuts corners, leaves cigarette butts all around the house, tries not to do work that is clearly detailed in the estimate, PLUS trampled my front flower bed, murdering the bleeding heart plants I had just bought. If I ask them to do something a particular way, I'm "picky". x(

The back wall (they put up clapboards) looked good to me, but Mr. MG didn't like their handiwork. The paint job on the whole house was acceptable but for some reason they didn't do the front stoop/little overhang with pillars, so I have to specify that that is, indeed, part of the HOUSE and thus shall be painted! The set of steps they built at the back door (for a VERY pretty penny) is a crime against humanity. I am in the process of forcing them to make them better. Mr. MG just wants them to go away, and I must admit, I concur, so we may end up fixing their messes depending on how well they do with them.

So! A couple more weeks and the renovations will be done, then I can have the landscaper come in and do his thing. And on the seventh day we will rest.
:rofl:

How goes the real estate listing? Hey, is it online yet? I'd love to see pics! :hi:

[northernlights]

2. HA! HA!!!!!! HA!AH!HA!HA!HA!

Let that be a message to the world. Those of us with the initials MM are worth our weight in GOLD!!!!!!! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Yes -- the listing took forever, but is online. Some of the pics are excellent; others are so-so. The description is improved, but NOT what I would have written. And I will never EVER again use a non-horse realtor as a listing agent. The posted pictures of my horses without my permission (my old gelding has been the target of thieves much of his life. the last probably would have shipped him to slaughter in Canada :scared: and I stayed out of work for an extra year in large part to protect him). Since they were coming out for an extra set of pictures, I had asked if they could do me a huge favor and get a pic of my guitar to email to me because I had 2 buyers lined up but no pic to send them. They agreed. And then instead of a close up of the guitar, took the living room with guitar and posted it in the ad instead of mailing it to me. I mean we are talking STOOOPID!). I'm tired of sending them emails of all the *mistakes* in the listing. :grr:

Here is the realtor.com version
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1544-Union-Road_Waldoboro_ME_04572_1110031633

[MorningGlow]

3. Snarf! All hail the MMs of the world!

And that goes for M&Ms too. :9

I love your house, NL! It's lovely! And the horses are beeauuuutiful. (Nice guitar, too! What kind is it? I have a Takamine. I wanted a used Martin, but as my mom was buying it for me--I was 15 at the time--I was trying to save her money, and the Takamine was less than half the price of the used Martin. No matter--it's served me well all these years.)

If your place doesn't sell in this market, for that price, your real estate agents should be whapped on the nose with a rolled-up homebuyer's guide. And that's all I have to say about that. :P

As for all the mistakes in the listing, couldn't they get into trouble for that? I mean, somebody could sue them for misrepresentation. I'm just sayin'. Maybe you could scare them with that. Or maybe they're too stupid to scare... :shrug:

[northernlights]

4. yup, we MMs are always ranked #2

and outperform the #1s hands down, every time. There is no justice, I tell ya! THERE IS NO JUSTICE!!!!!! :cry: :cry: :cry:

Anyway, no the realtors won't get into trouble. Basically, the way I understand it after talking to multiple lawyers about how they misrepresented my property as 5 acres when it's 2.5 -- they can make any claim they like and if the buyer doesn't find it out, tough break for the buyer. Maine. Ya gotta love it. :cry: But at least the stuff they have wrong is really easy to see -- it won't require any expensive surveys in mid-winter. There is, sadly, no fireplace. The stove is gas, not electric. The circuit breaker box is right out in the open in the basement, for all to see. And so on.

The guitar is a Guild from the Westerly, RI factory. I got it in the mid-late 90s not during a mid-life crisis. I just was looking for something new to try and focus on, to de-stress. I'd always wanted to learn guitar as a kid, but wasn't allowed to because my sister got there first. (My mother had this crazy rule that whatever one kid chose to do, the others weren't allowed to do. So my eldest sister was a dancer, and mid-sister and I were banned from dancing. Mid-sister took up guitar, so I was forced into piano and banned from guitar. This was mommie-dearest's brilliant plan to prevent sibling rivalry -- instead fueling sibling hatred, lol. Can you imagine if mommie-dearest had been Mrs. Kwan? There'd have been NO MICHELLE KWAN!!!! :o)

So anyway, at 44 or 45 or so, I started taking guitar lessons. I eventually lost interest due to the pain it caused my shoulder and arm. But I did get to where I could limp through one of my favorites of all time, "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas! So my beautiful little Guild has been sitting in its case doing nothing for about a decade.

[I Have A Dream]

5. Your home is beautiful, northernlights.

I'm sorry about your horse. :(