God's Hand on Our Home, part 4

The appraiser came the morning after our cleaning session, and our home inspector that same afternoon.  After about a week of holding our breath, the report finally came in.  The appraisal of the house came back at $115,000 more than we offered.  We were floored!  The home inspection went fairly well, too.  There were some things that definitely needed to be fixed, but nothing was too much of a safety hazard.  

The only negative news was that the inspector found a pile of termite dust in the garage.  That meant that even though Kama’aina Pest Control had already come out and cleared the place, we’d have to tent anyway.  Linda was extremely frustrated with Kama’aina that they let this slip, and we were frustrated that she took info from our home inspection and told the bank. We were actually very upset at first, but relieved to find out that because of this mishap we got a few perks.  We’d have one year of insect treatment for free; they took off several hundred dollars of the tenting cost; and Joe (the seller) was willing to split that cost with us.  What a blessing!

The appraisal report outlined five major things that needed to be addressed.  The bank said these things must be completed by closing in order for us to receive the loan: 

1. Trim back the foliage encroaching on the dwelling and fence lines.

 

2.  Get the pool functioning and in working order (yikes).

Liner coming off

Small jungle growing in the deep end

Lots of potential

3.  Remove the mold and have it inspected by a professional.

Mold in laundry room and closet that held leaky hot water heater

Apparently the hot water heater leaked for over a year

The mold then seeped across the hallway, into the kitchen drywall

Kitchen cabinets (and underneath) were starting to show signs of mold

4.  Clean or replace all carpet upstairs to remove soiled areas.

Soiled spot in small bedroom

5.  Replace the garage door motor and get it working properly.

Garage during initial inspection

With this final list, we decided to drop the FHA loan completely.  Mike quickly got to work on arranging contractors.  He got in touch with a guy named Tim from Quarry Pools, Sal who does construction work on Hickam and is a friend of Jordan’s, and Rich with ProToCall to deal with the mold issues.  As for the foliage, Mike and I knocked that out in a couple of weekends.  We also spent an entire afternoon fixing the broken garage door ourselves!

We worked on the house every weekend: cleaning, prepping, getting it ready for the final inspection.  We wanted to be sure we’d get the loan.  There were a few kinks that seemed like setbacks at the time, but in hindsight were more like God’s hand at work.  Here’s an example. 

It was a weekday afternoon when Mike and I decided we needed to go ahead and rent the carpet shampooer from Home Depot.  The mold guys had done their work dehumidifying the entire house and getting all possible moisture out.  The mold had been removed and our mold test was scheduled for the following day.  Well, this was a frustrating night.  Mishap after mishap, frustration lurked around every corner. 

Our friend Bain needed to change his oil, so he asked Mike if he could use our garage and tools at the apartment.  Of course we didn’t mind.  We told him to lock up and close the garage when he finished.  We had to get to Home Depot.  Literally right when we walked into the store, Bain called and said oil was spewing out all over our garage.  He was panicked, but there was nothing we could do from the store.  We told him we’d be up there in 20 minutes or so and that we’d buy some absorbent to soak up the oil.  With great frustration, we went ahead and rented the shampooer, bought two packs of the absorbent and headed back to the apartment to assess the damage.  We were able to clean most of it, but Bain still needed another oil filter.  I finished cleaning while Mike took Bain to Walmart to get a filter.  I ended up only using ONE of the bags of absorbent.  Finally, we headed to the house to clean.  By this time it was late.  We had been held back by about two hours.  Because it was already so late on a work night, we called Kim and Jordan to come and help up get this job finished.
 

Kim helped me get the shampooer ready.  To do this, I put the bucket in the tub and started to fill it.  Seems normal, right?  Wrong!  Apparently, when we disassembled the hot water heater the day before, we didn’t cap off the “hot” valve.  As soon as I opened the valve in the tub upstairs, the water started flowing out of the downstairs line.  Mike explained it to me later by saying that it’s like when you have your finger on the top of a straw.  The water in the straw will stay in place until you take your finger off the top.  Well, by turning on the tub, I “took the finger off the straw” so to speak.  Water gushed from the pipe, and I all I heard was shouting and yelling to turn the water off.  What had I done?!  Two days of dehumidifying, nullified.

This is the part that’s awesome.  I’ll take the blame, as long as God gets the credit.  What had we just purchased at Home Depot not an hour before?  Absorbent.  We only used one bag on the oil spill, so we still had one in the truck.  It soaked all of the water right up!  Praise the Lord.

Soon, the work was finished, the inspector came through to check that all repairs were complete, and we were approved for our loan!We took a big risk, but it was so worth it in the end. 

The seller had taken most of his items he wanted from the garage by this time, but we ran into him at the property late one night.  We offered to take things to the dump for him that he didn’t want or couldn’t keep.  He told us anything he left we could have.  AWESOME!  He left some really nice things.  I’d estimate the total value of everything at over $5,000:  A temperature monitored Craftsman tool chest, other various tools and tool storage, a brand new charcoal grill, a large wagon cooler on wheels, a 5 gallon drink cooler, yard tools, a 14’ x 14’ camping tent, air mattresses, a nice patio set with four chairs and a table, industrial shop vac, pool volleyball and basketball equipment, and the list goes on. 

We finally closed and signed the papers on Monday, May 20, 2013.  We had already changed the locks when Linda met us there with the keys.  She was so great in this process.  As a celebratory gift, she bought us a tiki umbrella and an ice cream maker to enjoy on our back lanai.  What a process it has been.  This, however, is only the beginning.  There is still a lot of work to do!  The day we got the keys, we ripped out all of the carpet upstairs, started demoing the bathrooms, then took a dip in the pool.  God is good, and we are so thankful for this blessing and opportunity!

More on renovations later… hopefully lots of before and after to come!