It was quite the interesting day with unexpected phone calls and arrivals at my office to where I was almost ready to check the calendar to see what phase of the moon we’re in. Perhaps it’s the changing weather that’s bringing out the best and worst in people–including me.
I can, but don’t want to believe we’re expected to get snow tomorrow. The more late Springs we have, the more I’ll be convinced we are definitely experiencing climate change because it seems in every April these recent years, there’s more than a light dusting of it, and all the more towards the end of the month instead of at its beginning like we used to have some years ago. And of course I’ll not forget those supposed 16 inches we received that first week in May of last year, yet knowing for certain they didn’t measure it until it was over, because I shoveled eight inches of that nasty wet stuff three different times which equaled 24 inches in total.
The executor of 24 – 11th St. NE renewed the listing on it today, and I’m hoping it’ll get all the more activity now that our weather is warming. Considering price per square-footage, that home is in a bargain range for any growing family looking for more space. I would be in 7th Heaven if I had that three stall garage that goes with it. If I lived there, I would convert its 3rd floor into an upper family room since it already has a bathroom up there. Only a half block away, there’s a home of similar size that doesn’t have more than a large single garage, a small lot, and also a 3rd floor rec room without a bath, and that one sold for many thousands of dollars more about a year ago.
When doing some research on an acreage over in Hancock county, I figured I’d might at well look up the building site where my mother was born. I had to laugh to myself when seeing the “year built” listed on the assessor’s site for the original house. When seeing that year, I certainly know all the better because that’s also the same house my grandfather was born in, yet they erroneously have it listed as being around 50 years newer than it really is. Talk about being off a few years! Believe me, I’ve seen all the many more homes in our City with wrong year built on our own Assessor’s site.
What surprised me the most about my grandfather’s birth house, was the amount of square-footage that it originally had before the subsequent owners added even more rooms on its main floor. It’s highly unusual to find a two-story family farm home built that long ago with over 800 square feet of living area on each floor. Just from experience, I’d say its original size would’ve averaged around 150 square feet more on each story than homes of equal vintage. It’s now left me to believe my great-grandparents were certainly thinking big for their time.
The buyer of the home we’re closing on Monday morning wanted to do his final walk-thru this afternoon, so at least we have that done until I personally take one last peek in it before we go to closing. I always try to take one last look before I close with buyers if they’re not doing their formal final walk-thru the same day we close. One never knows what can happen to a home overnight, which is why it’s better to be safe than sorry, because I’ve personally heard some real horror stories from other Realtors regarding what had taken place in the night.
I was being a bit wicked this afternoon when someone was telling me how much he’s been working of late in his yard and garden. He just happens to be one of those who has contraptions to do just about everything, which is usually the norm for our much younger and markedly older crowd. I couldn’t keep still when he said he needed to buy more hose so he could water bushes he recently planted. Naughty me interjected his narrative by saying, “Back when I was heavy into yard work and watering trees and bushes, an outside spigot and two equally weighted pails was all I needed to get my watering jobs done.”
Of course he insisted that I lived back in the Stone Age where I had no running water, read by kerosene lamps, and had a chamber pot with my name on it under my bed. My only rebuttal was, “Don’t you think it better to burn calories and not money on things that really aren’t that necessary?” Of course the subject then veered off to where he insisted I believed him to be on the stout side. That was just one more of my examples of how people can take comments out of context and then run with them in the wrong direction.
I’m hoping all of you stay warm and safe should you have to be out in tomorrow’s snowstorm. Yours truly will be praying for a light dusting, no sleet, and a fast melt.
Tonight’s one-liner is: Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.
