The Inspection Is Good

We met the inspector at the house today. He spent 3 1/2 hours going from the chimney to the dirt under the house. There are a fair number of little things that need addressing. Remember, this is a foreclosure so no work was done to get it ready for a sale. (A side bar here: I feel cheated because we did a ton of work – and money— on our Grants Pass house to get it ready to sell; zilch was done on this house. But I understand the difference). He found little things like a cracked toilet seat (ouch!), two electrical outlets that don’t work but no apparent switch to control them, door knobs that are loose or don’t work, and so on. Perhaps the biggest thing is that the electrical panel needs to be replaced. It is not a serious, right NOW issue and we will replace it when we build the addition.

One other issue. He couldn’t crawl under the house because pipes are in the way. However he could get his head in and look around. It all looks good and doesn’t smell like dry rot or sewage or anything bad. We are going to go on a little faith at this point. We will cut an access hole in the floor of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom. Most new houses have the access to the crawl space in a closet so this will not be something unusual. We need to add insulation under the house and in the attic. We need to paint the interior. Stuff like that. Some money involved but lots of work.

This is the bedroom that is painted and speckled – weird colors. It will get lots of Kilz and then some paint!

The main bathroom looking into the mirror.

The kitchen looking from the family room. We found out the dishwasher and garbage disposal don’t work. The cabinets are “okay” but will need replacing. Joyce wants to take out the cabinets in the foreground to open up the two rooms. The door leads to the garage.

Gas fireplace. I should have taken this picture when we had the fire going. The blower works; lots of heat. The bricks have been painted bright red. We’ll probably repaint them white. We’ll also replace the funky light fixtures.

Okay. That’s the house. Now for VBS. Joyce, Ginger and I have been teaching the Bible story at our church’s Vacation Bible School. The title is Son Harvest and it has a country fair theme (i.e. farmer). We don’t have as many kids as they expected so we teach three 30 minutes segments and have one segment free. These minutes include the story and working on the Bible verse – which means playing some games to reinforce it.

Here are a couple of our kids – not the one with the blue head. These were dressed up as scarecrows for a game we played.

Ginger is enjoying a moment of quiet repose before the next onslaught of kids. Our friendly neighborhood scarecrow keeps watch.

This is the Fruit of the Spirit tree Joyce and some of the high school helpers built. And you thought only God could make a tree!

We have two more days. We’ll make it but I admit we come home each afternoon and take a nap. I’ve been walking about a mile each evening. I skipped it tonight! Well, until next time. Take care.