START HERE: February 20: The Fairytale

Yeeahhh. . . so, we were in the house on the morning of February 20th, sledgehammer and mop in hand. We had heard from our realtor the day before that they didn't have some Very Important Document yet because the bank had to make a last-minute correction and then stuck it in regular postal snailmail as of Feb 16th, with no thought whatsoever that this was a mail holiday. But our realtor did the proverbial I'll-make-some-calls and eventually reassured us, "It'll probably get here by Friday. Either way, we should be fine."

Anyone who knows me well, knows how I reassured I am NOT when I hear, "We should be fine." You may as well superglue the stake holding my rock-climbing harness into the face of a thousand-foot cliff and say, "It should hold." It turned out that little error was the least of our problems. Our realtor, Gary, called Friday afternoon, as Rich had the half the fireplace facade all over the living room floor (Like this - see next post for "before" pic of Fireplace facade:)

to say that the seller's listing agent didn't have permission to sell the property until it was inspected and met building code requirements. Quoth Gary, "Do you guys know anyone in city hall you could call? 'Cause I sure don't."

We spent our afternoon running in the snow down to city hall and finding out that our building was indeed required to be inspected and brought up to code. We would have to schedule an inspection, then provide proof that we can fix all the code violations, before it could be approved for sale. Tom down at the Vacant Buildings office was very nice and reminded me of that guy on "Heroes." Even Mom ended up talking to Tom and remarking, "What a nice man!"

Long story short, it took an extra two weeks to get us into the house, but we did surprise nearly everyone and closed on March 6th. Thanks to Mom, and a little bit to our realtor. A big sarcastic "thanks a lot" to all the rest -- listing agent, seller, city of St. Paul in general, code compliance specifically, and previous owners who wrecked the crap out of this house.

But I'm not bitter.