No, we did not hear anything further about the house today. We were told either Monday or Tuesday and today is Tuesday and we have heard nothing. It’s been six days now since we put in our bid and no information. Rather rude. You would think that they would at least want to keep their potential offers in the loop. If we were the winning bid we could easily have been out looking at other homes too since this one doesn’t seem very interested in selling the place.
In reality, we are pretty confident that the house went to someone else and that the bank just isn’t bothering to inform us as much. I’m very surprised that absolutely no one has called us to at least discuss us not hearing anything. Our bank emailed me yesterday just to get a status. Apparently they haven’t heard anything either.
I ended up working from home for a bit this morning. It was just a really busy day. It was around ten when I finally managed to get into the car and get off to the office. I started work pretty early this morning, around eight, but there was just enough going on that I was never able to leave. It happens once in a while.
Work was pretty busy today. We have some server migrations going on this week so there is a lot of coordination required for that.
For lunch, Souder and I went to La Cima. There was mahi mahi on the buffet again today so I didn’t want to miss that. It was a short lunch, though, as there was so much going on. Didn’t want to be away from the office for very long.
Dominica said that the contractor showed up around three and started work on the garage. He was quite impressed that I had managed to clear out so much stuff. He didn’t think that I was going to pull it off so late at night. So the demolition has begun. We should, in theory, have a new garage in no time.
I didn’t stay late this evening, there was much to be done. Demolition had been completed by around four thirty and supplies are needed for the garage. So I left at normal time, met Souder and he followed me up to the house on the surface streets so that he could bypass the parking lot that is the President George Bush Tollway northbound in the evenings. It can easily take over forty-five minutes to get home while taking only eleven minutes to go south to the office, both during rush hour.
Brian and I got there and the contractor and electrician were there minutes behind us. We put in an hour or two working on and looking at the garage. What a mess we discovered once those walls were down. Live electric wires just shoved into the walls, tangles of power lines, electric outlets that were not attached to studs, just hanging in the middle of insulation, no insulation on the outside walls (but insulation on the inside ones!), the inside wall was freestanding and not attached to the house, etc. What a mess.
The biggest thing that we discovered, though, was our fuse box. We had been thinking that we probably only had a one hundred amp service. Thankfully that was not the case and the house was actually fitted with two hundred amps which was good forethought for 1978 when the house was built. We definitely need that much power. What is bad is that there is no main breaker, so no way to fully cut power to the entire house. But the really bad part is that the two hundred amp box contains six hundred and forty amps worth of breakers. That seems rather excessive. There is no way that we would ever flip a breaker. The box would explode and the house burn down before the breakers will flip!
Tomorrow is the shopping for the garage supplies. I think that they are planning on having the garage done by the weekend. The electrician is hoping to be in on Thursday to do all of the wiring. He and Souder also went around the house and looked at the electrical situation there as well as up in the attic. They are formulating a plan on how to deal with the electrical disaster going on up there, which is pretty significant.
After the contractor and electrician left, Souder and I hooked the Internet back up so that there is at least some minimal communications with the outside world while this work is going on. Our house phone is off until the weekend, though.
Dominica made a late dinner and we ate veggie riblet sandwiches and watched some Disney channel shows while Liesl was still up. We can’t watch anything from our own collection since the server had to be taken down, as did my garage movie conversion system, to make way for the demolition. So we are down to Netflix only.
While we were watching, Liesl showed up by the bed holding a shrink wrapped movie that I had not seen before. It was one of her kids shows. I was like “where did she get this?” and Dominica had no idea either. So we opened it for her and she watched that while I went and worked for a while. Always something to do.
We were off to bed at a good time. Dominica has to take Liesl to a morning doctor’s appointment. I can’t make it with them as I have a “numbers” call during lunch tomorrow and I have to be in the office. I also have to be ready for when I need to run to Home Depot to pay for a large number of supplies being purchased for the garage.