Starting the punch list

Of course anytime you buy a house, once you get moved in you see the flaws. One flaw—and I’m not quite sure how we’ll fix this one—is that the microwave is mounted very high up. I’m sure the previous owners did this to keep the bar/counter area as open to the living room as possible, and I’m a fan of that. After all when you live in about 1000 square feet, the goal is open and airy. However, I’m 5’5” and while I can manage to microwave small things safely (say a cup of water or a bag of popcorn), I really can’t do much else. See?

I mentioned the drunken dresser on Sunday and thought you might like to see a picture of the damage. What isn’t coming through in the photo is how if I barely touch it on either side, it sways. A lot. I thought I could move it a tiny bit down the wall yesterday without damaging it further but all I did was hasten our next trip to Ikea. Instead of replacing the dresser, though, we are looking into wardrobes like these systems.

And finally since this blog is named kitties kitties kitties I figured I’d better include a current picture of the kitties. I took one of Chloe too, but really all she does is sleep curled in a little ball or else perch on my lap—very sweet but it doesn’t make for interesting pictures. All three have calmed down a lot and very quickly too. After the peeing incident last Friday I really thought we were in for a long time of crazed/bad cat behavior.

Much better

Saturday's move went much better. In fact the only glitch (if you can even call it that) was that since we were the afternoon move for our movers, they didn't get to the old apartment until after 4 PM.

Getting our furniture in here seemed to calm the kitties a lot. We still have boxes stacked everywhere, but I think they kind of like that. I've seen various kitty combinations on the different box stacks.

One big breakthrough occurred yesterday. Ben had told us that when his family moved from Lawrence KS to Detroit, his two kitties completely forget they didn't really like each other. Similarly, I've seen Chloe gradually warming up to the boys and yesterday we found Chloe and Wally nearly in a kitty pile.

Finally, Kent's dresser will not survive this move. He bought it when he got to Boston since all our things were in Kansas City. While it looks nice enough, it's a pretty cheap dresser from Ikea. He didn't put the back on it—he says not having a hammer made that impossible. During the move, pieces started dropping off that thing even though the movers had it well-wrapped in some kind of industrial saran wrap. It's standing in our bedroom leaning about three different ways.

The head mover said he knew it was from Ikea, that most of their furniture never survives a move. That's not what they are intended for. You assemble them and when you move, you leave them. I think it's not just that the item is cheap but also because Kent left off the back since my identical dresser came through just fine. Oh well. We'll probably still get another one because they are inexpensive, roomy and look good. Only this time, he'll put the back on it.

Inspection is done!

And while we do have a few items we will look to have fixed, the unit is in pretty good shape. Kent and I took a lot of pictures, and I've loaded them into the slide show. If you'd rather be able to see bigger images plus their captions, go here.

Quick updates

First, I didn't get lost on my run this morning.

Second, our offer was accepted for 3 Claremont Park #7. We've scheduled the inspection for tomorrow and I plan to take lots of pictures. Look for the slide show to change sometime tomorrow so you can see what our new home looks like.

And the winner is . . .

Last night we checked out the property I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. This unit is a penthouse unit and is on the fourth floor; you climb five flights of stairs to get to it because the building’s entrance is a full flight of stairs above the street. I will say the kitchen was fantastic, and I really liked it a lot. And the apartment was very bright because in addition to the windows, someone had put in a lot of skylights.

But all those skylights limit what can be done on the roof (the unit has roof rights, which is considered a selling point). Boston code requires that any roof structure be set back three feet away from the edge of the roof at all points. Because of the large number of skylights, we’d have had space for at most a four by four deck space. To us, the juice just wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. So combined with the unit being further south than we really wanted to be, plus the huge number of stairs required to get to the apartment, plus no outdoor space since the roof was useless for renovating—we decided against that unit.

As we hiked down the stairs (why did I wear my cute Van Eli sandals?), Kent and I briefly touched base just to make sure we were in agreement, and we were. By the time we reached the second floor, we’d told Paul we were ready to make an offer on 3 Claremont Park.

Now here’s another interesting difference between how real estate is handled in Boston compared to Kansas City. We still have not seen a seller’s disclosure form because apparently those are not shared until an offer is received—the buyer just puts in a contingency about the disclosure. And we don’t know the owner occupancy rate for the building yet—another item that is done after an offer is made. Finally I know if we’d told our realtor in Kansas City that we were ready to make an offer, she’d have hauled out her paperwork on the spot. Paul smiled and said he would pull everything together the next morning.

We had dinner at Stella’s last night. Paul said it was good and he was not wrong. Of course this morning I’m wishing we hadn’t split a bottle of wine. Running will not be much fun.