Bumps in the road

It's official. We are no longer home owners. We closed on the sale of our house Friday. The new owners take possession on Saturday. Late last week it was looking like we were going to be able to get into our new house with time to spare before we hand over the keys to this house. The sale of this house was going smoothly, and our financing was all arranged for the new house pending the results of last Thursday appraisal. Sadly our appraisal on the new house brought all of that to a screaching halt. The house appraised for more than we're paying (yay!), but it turns out we can't get financing for the new house without adding a railing to the never completed back deck. No big deal, you might think, until you find out that the deck looks like this--

42' x 10' and falling apart. Matt and I were willing to put a railing on even still, but then we realized that it would require a permit. I called the city and found out that there is already an outstanding permit--not just for the deck, but for the whole house! That opens up a whole new can of worms. Given the current condition of the house (broken windows, over-spanned deck beams, etc) I don't think there's any way an inspector would come out and pass off the railing without requiring that we fix all of the other problems. The permit has been open long enough that the city could make us bring anything and everything in the house up to the current code if they wanted to. I don't know how much code has changed in the last 6 years, but it wouldn't take much for the costs to add up. So we're negotiating with the bank that owns the house and trying to decide who's going to put up a railing and if we want the building permit to be closed before we're willing to buy.

On a brighter note, check out the color scheme of one of the bedrooms!

I think this example probably sums up why we want to repaint every square inch of the house. Sadly, this room looks better in the photo than in real life!