Update on our first house

So, I always believed it when I heard that buying a house was stressful. But I didn't truly understand until now. It's been awful with all this going back and forth with the bank's agent.

We were waiting and waiting to hear about the estimate from the bank's approved contractor to replace the roof. We had agreed to put it in the sales price if they got the work done before closing for us.

Then the bank's agent said the cost was none of our business and to stop bothering him because the bank was paying for it and the sales price was staying the same. That seemed too good to be true, but then four business days (with a weekend in between) went by without hearing any different. So, we believed it.

Then last Tuesday we were told we're paying for it in the sales price, which felt like losing $5,000. And we've been fighting ever since to get the estimate - we want to see what we're paying for before we agree. Also, there's an issue with a shed on the garage - there's mold in it and the roof isn't up to code. It has to meet a certain standard for us to get the type of loan we've applied for. We need to know if re-roofing the shed (that they verbally said was included in the estimate) actually includes removing the mold and bringing the shed up to code. If it doesn't, it's horribly wasted money - we want to knock the shed down within the year and build a car port or make the garage into a two-car garage. We can't get that included in the sales price, but if we can at least get assurance that the work will make the shed up to code so we can get the loan then it's fine.

It's been awful and embarrassing trying to get this stupid estimate - I was told to talk to the contractor myself but then the contractor said he wasn't even supposed to speak to me let alone meet with me because the bank was his customer not me. Our buyer's agent got the contractor to agree to send the estimate to her, and that was supposed to happen last Friday (two weeks after the contractor saw the house) but now it turns out that there was never any estimate on paper and they're now supposedly working on writing up the estimate for us. We cannot begin to fathom what's been happening and why. The miscommunication and the incompentence of the bank's agent are beyond anything I've experienced before, and I have applied for and received student loans for overseas university!

Ugh. Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there. This is on top of the drastically reduced hours at my day job. It's the reason things have been slow in my shop and on my blog. I'd rather be updating more often and listing more new items, but all the house stuff gets me all upset/frustrated and I start playing the Sims 3 or Oblivion IV to just tune it all out and cope. The closing date on the original sales contract was August 17, which seems like a joke now.

Hopefully in a month or so, this will all be behind us and we'll be happy and working hard on getting our house clean and cozy. It is a great little house at a great price in a perfect spot, so we're not going to let it go. :)