Scrap Guy

So, I go inside for a drink, taking a short break after finishing taking down the little bit of drywall that was left from yesterday, and I have a guy out front eyeing the aluminium & iron scrap from yesterday! Hooray! Less I have to load in the dumpster!

Cicada At The New House

Lots of these buggers around!

First BBQ!

I'm grilling for the first time at the new house, angus burgers, buffalo burgers and hot dogs!

Who's hungry?

District 9

I'm settling in to watch, I'm actually looking forward to this. The sci-fi genre could use a boost after the disasters that were 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' & 'Transformers 2'.

I'll update this blog with my take after the show.

*Update*

Wow. District 9 will probably be a film piece to measure up to for a few years to come. The film was not afraid to blow people up. The story did a great job of keeping the viewer guessing, with plenty of good turns. I would like to see it again to analyze the details better.

Worth a view, keep in mind the 'R' rating.

Streaming Videos

Okay, the work has begun on the house, if you follow the Qik link at the bottom of the blog, you may catch a live feed from the scene of destruction. I will try and stream at least once, hopefully twice a day to show the progress. You should be able to post comments to me in real time if I happen to be streaming "live", just use the comment section in the link!

See you there...

Time For A Haircut!

New Home Owners!

April & I are home owners!

Let the repairs begin!

Trolley Cars

If you ever have been a fan of Railway rolling stock. Now would be a time to support your local railway museum. The collection of trolleys in Cleveland, which were intended to become a tourist line down town after the demise of Trolleyville, are up for sale. By contributing to your local museum, like the Illinois Railway Museum for me, you will make it possible for running trolleys to be acquired by institutions that can operate and maintain them for public enjoyment. These trolleys have survived this long, it would be a shame for them to become scrap now. Many of the pieces are irreplaceable.

For more on this, checkout, http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-buy-trolleyville-cars.html.

Stacked To High

Rebecca demonstrates that these boxes of bars might be stacked too high...

Structural Engineer

So, termites do a bit of damage, not like molds or other things, but repairs will be needed. Preliminary indicators suggest a few 2x4s will need to be replaced, so far only vertical support. Test holes in the celing of the garage look as though the termites haven't went much beyond the wall so far. In looking in the wall today, only found 1 live termite, my thoughts are if we get this now, the house should be free of them pretty quick. Taking a few other prevetative measures should keep the home termite free.

Here's to owning a home tomorrow!

How To Spot A Gamer

I was in geek awe.

Mitsuwa Obon Festival & Other Updates

We(April, Ellen, & myself), are heading to Mitsuwa to hear a crew member I worked with downtown. Been trying for a while, she usually provided rather short notice, but I got more than a month this time.

On the house front things are progressing. I will try to sum up as best I can, the details get muddled.

We bid on a house almost two months ago, the owner accepted. It was then a matter of time for the owner's mortgage company to approve. About a month in we found out there was a second mortgage, and the two companies were ever so slowly coming to an accord on who owed who how much. At the same time the home was about to go to a sheriff's sale as part of the home being a short sale, we got an extension and things progressed. It is in every one's best interest for the home to get purchased rather than the sheriff sale, for if it does go to sheriff sale, both real estate agents and both mortgage companies loose out. Once the price had been worked out, a home inspection was in order, we had held off until we knew we were actually going to be allowed to get the house. The inspection turned up things I had already observed, no real surprises. There was an assessor at the house at the same time. After they both finished up we waited to hear about our getting the house. The assessor turned up a few things to fix, which the owner is unable to fix as she is broke. So after a legal document giving me permission to make the repairs (Totaling about $43), I got to work. The repairs took a couple of hours, as I got to one last one in the garage, I stumbled on evidence of termites in the wall. This has been a busy week sorting this out. The loan can't be released now until there is proof of treatment. With a pending sheriff sale again next week, I haven't seen all of the people involved move so fast to get the house treated and all of the paper work sorted out. If everyone had communicated this well over the previous 2 months, we'd have been in the house already.

As a side note, both the listing agent and our agent(With around 30 years experience) have never had a house with termites.

April and I are keeping our fingers crossed that everything will be sorted out in the next week.

Comments on this would be very welcome!