First Week

Last week I closed on a 1927 bungalow in an unincorporated (ugh), suburban (yuck), lower-middle income (sigh), little city (hah! what city?). The first day was very exciting: My awesome realtor gave me the keys and a sweet present for the house. That's about where the joy ended.

Arriving at the house, I noticed the people across the street (several grown men) had nothing better to do than sit on the front porch, smoke, and watch the quiet street... in the middle of a workday. Let's not even talk about the days that followed when I discovered their multiple junk cars littering the street and constantly parked in front of my house. I may not own the street in front of my house, but it's still rude to park junk there.

List of Priorities:

1. Pest repairs... thousands of dollars in repairs are needed and companies are unwilling or mind-numbingly slow about responding to my request for an estimate. How hard can it be? I'm happy to give you the square footage, just tent my house and kill the creepy-crawlers!
2. Gas Shutoff valve... required by the county and nobody wants to come to this city to do it.
3. Sewer Lateral... required by city/county and "the only guy that might know about that won't be back until Tuesday" (per the city's sewer place). Trying to get an extension but this will (clearly) have to wait until Tuesday.
4. Remove Deck... there's this monstrous back deck on the property, it needs to go.
5. Repair/Replace bathroom things.
6. Everything else...

Now, that's not too extensive a list, is it?