So today was a Day. Aren't they all? you may ask... No, you see everyday is a day. This was a Day, with a capital D. It's an entirely different beast.
I woke up stupidly early, which I bitterly resent, especially on the weekend. lol but the end result is that I got some work done on my paper and went for a walk all before I'd planned to get up. We had planned for our house walkthrough at 10:45 this morning. This is the "right before closing, check all the things work" walkthrough. Now we've moved a few too many times over the last few years so we're used to these. Walk around, check the water and appliances work, etc.
Driving out, all good. Chris points out the craziness at the Home Depot - people lined up around the building. So glad we didn't have to go to a store today. Ontario just started reopening yesterday; it's the first time in ages stores have been an option and they're at limited capacity.
So when we got there, it wasn't a promising beginning with doggy bags left next to the front porch *sigh* - esp questionable as it seems they didn't actually have pets. But okay. Go in and there's a slight oder. hmmmm. And otherwise things are pretty dirty - for a house that's only a year old, the previous inhabitants managed to make a good mess of it.
But sobeit, we start walking through and things are working. The dishwasher was a bit of a mystery, but we got it working. Chris saw the neighbour kid out mowing his lawn, and went and offered him $40 to do ours too ;) Win. Neighbour kid's mum was thrilled with the whole situation. So not a bad start.
Then we ventured upstairs. *sigh* Remember that faint oder when we first entered? Well from the best we can tell, there was a substantial amount of marijuana being smoked in the house *sigh*. And on top of it, not only left-over smoke oder, but also multiple burns in the carpet and we're reasonably certain someone dumped their bong water on the landing. So awesome.
Now "hardwood floor upstairs" was on our list of things to do some day, but super low on the priority list. Like maybe end of the decade? What we had thought just required a carpet clean was going to be a much bigger challenge.
Fortunately the two rooms we were planning to use as offices were unburned. The worst was in the master bedroom. So we'd pretty much decided we'd apply the ostrich method (as in head-in-the-sand), and use an area rug to cover the worst of it and ignore it till future us could afford to deal with it. When our amazing realtor volunteered to pay for the hardwood?!?! She threw out a number and... wow. So while on a quick google of costs I didn't think it'd cover it, it'd certainly do at least 50% if we were careful with what we picked.
Alright, so off to Home Depot... Right - remember that comment about not needing to go to a store? Much less Home Depot? Right. Hindsight's an ass. We get to the closest Home Depot and the line up is insane *sigh*. Okay, figure we'll go home and hit up another one after dinner when hopefully most people will have gone home. But on the way home, we'd stop at a few flooring stores on the way. Well the first one said they had no stock of anything and were booking six weeks out at best. Not helpful.
Continue our trek and the next one was accidental -- we found it while on the way to a third one. And it had a few options of hardwood that was not only in stock, but end of the line, so significantly reduced price. Like 65% reduced. Which brought it into the range our realtor had offered. Amazing! The only one we loved though, they didn't have enough left. Sad :(
So we continued our journey. The store C had been targeting was... less successful. Sales people were seriously meh and they didn't have anything we particularly liked and nothing in a price range we could possibly make happen. Alright... Continue on our way and hit up a Lowes that had essentially no line to get in, but all their product was both more expensive and not as nice as what the previous store had.
We debated briefly and decided it was silly to pass on a good thing, so went back and ordered the hardwood. So exciting news - we'll have new hardwood. Less exciting - it can't be picked up till next week :( Booo. But we'll figure it out.
So okay - but if we're putting down hardwood, we need various other things to go with it. Which means that Home Depot run still needs to happen. We decided to save that for after dinner, and that ended up being a win. We were able to go in with no line and collect the various things that had been on the list. So that's all good.
But suffice to say the afternoon of paper-writing that was the original plan, most definitely did not happen.
All first world problems for sure, but just always that One. More. Thing.