Closing Day

I found out today that my life is not an HGTV program.

We closed on our house this morning. Tim and I had planned on signing all of the papers, going through the ceremonial passing of the keys, then going to a celebratory lunch. After that, we would go to our new house, open the door ourselves and, perhaps, Tim would pick me up and carry me over the threshold. It was going to be perfect.

What really happened was not that perfect.

Tim scheduled a walk-through of the house with our realtor for Wednesday afternoon to make sure the sellers had finished the short list of requests we had put into the contract. After 45 days, they finished 3 of the 4 requests. What they didn’t finish? Cleaning out the garage. They used the garage as their work area and there was a huge piece of old carpet covering the entire floor of the garage. They promised that the carpet would be cleared from the garage that night and everything would be good to go the next day before closing.

At 9:00 AM as we were about to leave for the title office, our realtor calls and says that the carpet is still in the garage. I worried that Tim would call the entire thing off and our house hunt would begin all over again. Legally, we could do that and I know it ran through Tim’s mind many times since he can’t help but stick to his guns. He does not like to be taken advantage of. We were also told that the seller’s agent was going to the house in the afternoon and would clear out the carpet herself, and that we shouldn’t worry because this agent could be trusted. I am 100% sure that this agent will voluntarily never work for this couple again as she and her son had to remove a 400 square foot piece of carpet in the rain and snow today.

I was so impressed with our home’s previous owners before all of this happened. They had done a really good job of updating the house. But now I think they are selfish people that can’t honor their contractual promises. I think Tim secretly wishes that nothing has been done to the carpet because he told me he would pack it up in his truck and drive it over to their new house and dump it in their front yard. And I believe him. We have their address.

We arrived for our appointment and the escrow officer was so nice and helped us understand everything we were signing. The coffee was good, too.

Oh, and that part where they hand over the keys? That didn’t happen. The seller’s appointment for everything they were supposed to sign wasn’t until the afternoon. So we would have to wait for our keys.

So we drove back to Dallas. In the rain.

Our keys are (hopefully) in the garage of our house waiting for Tim to come pick them up tomorrow. Without me.

Although this day seems disappointing, our expectations were very high, and I keep telling myself that this was the hardest thing we had to go through during this entire process. We are very lucky. We are homeowners.


Here we are! Happy signers!