A onother day, another house under contract

With the house in Coal City falling through, we came back up to IL to look for another house. After looking at 12 houses, we settled on two. One in Wilmington and one in Godley. A flurry of phone negotiations later, we have a contract on the one in Wilmington. This is our favorite, and we think, the best for the money. On Sunday, it had a partial inspection, there are some issues but, so far, nothing that is a deal breaker. The gas and water were not on so the inspection could not be completed and barring something real major, we will continue to pursue.



As you will note on the slide show, this house has a bomb (or fallout) shelter. The whole house is very well constructed with steel I-beams as the main support of the house (and the shelter). It is very roomy and has VERY LITTLE mold. There are a couple of spots in the basement and some in the shelter but, very little considering that the house has not been lived in for two years.



The house has a large eat-in kitchen(20x13), formal dining room(13x9), and living room(22x13), good size bedrooms and a full basement, (where we will be putting mom's sewing room and eventually my office). It has a large storage room and then " the shelter", which is accessed by a series of hallways. It also has a hidden exit in the backyard. The yard is large, about a 1/4 of an acre. It also has a two car garage.

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This is not the house you are looking for.

Last week we were so excited, we thought that we had found "our" house. But, alas, it was not to be. Thursday afternoon the house was inspected and many problems were found.





The heating and air conditioning systems had many problems, holes in the ducts; broken joints; inproper placement which could cause fires; un-insulated ducts, lack of proper venilation; etc.






On the roof, almost all of the vents were either rusted, not enough clearance from the roof or other problems













However, one of the biggest things was "MOLD" in the whole house. The house looked so nice when we looked at it, however with the lights out, a flashlight told the whole story. There was mold on every interior wall with the exception of the living room. There was mold in the attic and mold in the crawl space. The mold was up the wall in some places up two to three feet.





Because of this, I estimated at least 20 K for repair, we withdrew from the contract on Friday.

Well, back to the drawing board, we will keep looking. Young John and Mandi are being our eyes and feet there. We will keep you posted.

Look what we found in Coal City Il.

My company (john) decided to move us to Illinois so this weekend we are up in the Braidwood-Coal City-Morris area looking at homes. After looking for two days and through 13 homes and drive bys of an additional 3 more. Plus a number of homes that were on our list but were dropped off because of problems. Thursday we found one home that we absolutely loved, however, it had a contract placed on it the night before. Friday, Barbara had our realtor get an appointment on a house that did not pass through the filters because it does not have a garage. When we drove up to the house and walked inside, we knew we had found our house. Here are some pictures. We wanted something that had at least three bedrooms and a family room which would enable us to have enough space for an office for John and sewing area for Barbara and a space for kids and grandkids to stay when they came to visit. What we found is a Three bedroom home with a large eat in kitchen, formal living and dining rooms, one full bath and a "hobbit" water closet, and a large family room. However there are two additional buildings; one small finished workshop for yard tools; and the other a "quarters" building which has two rooms, a 3/4 bath and an enclosed porch. We will use this building for John's office and Barbara's sewing room. The lot is not too big (75x125) but it is nice. The neighborhood seems nice and we have already met some neighbors. Here is the layout and some pictures of it. Our offer has been accepted and the contract is being signed and we hope to close in the middle of November.