Moving!

Holy cow!  I can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted last!!  I'm going to have to get better about this when after we move.  Yep, that's right!  We're moving!!!  Chad found out a couple of weeks ago that he had gotten the job in KC!  Great news!!!  Unfortunately, we had to wait until I had informed my CEO before we announced the move.  Chad will be working for the University of WI but located in KCMO at a National Weather Service training facility.  He will be working with a new satellite that forecasters will be using in a year or two.  It's been an exciting but extremely stressful time for us.  He head's off to WI for training two weeks from today.  Until then we (mostly he) has been feverishly working on the house to prep it for sale (or rental).

We met with a realtor a couple of weeks ago just to get an idea of what to expect.  How depressing!!  Looks like we will definitely lose money if we sell the house.  Currently there are 122 homes for sale in a 1 mile radius of the house, which makes it almost impossible to be competitive.  The other downfall is that I lost square footage in the basement.  I guess when I bought the home there was about 450 sq. ft. of finished area in the basement.  There was some paneling and wallpaper from the 1970s and some nasty, dirty carpet that the previous owner had just laid down over the floor.  (It wasn't even tacked down.)  I guess it was just enough to qualify for finished square footage.  When I moved in I immediately removed the nasty carpet...and the cracked asbestos tile that was under it.  It's been a clean, concrete floor since.  However, when we met with the realtor, he said that if we don't have the finished square footage in the basement, then we're going to lose even more on the house.  *sigh*

We couldn't decide what to do...lose more $ or spend a few $ to finish it and get more $ if we sell or rent it.  With the help a family & friends, we came up with a way to finish it (even better than before) for not too much dough.  At least we had already scheduled Woods Basement Systems to come out and waterproof, which definitely had to be done if we were going to finish the basement.  We were told the basement would take 2 days to waterproof...but of course there were issues.  It ended up taking 4 days!!!!  The good things with Woods is once they give you an estimate, it is set in stone no matter what else they find.  

It took a bit of effort to prepare for the waterproofing.  We had to take the old paneling off the walls and pull everything else away from the walls...including the stairs.  I won't bore you with all the pics, but here's a few...

We had to take the steps off, since they are next to the wall.  So here's how we've been getting up and down the stairs.  Safe, huh?!?!

Day 1 - Lots of jackhammering and problems

Day 2 - More jackhammering

Day 3 - Drainage system and rock installed

Day 4 - Concrete

So this weekend we've been busy starting on the remodel of the basement.  It's looking great!!  More pics to come.  Hope everyone has had a much more relaxing weekend than I've had...but at least it's been a productive one!