Thanks so much to the many who wrote and who surfed in to read the tale of nutsoidness about our move!  The great news, of course, is that we will be moving to a house we LOVE, with good karma, in a town called Hope.  Several of you asked for pictures.  I feel a tad awkward about sharing pictures of the house and its insides now (will when it is ours!), but I can share some of the outside and view.  Yesterday a big storm blew (and boy did it BLOW) through.  This was our current front yard as we left the house to trek out to  Hope, about 10 minutes west of where we are now:

At home in Camden-still snowing furiously on Weds. afternoon

On Tuesday we had gone out to the Hope house for the septic inspection.  It was a glorious winter’s day in Maine, so I took these photos looking toward Freedom and Liberty (ya gotta love a state with town names like these!) and uphill of the house, which is surrounded by 11 acres!

Looking towards Libery and Freedom, Maine from the top of the driveway

and looking uphill from the top of the drive:

Looking uphill from the driveway into the winter sun. The path in the snow leads to the porch off the kitchen..you can see the tip of the roof on the right edge of the photo.

and another of the “main” views:

My shadow is the one to the left; I think our realtor Mary and hubby Paul are on the right. What BLUE skies!

Yesterday during the storm, our house inspector, Peter  T., took this photo which he shared with me.  It is of the front of the house, and as you can tell it was windy with snow going sideways! The lights on the right are in the living room.  The dining and kitchen are to the left and there is another covered porch off the kitchen on the driveway side of the house.

The Hope house in this week's storm

Just imagine....this will be OUR view soon! Taken from inside the living room.

And dusk was falling as we made our way home to Camden at about 4:20 p.m.  Took this from a moving, bouncing car…good camera!

Dusk (at 4:20 pm...the days are getting longer!) and the road to Camden

The nightmare of our attempt to purchase a house is now blessedly over, thanks to some very good luck for us and a very selfish owner nearly going into breach of contract on the sale of his house (the one above). I first mentioned the mess in this post, and asked you to think “desired outcome” and “Hope.”  Read on to see why!

We will be buying a house and moving by mid-February, no thanks to the owner of this house who was quite happy to refuse to honor his word and signature on the sale contract and apparently quite happy to force a family, who had sold their house ONLY so they could buy his (and weren’t otherwise planning on moving), into homelessness in a Maine winter because of his contemptible selfishness.  Can you tell I’m ticked?  I am SO not a vindicitive person, but what this man has put us through the past four months is beyond the pale.

We are happy to report that we will NOT be buying this house, on which we placed a contract in September and did everything by the rules and actually really wanted the house at first…until we got so fed up with the absolutely unconscionable and unethical (if not illegal, but I’m not a lawyer so can’t say for sure) actions of the owner.  If you know of anyone who is looking for a house in Rockport, Maine, and they see this one, have them e-mail me.  I’ll be happy to provide more information not-on-the-internet!  The petulant bully of an owner will never see a penny from us, and all his own fault!

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to say that our real estate agent, the listing agent for the seller, and the owner of Camden Real Estate (the two agents work for CRE) have all been fabulous and supportive; though we have had minimal dealings (as is appropriate) with the listing agent, she was great too.

Here’s the lengthy sequence of events, if you want the gory details.  I am sharing them so that potential buyers (and realtors) can protect themselves  in the unlikely event there is some other person in the US who would behave as badly.  What I discovered is that most of the boilerplate in the Real Estate contracts protects the Seller on the not-unreasonable assumption that a seller actually wants to sell their house, but does precious little to assure that the Buyer is protected from unscrupulous sellers.

In August hubby by utter random chance saw a house listing in the online newspaper for what looked like a dream house and price for us.  It wasn’t, but that led to us finding a different house–the one in the photo– that we thought WAS the dream house—high end builder, a little small, but with a view and due to the economy a price we could manage.

In September, we made an offer just above assessed value, as that is about where things are selling now in this area–that was about 5 percent below asking price;  owner said full price or no deal.  Figuring properties like this (awesome view but in our price range) are exceedingly rare–usually the really rich people get these lots and build McMansions–and that the economy is turning around and values will go back up, we agreed to a full-price offer which was accepted.

Mid-September: While we are finalizing the contract to purchase this house, we get our house ready to list.  Our current house (well, at the moment we are tenants!) got lots of views the first week, including several with serious interest.  It is on the market TWELVE DAYS before we have a signed deal in early October.

Early to mid October: That’s when the trouble began.  Owner of the “new” house we wanted balks despite the fact that he has THREE MONTHS until he needs to move out…he wanted to stay in his house until JUNE 2011! (reportedly because he does not want to take his kids…ages 3 and 5…out of school!!!!)  and when he discovers he’ll need to move in early January because closing will be either December 28 or January 5th, he starts throwing up road blocks. It  has been a nightmare of contrariness and attorneys ever since.

The day after the owner is informed about closing in late December/early January, his second wife telephones (we were luckily out and she left a message)  “to chat.”  Right.  Then we get an e-mail in which the wife purports to be friendly.  Yeah right.  Please bear in mind that neither seller nor wife know anything about my business other than what they saw on this blog, and most of the statements about my business in the e-mail are gross inaccuracies or downright false assumptions.  Here’s what she wrote:

I wanted to give you a heads up about an email that my husband sent to Xxxxx (the listing agent) a few minutes ago.  We aren’t sure whether you are aware of the following. Thanks!

“Hi Xxxxx,

You might remind Sarah Smith that she may not run a business from a home in Tolman Park.     I believe you will find that written in the phase 3 covenant, paragraph 10.   I am aware of Sarah’s business because we have seen her blog.

You might remind the Smiths.    I just verified the business angle with the president of the Tolman Park Association board of directors, and she let me know it would not be allowed to run a business out of my home because it will involve extra car traffic.     It would not be allowed to have a show room or ship goods from a business inside Tolman Park.

I also want to warn the Smiths that association dues do not cover plowing the drive way.     It will cost at least $200.00 per storm to plow my road and likely more.    I will be taking my plow with me along with all my fire wood.

If the Smiths plan on using the wood stove effectively they will need to buy around two and a half chords of seasoned dry hard wood.    Mine is seasoned for two years before I bring it in to dry.     If the house is heated using propane alone, it will cost plenty for propane, likely 3K more.

Attached find the pdf of phase 3 covenants.”

I would be happy to email you the PDF if you would it as sent in the email to Xxxxx (listing agent).  Please just email me your email address.  Thanks!

I promptly located and spoke with the President of the Owner’s association, explained there were inaccuracies in how the owner represented my business, explained what REALLY happens, and she said “Oh of course that’s fine!”  And we are eminently smart enough to read and understand the Association rules and what the dues do and do not cover!  The man is…well….. you can draw your own conclusions.

Friday, October 8:  we arrange to have the house inspected on the following Tuesday.  The owner REFUSES to allow us access!  We had to hire an attorney to talk to his attorney and request said person inform the owner that he HAD to let us inspect under the contract.  First attorney is suddenly out of the picture (we guess she told the owner what he had to do, and he didn’t want to hear it, so hired someone else).  The second attorney must have told the owner the same thing.  At first, the owner said we could inspect the house on the last possible day we had in which to do it.  Our attorney had to protest that we had to get in sooner to do the radon and water tests.   It took another 10-14 days, but we finally got to inspect the house, though not the outbuilding.  The owner still refused to permit us to test for radon, which is quite common around here.  If radon levels are too high, mitigation is easy but could cost about $2000.

Late October/early November:  to get a mortgage, you have to have an appraiser from the mortgage company visit the house, including inside.  The owner refuses to allow the appraiser on the property.  HELLO?   What about “must permit the buyer to do what they need to do” to buy the house does this nitwit (what I really want to call him is unsuitable to a public forum!) not understand?   The owner finally says OK, but not until he is home, as he is in Alaska.  The fact that his WIFE is at home appears not to help.  Hello??? Appraisal is finally done with maybe 24 hours to spare in terms of the mortgage company’s timelines and requirements.

December:  request owner agree to a “simultaneous closing” so we will own a house and have a legal right to evict him if need be and  sign a rentback contract to confirm a date by which he will be out of the house.  He refuses to respond.  His attorney says first that he needs to be in the house until Jan. 22, then Jan. 28, then no more replies.  In mid-month, sick of the utter lack of cooperation, we finally said fine, no rentback.  Closing will be January 11th (the last day permitted under the Purchase and Sale contract) and he will be out or be in default.  No reply from owner or his attorney.  Can you say thoughtless, selfish, petulant bully?  The owner, by the way, is from a well-known, wealthy New England family and is described by most as “independently wealthy, never worked a day in his life.”  He is 48–not old, just …well…another one of those things I can’t call him here.

After discussions between the attorneys, our attorney suggests we ask the buyers of our house if they can extend  OUR rentback two weeks.  They can and do, but due to their timelines and move-out dates, can’t offer a day more.  They are nice, reasonable, sane people!

December 24th:  our attorney calls with an update about the latest lack of response from owner and  his attorney.  As I have several times over the past few months, when confronted with yet more petulance and obstinacy on the part of the owner, I check the real estate listings at about 2:30 p.m. to see if there are ANY viable alternatives to this moron’s house.  (Cue thunderclap, flash of light and parting of the clouds!!!!!) This time (unlike every other time), THERE IS!   There is a new listing…on the market only two weeks.  It has more land, more square footage, we like the location better, and it costs less! We e-mail our agent that afternoon to see if there is any way we can see this house before we go to closing to sell our house on the 28th. Merry Christmas from all the gods and spirits and house karma!

December 25th:  we all take a bit of a break from the nightmare.

December 26th:  our agent calls / e-mails, and we can go see the new listing later THAT morning!  We all meet there, and we love it!  The new listing is a well-built lovely home, but doesn’t have as high-end finishes and isn’t as dramatic looking as the first house.  But we VASTLY prefer where it is, it too has an unblockable great view, and has more than double the acreage.  The studio for me needs to be finished, but with the savings in price we can do that–and I can make it “just right”!  Best of all, the listing agent thinks the owners will agree to a closing that is in the first two weeks of February, meaning we don’t have to find a temporary rental and storage for a large house of stuff (meaning we are not out more big bucks!).  Blessings to the new owners of this house, which make all this possible!

December 27th:  we call our attorney and tell him that we now  have a Plan B, which we actually prefer.  This means we can play hardball with owner of the house above.  He is out and we buy the house per the contract signed in September, or he is in material breach of contract.   He is offered the right to walk away from the contract and both of us agree not to pursue legal action against one another (this is called a recission agreement).  If he hadn’t done that, we were fully prepared to take him to court for all expenses, including temporary housing, storage, and so on.  I’ve never had to take ANYone to court, and didn’t like the prospect, but his actions were just unconscionable.

We sold our house on Dec. 28 and have a rentback thanks to sane and reasonable buyers for our house.  We still don’t know where we will be living in 6 weeks.  We notified the seller as required under the contract, and he was still apparently willing to leave us without a home and refuse to honor his signature on the contract and move out of his house and sell it, as he had promised four months previously.  To me, that is utter disregard for the contract and the law.

Last week of December:  we work on a plan with the owners of the second house which means that if the owner of the first house defaults, we can buy their house.  Still no word back from the selfish toad.  We were still willing to go through with the purchase of the first house IF the owner vacated it on time, in full compliance with the contract.

January 5:  our attorney calls and says the owner of the first house wants out of the contract and will sign the agreement to walk away from the contract.  Except he doesn’t.  Once again he seems to think he can just string things along and get away with whatever he wants because  he is a rich, selfish xxxxx (can’t put that word, either).  On the 6th, his attorney says he’ll sign on the  7th.  On the 7th, he says the owner will sign on the 8th.  On the 8th, the attorney says his client will sign on the 10th.  Like I believe that!

January 6th:  we receive a phone call from a former neighbor asking where we are going to move since the first house fell through.   Hunh?  How did he know that…neither we nor the realtors have breathed a word to anyone?  Turns out he is friends with the owner of the first house.  The (expletive omitted) appears to have sent his friend on a fishing expedition to find out what we are doing.  None of his business.  I politely decline to answer as “things are not settled.”

We are only putting this information out in public now that the owner was on the brink of  breach of contract.  All along (as the owner’s own attorney put it to one of the parties in this transaction) we have done everything right. As our attorney said way back in October, the courts do not look kindly on people who willingly sign a contract and then try to break it on purpose.  Like this jerk. As I mentioned above, if you know anyone who is thinking of relocating to this area, they can write and I’ll share a few more details privately –like his name– so they can be forewarned!

Monday, January 10th:  we schedule the walk-through due to lack of response. At 9:30 in the morning we get a call from the owner of Camden Real Estate:  the recission agreement is finally signed by the seller!  The contract for the purchase of the first house is now null and void and we can go forward with the other property!!! WOOOOHOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!

WE ARE FREE!!!!!!!

Now, let’s all hope no one else will come close to offering what we did for that first house, that the owner has to wait forever for another offer, and that every realtor in the region is unwilling to touch him or his selfish money with a ninety foot pole.  I believe in Karma.  I believe that I don’t need to waste another second of my life on a man who is, frankly, a waste of the planet’s oxygen.  Because Karma will come back on him.

But after telling our agent that, I realized, maybe GOOD karma came to us.  That Christmas Eve gift of finding the Plan B house is the reward.

We will be out several thousand dollars, which for us a sizeable sum.  The costs were the usual:  inspection, septic inspection, mortgage application fee, appraisal, and the UNusual:  lots of attorneys fees (they use attorneys instead of title companies for closing up here in Maine).  The sad fact is that we are glad to be rid of this jerk even at that cost.

And thanks to any of you who managed to read all of this ranting blather!  Can you tell I needed to get it out?  I won’t tell you more about the Plan B house for a while, though, because the owner of the first house is sufficiently spiteful (and in my opinion, unbalanced), that we don’t know what he will do; the good news is that the Recission Agreement means he can’t change his mind (again) and try to sue us for not buying the house.  Fortunately, they are moving to Alaska eventually, so they will be far, far away.  My condolences to the population of the town the plan to call home.  And for us….HOOORAY!  All’s well that ends well!

Life will be good!  And by the way…the new house, the one we WILL buy, is in the town of Hope!  See?  Think “Hope” worked!

These past few months have been more than amply filled with family and household responsibilities, and precious little time for creativity and art.  But I did eke out a few moments…over the course of two weeks! (these ought to have been done in a day or two..tells you what my days have been like) to make some mistletoe ornaments for my Frayed Edges Friends (we are, by the way, getting a rather lovely collection of ornaments we have swapped over the years).

Photographed at Kate's house, the Mistletoe ornament pattern is by Susan Brubaker Knapp, in the 2010-11 Quilting Arts Gifts magazine

When I received my author’s copy of Quilting Arts Gifts 2010-2011, I immediately paged through it to find my article, but on the way was immediately stopped by Susan Brubaker Knapp‘s wonderful mistletoe ornaments.  Susan and I have only met once “in the real,” in Houston (where else?), but have become friends via internet.  I was thrilled when I looked at the credit to see that these beauties were her pattern!

Of course, could I make it just like the pattern?  Not quite….. I used a slightly smaller pattern (I think now I like hers better–more room between the leaves…since I haven’t seen “live” mistletoe in decades tho, I wasn’t sure about the branching pattern on the leaves).

My leaves ready to cut out, and the big photo from QArts Gifts issue

Also, when I went to make these just before our Frayed Edges meeting, I realized I didn’t have either the 1 cm white wool balls Susan used OR the variegated light green floss OR anywhere to buy them locally AND not enough time to order stuff.  So what did I do?  I made it up!

I promptly thought of my polymer clay (neglected for a couple years in a box), and dug out my translucent and Pearl white Sculpey III (I think that was the kind) and made round white beads.  LOTS of them.  Think 7-8 for each sprig, with three sprigs per ornament, times four ornaments…… folded up some parchment paper into “Z” folds so the little pesky things wouldn’t roll in the tray while going into and out of the toaster oven. And since I couldn’t sew through wool beads with floss and make a lovely French Knot like Susan, I used green seed beads (a couple colors) as a “stop” to secure the beads to the stems.  I think Susan had quite a few more berries per ornament than I did, and if I had had time I would have made another bazillion beads, but not enough time!  Oh well!

Here's my "work station" on the dining table, with the polymer clay beads I made in the "Z" fold parchment, waiting to be sewn on to the ornaments. Wear a thimble!

Then I didn’t have lovely silk ribbon like Susan, or a place to buy any, or time to order, so I dug through my ribbons and tidbits box and found the plaid ribbon.  It’s not great quality ribbon, but it looks PERFECT.  I tied an overhand knot about halfway down to make a hanging loop.  Then I used some 1/8″ wide green satin double-faced ribbon (from JoAnns) to seriously tie together tightly the three branches of mistletoe and the plaid loop.  I made sure the knot of the loop was below the tightly-tied green ribbon so the loop wouldn’t pull up and out.

Here’s the three I gave away—mine had to wait until later to get finished, but it did make it onto the tree before Christmas!

3 mistletoe ornaments, and MANY polymer-bead-berries

And a close up:

On mine I tried painting the edges as I wasn’t certain about the white.  What a PAIN!   I finished my ornament that way but it was so fiddly getting the brush between the edges of the leaves that I decided to skip that.  And Kathy said she really liked the spark of white…good!   Also, I used a heavy 35-wt cotton thread–heavier than I usually use–for the quilting.  I had bought some of Superior Thread’s King Tut line (the Bullrushes color) for a class for kits, and had a bunch leftover.  It was perfect, used it top and bobbin!

Best of all was when Kate just gasped….she had bought a similar ornament at a craft fair for the Mother and SO wanted one for herself but was good with the budget and didn’t buy one.  So she got one anyway!

Thanks Susan for a really WONDERFUL ornament!

As always, our December Frayed Edges was friends, food, smiles and fun.

And since it was December, gifties!  We met in Kate’s couple-hundred-year-old farmhouse near Merrymeeting Bay (isn’t that the most awesome name?) on a gray day with the woodstove warming us in the kitchen/dining room, and Bailey (OOOPS…I am SO bad with names)  Bristol the wonderdog keeping us company. The photo at the very  top is as I sat in my chair and looked up…isn’t the shadow pattern on the ceiling awesome?

As always, Kathy was the one with work to share!

Kathy's portrait of her son, for a drum case!

Her son is a drummer, and asked Mom to make him some round covers to put on his drum cases.  Kathy is using a different technique for each, and this one is a portrait  of said son done with bleach pen on cloth!  Totally cool!  She shared that she did a sketch of her son, place glass or clear plastic on top, drew over the lines with the bleach pen, THEN placed the cloth down  on the bleach pen.  That solved the problem of having the bleach react too much with where you start drawing and not enough where you finish.  A clever lady she is!

Then we had gifties… My small offerings are the mistletoe, Kath gave us each awonderful key and card holder, thereby supporting local craftswomen, and Kate took some fabric I had given her (an old damask tablecloth of Mom’s, actually), dyed it, and made us a set of re-usable gift bags.  Those clearly will be for in-house giving!!!!  Kate made the lovely vignette of votives on a small mirror (also found at the local dump’s swap shack….I really need to go to the Bowdoinham dump!), then gave us the candles which you saw here on my blog! Kate recycled old music sheets to make them.

then there is lunch in the sunshine:

including soup and dessert…yum!

Then we remembered Deborah, our itinerant member who lived in Maine, then near Dallas, and now near Annapolis, had sent a box!  more gifties! Here are her funny snowmen and one of the inspiring ‘zines she makes:

After lunch, Kate said “let’s make journals”.  Hunh? It appears the gift-giving wasn’t over!  Kate bought this cool gizzie and said we’d make journals.  Apparently the covers of discarded Readers’ Digest Condensed Books make the best recycled covers.  And then Kate had a stash of de-commissioned letterhead from a couple places; some of the paper had this “ghost” terrain map on it…SO cool!   So she let us choose from her stash of scavenged-from-the-swap-shack (gotta go there!) stuff, and we made our own journals.  I’ll share than in a post fairly soon.

Finally, there is Bailey Bristol being sweet!

Last year (I had to search my blog to find it), my word for the year was

Simplify.

Even though I had actually attempted to do that over the course of the year, the fact that I didn’t remember the word (sigh) will tell you that I have some work to do on that score!

The word for 2011 is

Breathe.

The year, as I mentioned yesterday, is starting on quite a stressful note thanks (well, NO thanks) to the owner of the house on which we put an offer.  Our house has sold, so we MUST move  (we have a short rentback from the new owners and think we can extend that a bit), but we don’t know if the current owner will comply with the requirement to be out of the house for *us* to occupy it when we go to closing due to a lot of things that have gone on since we got the contract to sell our house.  So we will know next week when closing happens if he will be out, and if it will be this month……

In the meantime, I am trying to breathe.  Trying not to feel like a quivering mass of stress.  Trying to pack up some things, clear out junk (to Goodwill when suitable, to the dump when not!), keep up with paperwork, not snap at the hubster and children.  All will be well in the long run, but at the moment it is pretty nerve-wracking.  Again, I’ll ask for you all to send vibes for things to work out the way we would most like!

Happy New Year to one and all!