Sunday 16 November 2008

The House is Ours

Our New Prince Albert Home


Front Door View

Our plans will be to remove the two ceders either side of the front door. Remove a lilac bush to the right of the house behind the spruce trees.


Side View

The spruce that is touching the house will be removed and also the elm on the side that has the power lines running through. All these trees have closed the house in and caused moss to grow on the roof. The flashing on the porch will have to be replaced with a flexible type of flashing so there is room for the porch to move during the cold weather.

Back view with shed and deck rails.


There is a lot of painting that has to be done outside but first the old paint needs to be scraped a sealant to be put on the wood then repainted.


This is the back Decks
There are some rotten boards to be replaced a set of steps also need replacing and more sealing and painting.
This is the living room
The fire place can not be used and has been closed up. We may eventually take the front tiles etc off and bring it back to the original fireplace but use a natural gas fire with a new flue placed up the chimney. The carpets will be removed in this room, the dining room and hall-way, it its place laminated boards in walnut colour will be layed.


The dining room
Other than the flooring this room we are going to leave as is. Unlike the living room the decor is livable and not too dirty.


Kitchen
Other than a good clean, the addition of appliances, repair or removal of the dishwasher as that one leaks, we will not be doing too much with the kitchen.


This is the porch.

There is no heat in this room so really a waste of space. As funds permit I would like to have this heated and open it up from the dinning room with french doors making it part of the house. For now it will just be a very large boot room.


The stairs to the second floor
The hallway will have the floor done and of course some fresh paint.

This is the upstairs landing

Again other than paint we will be living with this as it is, even the painting will not be done until next year.


One of the 3 bedrooms

All the bedrooms have this awful paneling on the walls and carpeting. For now we will live with this. The plan in the future is to remove the paneling and decide whether to repair the original plaster or put gyproc board on the walls, then paint. Remove all the carpets and replace with laminate board floors, using area rugs by the side of the beds.

So there you are, our new home. The ladies of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Prince Albert are going to clean the house, remove the carpets on the lower floor and arrange for the laminate boards to be laid. We should arrive the first week of December and take up residence.

We are really excited about our move but we still have all our packing yet to do. As I will be working up to November 28th most of the packing will fall on Richard's shoulders. We had one offer of help today from one of our church ladies here, I might just take her up on that offer.

Saturday 8 November 2008

A CALL

Richard has received a Call from Redeemer Lutheran Church, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to be their Pastor. We have had a whirlwind of activity since receiving the Call. The first thing was to receive the actual documents, then Richard announced to the congregation here in Nipigon that he had received the Call and requested the following Sunday off to allow us to travel to Prince Albert (PA)to see if we called find ourselves a home.

We left Nipigon on Thursday, October 30th, arriving in PA Friday afternoon. We had contacted a Real Estate agent earlier in the week , we gave him a quick phone call to confirm our arrival and see about viewing houses on Saturday and Sunday. Not being familiar with PA we were reliant on our Agent to find suitable houses in safe areas. This left us with a lot of houses crossed off our list. The first house we entered, we loved. It was a two storey, 1912 built house. We just loved the character of the house. On first viewing we did not really notice how dirty the house is and how much need of TLC.

We viewed many more houses, most not really suitable mainly because they only had two bedrooms; having children with families we really did need at least three bedrooms. We did see a three bedroom house which would have been great, we were curious why it was priced so much lower than many other comparable houses we had viewed. Our agent talked with the current resident of the property we were soon enlightened why lower price. Right next door there was an apartment block with residents who would have made this a very undesirable neighbourhood.

We returned to the first house we had seen on several more occasions that weekend, we also included our host and hostess to view it with us. On the subsequent visits we began to see how dirty the house was and how much work there would be to bring the home back to it's original glory. Were we really up for this task? We decided to place an offer and see what happens.

We had constantly sought guidance from our Heavenly Father and felt this home was meant for us. We discussed our best offer, considering the work, condition, lack of utilities being on during the past several months, general neglect and lack of appliances, a suitable figure was arrived at, now all we had to do was wait. The offer was accepted with our two conditions; one being able to obtain a mortgage the other for us to arrange having the house inspected. Tuesday we were once again at the house discussing with our house inspector the possible problems. He was very thorough, the bottom line and main question; was there any major reason why we should walk away from this deal? His answer was no, but to realise there was a lot to be done, some items as soon as possible, but most could be completed over several years.

The final obstacle was our financing. This was our biggest frustration. We chose to deal with the Royal Bank, having dealt with them for a good number of years. Our first appointment was made on a day when the bank was closed. That's correct the central banking centre for the Royal Bank made us an appointment on the day that particular Branch was closed. More phone calls another appointment was booked for Tuesday. It wasn't until he had finished setting up our new bank account that he informed us he did not handle mortgage applications and would have to pass our paper work to their local RBC Mortgage Specialist. Now we were really beginning to worry. We were heading back home on Wednesday and we still did not know if we could get a mortgage in place by Nov 12th.

Thursday we were back home in Nipigon. We had not heard from our Mortgage agent so I phoned to see how things were moving along, only to be told she did not have enough documentation and could I fax some additional papers. My nerves were really frayed by this time. I faxed everything on Friday and then we waited. It was not until that evening Christine contacted us to inform us our mortgage had been approved. That was our final hurdle. We have a new home to move to in PA.

As you may well realise from reading this that Richard will be telling our congregation that he has accepted the Call to Prince Albert. Prince Albert congregation will also be told tomorrow that he has accepted their Call. All that is left to do is arranging the move and that will be another blog. Photo's of our new home will follow shortly. Oh and yes I did hand my letter of resignation in at work on Friday morning. I will work until November 28th.