Wrapping Up the Estate

Most of you reading this know the ending, how the estate was finally settled. But for documentation sake I'm going to blog it anyway.


At the end of my last blog I was talking about the money we were making at our garage sales and how we were going to use the money to have the outside of the house painted. Well, apparently we had not yet discovered that mom's laptop and digital camera had been stolen on Friday of our last sale weekend. Then Monday when mom went to deposit the sale money at the bank she discovered that all the large bills (as well as the rolls of quarters and dimes) had been stolen late Sunday. Approximately $1500 in cash was gone. Fortunately we didn't sell the appliances at the sale and so still had a little money from the sale of those after the sale, as well as the ones, nickels and pennies. I think they came to about $400.


After having worked our butts off sorting, cleaning and selling, to have that much loss was very discouraging. We felt like we were getting nowhere and we were killing ourselves to get there. So we decided to revisit an offer made by one of our garage sale customers - an offer $85,000 less than the appraised value. But considering that we wouldn't have to finish painting, cleaning up and repairing the house, we wouldn't have to pay to refinance the house ($10,000) and we wouldn't have to pay realtor fees (he's a licensed realtor) we decided unanimously to cut our losses and let him make that deal. He is getting a great deal and we're all done, we can all go home and just wait for escrow to close in early January.


So I left the painting supplies sitting around, mom and I both packed up all we could take and we took off Thursday, Thanksgiving day. I left at 11:30 in Uncle Eugene's van packed to the gills and mom hit the airways at 4:40.


The day we made the decision to sell was amusing. Kathy and Pearce showed up to have a powwow and replace the broken dining room window. They came in and Pearce just exploded - not in anger, just in his thoughts on the subject. It was comical. But he had his say and went outside to spray windows and wait to help the trash man empty our 9 overflowing trash cans. He even set up a camping chair on the sidewalk to wait. In the meantime mom, Kathy and I all talked about the pros and cons of selling to "Ron" or renting, refinancing and selling later next year. We all came to the same conclusion to quit pouring money, time and energy into the place and let it go. Then we had Pearce come in and we called dad to let him know our decision. It felt so good when his only reply was a concession to our wishes. We met with Ron and got escrow going that very night. Then out for a celebratory dinner at Chili's.


This was a close to a big chapter in all our lives. It was Kathy's and my home away from home while we lived in Lakewood. And it was always our landing place when coming to Southern California for all the years to follow. It was always Granny's house, even though she died in '94 and was difficult to say goodbye. But it'll be someone else's house to make memories in now. I hope they have as many good memories as we've had.