What a difference a week makes.

If you had told me last Monday that this last week was going to be fabulous I think I would have laughed in your face. But now, on this side of the weekend, I can truly say that it was one of the best weeks we have had this year.

Monday started off AWFUL, as many Mondays do. You can read all about our car and the newest drama we had with it here. (It's a looong post...just warning you.) We were still having problems with our property manager. We still couldn't get in touch with the lawn guy so that he could mow our yard and keep it from looking like this again. We heard back from our realtor about the showings we had the previous week. Both of the couples liked the house but neither were interested. Things just were not looking up.

On Tuesday we finally had a ray of hope. Gayle, our realtor, wanted to know if we would be interested in letting someone move into our house before we closed on the sale. In essence, they would be renting until the closing date. They were a military family and their household goods were being delivered very soon and they were hoping to have a house to put all of it in, not a storage place. (That sounds familiar!) After I stopped hyperventilating we decided to run it past Tim's dad to make sure we weren't getting caught up in the idea of having an offer on the house and forgetting to factor in something very important. He said that it sounded like a good plan as long as there was paperwork in place to protect us in case the sale fell through or they changed their minds. We let Gayle know that we would be willing to work with them. I thought we would hear something back from them immediately. When Wednesday morning rolled around I got nervous. Had they changed their minds?

And then, Wednesday afternoon, Tim called to let me know that he was looking at an email that contained their offer. They wanted to move in on the 12th and close by the 31st of July. My head was spinning! We signed the papers that night and by Thursday afternoon we were officially under contract.

Wednesday was also the day that Rick called to let me know that he was standing in our house and that not ONE thing that the property manager had promised to do had been done. The doors were still broken, trash in the garage, holes in the walls, no garage door openers...all after a month and several phone calls where she promised to be done "next week". We didn't have to beg to get Karen and Rick to finish the repairs, although we would have. They went down on Thursday, measured the doors (which ended up being smaller than the ones at Lowes...urgh) and fixed the CO2 detectors. Since they actually have lives outside of fixing our house they weren't able to go back until Saturday, which is when the inspection was going to be done. Gayle wasn't too worried but I knew the inspection is a big hurdle and I was nervous.

Saturday afternoon I was in Bartlesville helping with the Open House/Shoe Sale at the studio when Gayle called with the results. The only things that came up were the things that Rick and Karen planned on fixing that afternoon. WHOO HOO! She was just as shocked as I was. We didn't think anything major would come up, but we also didn't think we would pass that easily. Usually SOMETHING comes up. Technically, I know things did. But we never saw a report and there wasn't anything we weren't expecting.

By late Saturday afternoon Karen and Rick were done. All the doors were whole again (after much cutting, measuring, and other such thing), the holes in the walls were filled, the stove had drip pans again, and the garage door had openers. One of our old neighbors let us know that there were vehicles in the driveway on Sunday and since the paperwork we all signed stated that any repairs that needed to be done after they moved in would be their responsibility I'm guessing they were satisfied.

As of today we have our car back, fully paid for by our insurance. (Although my sanity may have suffered.) We're only 17 days and a few steps away from closing on the house, which was officially on the market for 7 days this time. (MUCH better than the 260 days it was on the market the first time.) We're also expecting the remaining balance of the security deposit from our awful property manager, which will cover the repairs that had to be done. Let's just hope our luck extends to our case against those terrible renters. Although, if it doesn't, we're not going to dwell on it.

See...I told you it was a fabulous week. :)