"Speaking of throwing things at a spouse" Years ago, the mother of a boy I was dating told me about the first breakfast she prepared for her career military husband. She was an "owl" rather than a "lark", & she had been pampered her whole life anyway. so the honeymoon was romantic, & then the newly-married couple moved into base housing, & New Husband had to get up at 5 AM to get to work. New Wife gamely gets up, too, puts on her beautiful negligee, & goes to the kitchen to make pancakes. & sits down at the table & dozes off, waking up only when the odor of burning pancakes seeps into her brain. As she's frantically trying to salvage the pan & fan away the smoke her dearly beloved appears in the kitchen doorway, guffaws, & chuckles, "Ah, the new bride in the kitchen." & turns around to leave. She said, "The sight of that smug neck retreating just *enraged* me, & I had a pancake sitting on the egg turner in my hand,so I flipped that pancake across the room, & it hit him smack on the neck & slid down onto his starched collar."

Well, things are chugging along. The things that were either wrong or annoying about the place have taken a bit more time to fix but nothing has been a horror story so all in all I am pleased. When they removed the faulty previous renovations to the attic (made into an office and bedroom) I thought there might be a lot of rotting wood because of the way things were stained on the siding outside. But rot was minor. The main focus has been getting that area updated since it was in such poor shape. The corrections to the supports and the installation of skylights really opened up the room and the whole thing has now been blessed by the county inspector (yay! a big relief). This old house was built solidly but out of two by sixes whereas now things would be made out of much bigger lumber - so getting things blessed by structural engineers can be tricky. Currently the work is focused on moving the massive HVAC unit from the sunny front of the house to the shady back of the house, building a false chimney up the outside wall to carry the ductwork upstairs to the home office. This involved cutting new holes into the brick foundation wall and re-working all the ducts throughout the house. The old system was patched and in some places just homeowner done and not efficient. The problem now is that I really want to use as much of the basement as possible as a workshop but getting the duct guys to understand me has been difficult. There are certain rules about how sharp a turn and how many feet a duct can travel and I want as much of the ductwork as possible out of the way which doesn't look like it is feasible. So in order to get from one end of the room to the other I am either going to be stepping over ducts or stooping under them a couple of times. Not what I wanted. Most of the problem is that the HVAC unit that came with the house is monster big (actually a good thing), the previous owner didn't have it ducted the right way so it was unable to cool or heat every room and he used small ducts. My crew is putting in these massive ducts which will do a great job of keeping things ventilated and cool but I will sacrifice workspace down in the basement - so I should shut up and quit complaining. The previous owner has never shown up to finish hauling off his junk. My understanding is that he really fell on hard times financially and just couldn't get it together. I've been piling it up and having the workers add it to their loads to the dump (and I've been paying for that pleasure). In addition to all that - I been fixing up my current house to put it up for sale and things are going s-l-o-w. I had such big plans about really going through everything and tossing out the stuff I don't use or need but that just takes way too much time. I'm down to throwing stuff in boxes and piling them up in the corner and hoping that someday I will be able to go through it. The realtor winced when she saw how much clutter I have (and my house is only a quarter of how cluttered my parents house is) and she suggested I find some newer appliances for the kitchen. She also warned that looking at the numbers I should not expect to get much for the house - so that's a bummer, but things are changing everyday so by the time I have it ready to sell and the new house is ready to move into the situation might be better. You asked for numbers: My final low ball offer was just under $30,000 of the debt owed by the seller (remember I thought I found the actual payoff amount online but I was wrong. So I went in thinking I had the facts when in reality I was way off). This made it a short sale and his lender took about a month to accept my offer and forgive the rest of his loan (remember he was about to foreclose). Then my lender appraised the place at $20,000 less than my low ball offer and I said I would only pay the appraised amount. His bank took one week to accept. The realtor pointed out in the closing that the final price was less than half of the original asking price - so it sounds like I got a great deal but the houses value dropped even further after I bought it. So I got it for a song but if things had drug out for one more month I could have saved another $35,000!!!

There are few Society Hill row homes that cap 2 million. Especially ones which are 16 - 17ft wide with that kind of staircase which is probably running up the center of the house taking up an enormous amount of space and cutting up the rooms into an odd layout. Again tough to say for sure without seeing it, but I've seen so many houses like this that I would guess that's the case. Also for some reason houses on numbered side streets seem to generally go for less than ones on the named streets. Not really sure why that is. We will have to agree to disagree on this one. You might squeak your money back out (just), but there's not a lot to be made on it IMO. We've bought several city homes which we've renovated and then sold for one reason or another and I wouldn't take this one on for a cent over $950,000 and that's being generous. Again I could easily be wrong, this is just my instinct and experience of that kind of house and the buyers in that price bracket who want things a certain way. The proof will be in the pudding. The real estate market has picked up in Philly. Our Rittenhouse row home just sold in 3 weeks and there was almost no competition in that price range. If it's a steal it will sell quickly close to asking as there are very few homes in SH in that price range either which should be an advantage for it. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this and see what happens! This post was edited by hobokenkitchen on Fri, Mar 22, 13 at 11:44

Shirley - IT's never JUST a GAME! lol. J/K...The world series consists of 7 games. Best out of wins the whole kit and caboodle. Cubs did not have a good showing last night...stinky Indians. OH WELL...here's to the next 4! Annie - I just visited California for the 1st time ever last May and I loved it. I wish I'd had so much more time. It was a whirlwind. I had to go to San Francisco on business but managed to see the ocean, the bay, the GG bridge, Alcatraz, The Giant Redwoods, the Bay Bridge, The Fisherman's Wharf, the Sea Lions on Pier 39, China Town, and Coit Tower all while we were there! I had such a lovely time. Cannot wait to visit again! Now only 4 states left for me to see!