Usually when you buy a house, you “negotiate” a few items, complain about the buyer/seller’s points of negotiation, and once the papers are signed and the keys are passed across the table, you never see that person again.
That was not the case when we got our house.
The previous owner of our house was Larry. Larry had bought this house after it had sat empty for about five years. He totally remodeled my house, knocking down walls, building new rooms, new electric, new siding, new furnace, new air conditioner, new windows upstairs, and new sheet rock. It’s barely recognizable from the before pictures we’ve seen. And, he did a great job.
When we went to view the house, Larry himself took us room by room explaining a lot of what he had done to each room. It was really like a living extension of him, this house. I’m not exactly sure why they sold it, but I think as soon as all of our points were negotiated and the papers were signed, he was regretting the sale. He was going to miss his house.
When we did the walk through after the closing (yeah, Ohio is weird about taking possession after the closing. The house isn’t mine until about three days AFTER the closing. Dumb.) Larry really went into detail about all he had done to the house and he gently touched every wall he put up in the house. He also told us about the next projects that he had planned to do, in case we wanted to follow through with them. What can I say, the man had a vision
He looked so sad at the walk through, that I told him he’d always be welcome to come back and visit any time. Who knew that would be the start of a great friendship? Larry in turn offered that any work we wanted to do on the house, he’d be glad to come over and work on it.
Now, almost four years later, he and his wife Linda are truly two of our closest friends. They are really great people. And, true to his word, Larry has been over and helped Ron with a lot of projects, like blowing the insulation into the attic floor and putting in the glass block windows in the basement. Larry also has plans for the back deck he thinks we should build! On the other hand, Ron is right there with his tool belt on any time Larry has a project at his house too; it works both ways.
They have been a blessing in our lives, for sure. The guys have become great friends themselves and like I said, the four of us have a lot of fun together. We are similar in a lot of ways, right down to our bat!
Larry called me last Friday afternoon and asked how our bat situation was working out. I told him that we decided to forego the Batman and Ron worked on plugging up all the holes himself. That seems to have helped as we haven’t seen any bats in a week or so. Larry told me he found my bat.
That morning, he heard his cats downstairs making a ruckus. He went down at oh-dark-thirty to check on them when he thought he felt something go by him. Sure enough, when he turned a light on, there was a bat in his living room. Hey, at least when the bat was in my house, he was only in the attic and basement! He tried to chase the bat and catch him but to no avail. The bat was too fast for him. Eventually, he realized that he no longer saw the bat anywhere and the cats had calmed down as well.
One of the cats was by the fireplace looking at it. Sure enough, Larry saw that the flue was open on the fireplace. Here’s hoping that’s not only how the bat got into the house but also how it got back out again as well.
Now I’m getting blamed for sending my bat to their house. What can I say? Better their house than ours!
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