It’s a day of mixed emotions for us. Today, 17 September 2025, we signed the paperwork to list our home of twenty years for sale. It’s not our home here in Mount Dora. We’ve only been here a little more than ten years. We bought the house in Wekiva Springs nearly thirty years ago to the day. I know it’s cliché, but we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into that house to make it our home. Our beautiful home. A home we could be proud of.
We’re sad because we have to say goodbye to the place that gave us so many happy memories. We raised both our children through high school and college there. It was home to “Manic Mechanic Wekiva”, the classic motorcycle restoration machine that was our two car garage. I chronicled our adventures and improvements on my stewsplace web site, now woefully outdated.
But we’re also happy to no longer have to worry about upkeep on a house we haven’t lived in for more than a decade. When the kids, our daughter and son-in-law, were renting it, we couldn’t rely on them to do even the simplest things to help us out. And they lived right there. We’re half an hour road trip away. Something that would take them minutes takes us hours. But that’s history at this point.
We had to pay a “cleanup crew” to handle all the years of “deferred maintenance” the kids and their “lawn guy” couldn’t be bothered to do. It cost $3500, but to see the difference makes it well worth the price. A night and day difference. Everything that had been allowed to slowly encroach on the house, pool screen room, fence, etc., was pushed back and neatly trimmed and edged. The way we remember it. The way we kept it.
A Little History
Before we actually bought the house, we started with a six month lease with an option to buy clause. It allowed us to work with the owners to address all the wood rot issues that kept it from passing inspection. They were caught in a tough situation, having to relocate to California for his job, having to leave the house behind, falling into disrepair. We’ve always been DIYers, so why not help them out so they’re able to cut us a deal?
That’s all history now too. Needless to say we passed the inspection and closed on the house Halloween of 1995. Was it haunted? Not really. But it does make the date memorable. We wouldn’t have moved here had I not been laid off for Christmas 1994. At the time it didn’t seem like much of a blessing, let alone a blessing in disguise, but it sure does now! Until we moved here from the East coast, the opportunity to excel was never afforded us.
We took full advantage of those opportunities and thrived in the process. With our home improvements it slowly evolved into the home we wanted, starting with elimination of the awful dark colors and wallpaper everywhere. We designed the living room around the massive stone fireplace, a central focus as soon as you enter the house. I custom built massive book cases to bracket the fireplace and complement its size. That’s a 60″ flat panel TV for scale.
The Waiting Game
So here we are, the house is listed and officially on the market. And now we wait for a potential buyer. Abby, our realtor, and her team put together a knock out punch on Zillow. They took pictures of everything, warts and all, and turned it into a before and (potentially) after walkthrough using 3DHome. Absolute genius. There were a couple mistakes we noticed in the floor plan, but those are quickly corrected.
We are amazed at the number of “viewings” scheduled in the remaining weeks of September. Ann watches them more closely than I do. But then again, she’s retired! I’m not. Over those weeks I managed to free up even more storage space, happy that I get a breather now. Everything had to be out of the house to list it. But not out of the garage. At least, not until we sell the house. That is to say we could move things into the garage to get them out of the house if need be.
That would come back to haunt us. Settling into a sense of security, centered around all these viewings with no offers for most of September, I try to get things back to normal. Looking at getting the taxes started, at least the basics of collecting all the information and statements and receipts I’ll need. I order TurboTax the last weekend of September, download it, and install it just to ballpark our situation.
We were actually getting money back, until I add in all the interest from our high yield savings accounts that is. Not the end of the world. Definitely not as bad as previous years when we owed just entering the W2s. Thankfully I got that much done because it turned out to be a false sense of security. With a few days left in September, we received an offer, and for the FULL ASKING PRICE NO LESS!!! We are absolutely floored!
The Waiting Is Over!
Needless to say we accepted the offer. The buyers asked us to cover part of their closing costs and agree to an inspection and appraisal. Pretty standard stuff. There were some questions and back and forth before the inspection, but nothing serious. Then the inspection came back with roof leaks around the chimney and electrical work to bring things up to more modern standards than when the house was built in 1978.
The estimates are $1500 for the roof and another $1500 for the electrical. My first thoughts are whether the roof is still under warranty. The next is why we should have to pay to have all the outlets in the kitchen, bathrooms, and garage replaced with GFCI (ground fault) versions. That’s 2005 code, not 1978 code, but whatever. Then I actually looked at the pictures and all the work quoted. He comes the “stash things in the garage” back to haunt us.
It’s for ALL the outlets in the garage, including the workbenches! Four outlets per bench times four benches, as well as the “not to code” DIY wiring to all those benches. We countered with those benches aren’t staying, thinking someone should have said something before the inspection. If it wasn’t worded “replaced by a professional”, I would do it all myself. Another trip over there to get rid of all that questionable wiring, break down the benches, and remove all the “questionable” outlets we added.
All Things Must Go
Thankfully Nick offered to help me and we manage to get it knocked out in about five hours. But we are beat. I brought my assortment of electrical box covers, but it turns out there’s only one blank plate in lot and we need three. The light switch walking in the side garage door was modified to add an outlet since there wasn’t a single one on that wall. Otherwise there wasn’t anywhere to plug in the benches along that wall.
It’s gone now, but we need a custom switch plate and blank, which they don’t make. It needs pieced together from custom bits, which they do make. All in all we removed three outlets that I added out of necessity. I wanted the fluorescent lights to come on with the wall switch that controlled the dim, single ceiling light fixture so I added an outlet off the light fixture to allow anything plugged in to turn on together with it. Gone now with a blank cover.
The last outlet I added was to a new, dedicated breaker just for the compressor, which was tripping the breaker for the existing outlet when it kicked on. Now there’s a spare breaker that doesn’t control anything, the wires capped off with wire nuts, and a blank cover over the outlet box. There were other electrical boxes around the window and the back wall, put together in a real Rube Goldberg fashion.
Definitely not to code, and most likely the reason for the “professionally installed” clause from the inspector. It served a purpose, but now it’s all gone too. Probably the saddest part for me was filling an entire trash barrel with all those old fluorescent light fixtures, now sitting at the curb for trash pickup. I used to have boxes of replacement tubes, but finally got rid of them when I replaced the fixtures here with LED units Nick gave me.
Bonus Time
I went through the remaining motorcycle parts and other items left to come out here. Thankfully I brought those two 90qt. bins with me. I filled them both! In fact, I took everything out of the bed of the truck except the plywood to make room for them before we left. Good thing because I loaded up everything except the Super Magna engine and the shop vac the kids left behind. Nothing wrong with it. Mine now.
One other thing that popped up. The permit had expired on the new garage door we installed for the kids. It was never inspected. Not sure if the kids never scheduled with the inspector or it just fell through the cracks. But as usual, we’re on the hook for it. Ann spent days trying to track down who needs to do what just to get the damn thing inspected. Once she finally got someone to call her back, she used that number and finally made progress.
We’re in a holding pattern for now. The roofer and the electrician will be there tomorrow. I just filed the taxes today. Ann brought the shop vac home with her yesterday since she had to meet the inspector for the garage door there as well as bring the trash barrels down from the curb from Monday’s pickup. They took everything thank goodness! She was able to meet with our groundskeeper guy when she was there too.
She wanted to get a quote from him for getting the rest of the trash in the garage hauled off to the dump. One less thing for us to worry about. That’s going to cost another $1500. We’d better hurry up and close on this house soon! With Ann retired and me the only bread winner, funds are rapidly diminishing. Not only am I paying all the bills for our home now, I’m also covering the bills and the mortgage there as well! Add all of Ann’s shopping! It adds up fast!
Home Stretch
The roofers finished and the final tally is exactly the original estimate. Suspicious, but Nice. The electrician needed us to move the hurricane plywood out of the way in the garage. He came back Saturday to finish up, but all he had was white outlets and ivory covers with him. He ended up coming back Sunday to put on white covers. I would have brought ivory outlets, but now we have two ivory and two white outlets in that bedroom. So much for the “installed professionally” clause.
Ann and Nick were there Sunday as well. Ann called our groundskeeper repeatedly to find out why he and his crew weren’t there to cart off all the rest of the trash in the garage. But no response. Until his wife eventually called Ann back to let her know he was in the hospital! Hope he’s okay, but now we’re on the hook for it. These last minute surprises are getting out of hand! Ann and Nick put as much of the trash up to the curb as they can and load up the bed of Nick’s truck with the paint and such.
An added bonus was the arrival of the “junk man”, a scrapper that makes the rounds before trash pickup, looking for any metal worth recycling. Nick broke down the sets of metal shelves and that caught his eye. As they were hauling another barrel up to the curb, he asked if they had any more, so they invited him down to the garage to see for himself. He said he’d take it all! He ended up taking all the motorcycle parts, and just about anything else metal, until he ran out of space in his trailer!
The best part is he carried it all up to the curb so Ann and Nick didn’t have to! Talk about a win-win! They told him the rest would be sitting in front of the garage door. So now we’re wondering if he emptied the trailer and came back for the rest or not. Either way he was more than appreciative. And so are we!
While there, Ann chatted with the electrician. He said he needs to revise down the original estimate because many of the items were already GFCI protected and working. That’s great news! I knew those outside outlets and bathroom outlets were already GCFI protected. Guess the inspector didn’t see or read the breaker listing I taped to the panel so many years ago (2004). Breaker #24 is plainly labelled as “Bathroom GFCI + Outside GFCI Outlets”.
Now that we don’t need to pay anyone to haul the trash away, $4500 is suddenly more like $2500. That’s even better news! Ann and Nick took all that paint and stuff to the dump Monday at lunch time. They headed back over Wednesday night to put the rest of the trash out to the curb. All that remained was my spare motorcycle engine and some plywood. Nick brought the engine back with him. I may venture over there this weekend to retrieve the plywood.
The Final Chapter
We closed on October 31st when we bought the house back in 1995. We’re scheduled to close with the buyers October 31st too, thirty years later, to the day! The thought of a young couple, expecting a baby, making this their dream home is heartwarming. To close the final chapter of our time there and end on such a comforting note will make this all worthwhile. Almost like it was meant to be.
If you made it all the way through to the end of this post, thank you. I hope you understand why this is important to us. Even if we didn’t really discuss the Barkyard all that much, other than to explain why we still have no progress to show all this time later. Call them excuses. Call them what you will. But soon we’ll have all the time that was taken from us by everything else that was higher priority.
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Post Script
I thought it would be nice to give an update on where we stand with Halloween fast approaching. It’s less than a week away and everything is still on track to close Friday. I already let the boss know I would be taking the day off. It’s a bit of a trek to Lake Mary from here, a much longer trek than it is from the other house for sure. Here’s hoping the next update is adding a picture of the “SOLD!” sign!
SOLD!
Well, no picture of the sign (yet), but we closed yesterday, Halloween 2025! We sold our house thirty years to the day from when we bought it. It’s hard to describe the sense of relief it brings not having to worry about it anymore. The warm feeling that someone else will remake it into their home for the next thirty years. It’s the end of an era.