We settled the promissory note issue. We offered a straight 10-year loan option with one year interest-only and the rest principal + interest. They get to raise the interest rate twice, at the 2-year and 5-year mark. Accepted, thank goodness. Now we just need to see the actual promissory note and pass it along to my broker. That and one more 401(k) statement should be all he needs.

I'm still waiting to hear from him how much extra we need to bring to closing because of the higher-than-expected home insurance. Hoping it's only about $1000 more but I can't remember if he was expecting the bill to be $1500 or $2500. It ended up being closer to $3500, so we may need to bring $2000 to closing. I know we can find a way, but I'd just like to find out for sure how much it will be.

The contractors have worked 3 days so far, and they have the kitchen and bathroom cabinets all painted and put back up. They also replaced the countertops in the kitchen. It looks pretty good; there are a couple of flaws I'm hoping they can fix. Next is the backsplash, which they'll do on Monday. I don't think anything will take as long as the cabinets did, because they needed to be taken down, painted twice, then hung back up.

We got a new light fixture for the dining room but it doesn't look right. The base of it doesn't cover the hole left by the old fixture. We're returning it and should get most of the money back (we just need to pay shipping). May just go to Ikea to see if we can find something, rather than waiting to have something shipped from Amazon again.

We packed and packed the past few days. Boxed up all our books, AS's sewing supplies, and about half the stuff we took out of the kitchen when prepping it for reno. (We put back only what we use frequently.) Also a bunch of kids' clothes that don't fit them yet, and toys they don't play with too often. All our DVDs except a couple of kids' movies, all of NT's CDs. Tomorrow morning he needs to box up his LP records. We'll be moving all the big pieces of furniture (bookcases etc.) to the storage unit along with all the boxes of stuff.

Right now it looks insane, but I know it will look better soon.

We ordered a few more things on Amazon for staging: shower curtain, towels, a little decorative jar for the bathroom to match. Curtains for the kids' room. Table runner for the dining room table, handles for the kitchen cabinets. Throw pillow covers for the couch.

So far we've spent a little over $4,000, including the storage unit rental. We expect to spend another $5,000 or so ($2400 for the other half of the contractor bill, $2500 for the floors, a hundred or so for more light fixtures, moving van, etc.) We may go over a bit if we also need to get curtains (AS thinks the current ones are too dark and don't go with the new gray wall color, but we're going to wait and see all the other changes before we decide).

I thought it would feel good to have things moving, but it's very unsettling and a bit stressful. All I do is focus on the flaws of the condo and worry that it won't sell quickly. We would hate to have to live here over the winter, knowing we own our new place but can't afford to kick out the renters. On the other hand, we're glad we have that option, because carrying two mortgages while waiting for this place to sell would have been a thousand times more stressful. This way, if the place just doesn't sell, we can do more renos, or drop the price, eventually, but first we can see if it sells for what we want it to. Meanwhile it will only cost us $100 per month over our normal housing expenses to keep the house as long as it's fully rented.

I hope I feel better tomorrow when all the boxes and empty shelving units are out of the condo and we can clean up and declutter and start to see how it might look eventually.