Ikea and Dumbasses.

For those of you who already know about the following crud, just ignore me and go on about your daily business.

~"Ikea" is Swedish for "Put it together your own darn self."

A few months ago, I took a trip to Ikea and bought a bunch of stuff for Cherry's room. Right away I put stuff together (some of it even in the ferry line up to get home), but I didn't put up her flower shaped lights .

I was lazy, it required a screw driver, and possibly finding studs, and because it was always still light when I put her to bed, it didn't seam all that necessary. (I should note that there are no other lights in the room. Don't know why, but whomever decided to build that room, didn't think that overhead lighting was important!)

But tonight, due to a crazy nap schedule, we decided that Cherry could stay up an hour later. This meant the room was too dark for story time. So, we decided to put the lights up finally.

But then, Armondo accidently pushed some of the light bulbs behind the fridge. (they had been sitting on top). So, he decided to pull the fridge out of its alcove in order to get the other bulbs. (We still had two, but we needed three). As he's pulling the fridge out, it gets stuck.

Turns out that the fridge has been there so long that the walls have settled around it and it's WEDGED in the alcove.

We can't move the fridge without destroying the walls!

So, we' were planning to buy new bulbs, but in the meantime, Armondo thought we could try these blue bulbs we bought from Ikea ages ago. But once we put one in, and then put the flower cover over, it gave off ZERO light.

SO...
Armondo ripped the blue covering off of the light bulb. And it worked.

So, three lights up. All working. All with bulbs.

End of story.

~Who Trained this Guy?!?

So, one of the financial things we've been trying to work out this past little while has to do with getting a second mortgage. We're trying to get a second, small mortgage in order to consolidate our car and my student loan debt. Our car loan has a ridiculously high interest rate, and the student loan isn't so bad, but we were able to negotiate a couple of percent lower.

If all goes according to plan, we will be making $400 less a month in payments! That, combined with the fact that we were able to pay our car insurance up front this year, instead of monthly, means our bills will be over $500 less a month.

The catch? (and the reason why I didn't divulge this info right at the beginning) Is that we have to have our house appraised and the value has to be high enough for the lenders to approve our loan.

The appraiser guy came and looked at our house last week, and I got the report, via email today. At first glance, it seemed like the house was appraised a little low, but not too much lower than we thought. The lenders thought it was a little low, and approved us for a loan at $500 less than what we wanted. (Not a huge deal, because, like I mentioned above, our monthly payments are around $500 less a month.) So, we were satisfied with that, and emailed our broker to tell him we'd meet up with him to sign and whatever. But then, I looked at the appraisal a little closer.

Our house was listed as a TWO bedroom house.

Umm... squeeze me? Baking powder? Nuh uh. Our house has three bedrooms. And it wasn't a typo. In two separate places, he wrote the house as having two bedrooms, and the pictures only included two bedrooms as well.

Now, I'm not like a real estate expert here, but I'm pretty sure that a three bedroom house is just a little bit more valuable than a two bedroom house. At least $500 worth of loan more valuable, I'm sure.

I hadn't actually read the email until after 5pm, so I wasn't able to get a hold of anyone today, so we'll be dealing with it tomorrow. (Thursday) But seriously, we're paying this guy close to $300 to take some pictures of our house and write notes, and he can't even count to three!

This guy even took MEASUREMENTS of our house. I mean, how do you lose a 100 sq.ft. space? Our living room is tiny, so it's not like it got lost there! I mean, he looked all around the perimetre, looked UNDER the house, etc. You'd think he'd notice that the house seemed bigger outside than in.

I so don't want to pay this guy full price for the appraisal. That, and we don't really have time to wait for another appraisal, because we have to get this all done before Armondo leaves, and there's still the step of taking all this stuff to the notary to have it finalised! We can accept the current loan amount, but if I can't get a PROPER appraisal done at no extra cost within a decent time, then I don't think I should pay full price for the current one!

Whew. Boring post. Sorry. Umm.. yeah, I have dishes to do now. Thanks for umm.. listening?