Part 3....Thanks, but no thanks...

Rewinding just a bit to when we were still living in the blue house...

I found the "townhouse by the beach" listing on Craigslist at 8:30 in the morning and I compulsively called the landlord right away. They said I could go over in the next 20 minutes for a showing, since they were on site doing some work. I threw the kids in the car, drove the 1.1 miles to get there, and was given a tour of the town house on the right side of the pair of town homes.

I liked it. It was a good layout, had relatively new carpet, a super clean kitchen and bathrooms, and there was a fresh coat of paint in 70% of the house. At the end of the tour, I let them know I was interested in moving forward and asked what that entailed. They informed me that this townhouse was available in 2 days and I'd have to sign and start paying rent in those two days.
I was hesitant, as I remembered I had only packed that one lonely box of candles and had about a billion more boxes to go. They said if I wanted, I could wait and the town home on the LEFT side would be available in three weeks. I told them three weeks sounded like a better situation for our family, PLUS the left side had a fenced in yard. I asked to see inside, but they said it would take at least 48 hours to give the current tenants notice. They reassured me it was EXACTLY like the right side town home. I specifically asked, "Same quality of finishes? Same level of cleanliness? Same colors?" They said everything was exactly the same, but instead of the walls being grey, they were white, and instead of having dark green carpet like in the one I was shown, it had tan carpet. That sounded like an even better deal and I said " If it really is the same quality as the town home on the right, then we'd be interest in the one of the left." I called Rich to get the go ahead, then I signed, wrote a check and was told we'd have the keys in three weeks.

Now, hindsight is 20/20, folks. I should have waited the stupid 48 hours and looked at the freakin place. But alas, I was a sleep deprived, over stressed, crazy lady that was panicked to move her gaggle of babies into a decent place.

Fast forward to the day Rich came to pick us up from our heavenly stay in Boise...

On our 12 hour drive home to Montana,  we called the landlord of the town home for a status update. Like manna from heaven we received GREAT NEWS! The stubborn tenants had left early, which gave them a little extra time to clean, carpet clean and touch up paint! I asked if I could go see it and they said "of course!" and that I could go the next day when the cleaning lady was there.

I jumped out of bed the next morning, knowing we only had 3 blasted days left in the dead bird house and that today was the day I was able to go lay eyes on where we'd be living for the long haul!

When I arrived at the townhouse I saw the cleaning lady's van in front and I bounded up the stairs to the entrance. When I was half way done bounding upward, a smell hit me.

It smelled like an ash tray, an old coat, a stinky towel, and a big dirty dog.

I literally felt a wave of heat and pressure fall over my body as I walked into the house. First of all, it was filthy. To make matters worse the walls were yellowed and stained. The carpet was yellowed and stained. The ash/old coat/stinky towel/dirty dog smell was thick and I could feel it in my throat.  I asked the cleaning lady if she could smell it and said looked at me and then looked away as she said " it's not...too...bad?"

That liar face. It was horrible.

I left and drove straight to Rich's work and had a full blown panic attack. How could we do this? How could we leave one dirty stinky place and move back into another dirty, even stinkier place? How could we let our kids play on yellow, ash, dirty dog butt filled carpet? Rich talked me down and we started logically listing our options. We called the landlord and expressed our concerns about the smell being less than ideal. She said she didn't smell anything, but then admitted she owns 4 large dogs and is a smoker herself.

Let me take a moment to reassure that I'm not a dog hater or a cigarette hater. To each their own and I am happy that people find happiness smoking and/or owning dogs. I personally have a strong aversion to dog smell and smoke smell. I don't think I am better or worse than anyone, it's just a preference, and I prefer no smell over those smells. So while you may be thinking, "Dog and cigarette odor??? Big freaking deal!" It is a big freaking deal to me, and let's try and respect each other's big freaking deals, deal? :)

Back to the situation at hand.

We knew 3 things. We had a contract with these people, we had no where else to go, and we absolutely could not stay in the dead bird house another minute.

Our landlord offered an ionizer to try and ionize the smell. We figured after the carpet cleaning, the smell of the carpet could improve, thus improving the entire smell of the house. We also read online that vinegar is a natural deodorizer. So I went to Costco and bought SIX GALLONS of vinegar, and two spray bottles.  We dropped our kids at a sitter and with the permission of our landlord we covered that whole mother lovin townhouse in vinegar.

We went back 2 days later, on what was supposed to be move in day, but the touch up paint and cleaning was taking longer than expected. The carpet had been cleaned, the majority of the house had been cleaned, the ionizer had been running for 48 hours, and the vinegar had been there working it's deodorizing magic for 2 whole days. Needless to say,  I was expecting big results.

No such luck...for the 47th time in one month.

The place still reeked to high heaven. We smelled the carpet, and despite it being cleaned, it smelled like dog butt and smoke. The walls smelled like smoke, the cabinets smelled like smoke and the bathrooms smelled like 5 kinds of mold.

It was official, we were NOT moving into the townhouse.

Now, we were in a tricky situation. Technically we were paying rent to live in the dead bird house, but we were supposed to be living in the townhouse. Now, we wanted to bail on the townhouse, and argue that we were not contractually obligated to pay rent/occupy, as they didn't hold up their end of the bargain in the first place, but the catch being we still needed to rent the dead bird house until we found somewhere ELSE to live. It was one big stinky mess.

Because of the speed of the market in Whitefish, I listed the stinky townhouse and it was re-rented over night. That was a such blessing and a huge weight off our shoulders.

However devastating it was, they agreed to let us continue to rent the dead bird house, as long as we were out by October, as that when the property was being foreclosed on...

WHAT??? We were squatting?! We were paying some schmuck rent while he was not paying the mortgage on the dead bird house?!  GREAT, now we were accomplices to foreclosure fraud or whatever it was called.

I had had enough. My red head had had enough. We were too old and had too many kids to be playing these crap games.

Although we never really felt like we wanted to be tied down to a mortgage in Montana, we talked to a super awesome, great builder who went to our church that day and put an offer on a lot the next day. Our offer was rejected, so we put an offer on a lot, 2 lots down. They counter offered at only $1.000 dollars higher. Rich called me to tell me the good news. I was so relieved to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Even though I still had to find a place to live while we built, at least at the end of the journey, we would finally have our own dang house.

A few minutes after I hung up with Rich I started to feel really confused and sick to my stomach. Rich was going to sign to approve the counter offer in just a couple hours and I couldn't shake the feeling that we were making a mistake. I called Rich and he said that he was feeling the exact same way. And then in some sad, sick twist to the story, we called our realtor and told her we'd changed our mind.

Now we were NOT building a house and we were stuck living in a pre-foreclosed dead bird house with no where else to go.

And then later that day, I got a text that would possibly make everything harder and easier all at the same time.