Lets give it another go

Ok - not much news that's new. 

We spoke with a lawyer about our options to file a complaint about the realtor who sold us the property and we may go with that option.  Turns out there's a good chance he knew this would happen to us, so he was in the wrong.   We're not interested in suing, just filing a complaint.

As for the duplex status, we've filed our appeal which should be heard on Dec 27th.   We've heard some people say its unlikley, but we've also got some positive feedback from the people at the Borough as well.

In the meantime, we've learned that there are some things that we're allowed to do without permits so we're going to start going back to the house to work.   We haven't been there in a couple weeks, mostly because it's getting cold and there won't be any heat in the house until we get the plumbing fixed, which can't happen until we get permits, which cant happen until we get zoning, which won't happen until Dec 27th.  So until that time, we're going to paint and install a fence and a couple other things.  We'll keep you posted.  

Unexpected help

In the middle of all this paperwork craziness, we got a couple of very nice and productive days. Rick's brother, Alan, volunteered to come up from DC and help us for the weekend, as well as Rick's dad, and Ryan, his friend from Highschool. With so many people coming over, we put on our happy hats and went to the house to get some stuff done. In what would have been a week's worth of work for the both of us, we got quite a few projects done : we fixed the window to the back door, took off the kitchen tiles, put up a few doors including a nice double door with side windows, spackled half of the house and finish a few randoms projects. It was nice to see the work getting done and crossing so many things off the looong list of stuff to do...