Well, Well, Well...

I know I said the next blog was going to be about how we chose the land and that whole process, but I thought I'd throw in a blog about a pretty big milestone first - our well.  It's bittersweet to be writing this because, while the well is in process, it isn't finished yet.  Let's start at the beginning though...

The sellers played a little bit of hardball towards the end of our negotiations with them on the contract for the land and before they drilled the well on the property, they wanted to make sure we secured financing first.  They also changed our requested two-week time frame to drill the well to 35 days.  We knew that would be putting the well drilling around the holidays, but we didn't think much of it when we agreed to give them extra time.  Hindsight tells me now we should have stuck to our guns about the two-week time frame.

As soon as we had a contract on the land with the sellers, Steve and I immediately got to work on getting the multitude of tasks done that we had to do.  This included lining up a surveyor, finishing all the final touches and making rushed decisions on the house so we could sign the builders contract, and securing financing.  There were so many moving parts to all of that and it felt like a full-time job for about two weeks so we could get everything done in the time frames we agreed to.  The longest time frame that was agreed to in the contract was drilling the well which is the only thing the sellers need to do before settlement.  Once we secured financing, we did the math and that meant the sellers had until December 29 to get the well done.

There was serious lack of communication from the sellers' agent for a few days and after finally hearing from him, he claimed he could not open the PDF document we sent over, which was the loan commitment letter from our bank proving we had financing.  I don't know many places of business that cannot open PDFs, so I don't believe him at all, if I'm being honest.  To speed things up, Steve hand delivered a copy of the loan commitment letter to the agent and, while there, the agent said the sellers already had the drilling company lined up to drill the well any day now.  This was before Thanksgiving.

Fast forward to December 22nd, after an entire month of us and our agent nagging the sellers' agent.  That's when we finally heard the rig to drill the well was actually on the property and they did work on it that day, however, they hit rock.  In Harford County, this is not shocking news at all.  They weren't able to finish that day, but they were going to go back on the 26th to finish.  We aren't sure why exactly, but they didn't finish on the 26th despite working on it all day.  Steve dropped by at the end of the day and he did see that they made progress, and he thinks they are close to finishing.  But, they haven't made any progress since then.  We had a very cold snap in Maryland with several days in a row below freezing and the weather messes with the drill.  So they've had to put the whole thing on a break until we get a few warmer days.

Sadly, the weather doesn't look like it's warming up before next weekend.  This is very bad news for settlement.  In order to settle, the well needs to be drilled and pass some tests, and those tests take 3 - 5 days.  The company that is doing the well, Barlow, has been wonderful to work with and has been staying in contact with Steve with updates and they know we are scheduled to settle on the 10th.   We really appreciate Barlow keeping us in the loop, because technically the sellers are their customer.  Fingers crossed Barlow can make miracles happen.  We know it's not Barlow's fault at all for us to be running into this issue, but I could just scream at the sellers for waiting until the last minute.  Not only did they wait until the last minute, but they also lied to us before Thanksgiving saying they were ready to go.

It will all be worth it in the end.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the well progress.

Progress as of 12/25/17 - this was when they hit rock

Truck on property on 12/25

Me surveying our land.  The pink flag to the right designates the back left corner of the house.  I'm in the backyard looking toward the other lot we were deciding between.

The rig

Christmas morning with the rig

Progress on 12/26 - lots more of the "mess" on this day

The rig

More mess

Again, the pink flag is the back left corner of the house  Steve's car is parked at the top of the hill in the distance; that's about where the common driveway will end and turn into ours coming towards us in the picture.  This view is of our front yard.