sinking the sale

For those of you who have been astounded at my good luck in selling my house, get out your schadenfreude calculators.

Let me bring you up to date.  The buyers of my house have been looking at it long before I had decided to sell it.  When the sign went up, so did their hands.

While I was in Mexico, the house inspector and the appraiser came through and found nothing surprising.  Well, the house inspector found nothing surprising.  The appraiser found something that did not exist.

A little back story may help.  The owner prior to me was an amateur photographer.  Back in the day when photographers still used film.  Her husband built a very nice dark room for her.  In the basement.  Complete with a stop bath sink.

I never used it as a dark room.  Instead, it turned into an all-purpose storage room.  And that is how matters remained until last month.


The appraiser failed to recognize the room as a darkroom.  Now, I realize darkrooms were unusual in homes before the advent of digital photography.  They are now rarer than buggy whips.

Instead of a darkroom, he saw -- wait for it -- a kitchen.  A kitchen!  The only thing the darkroom has in common with a kitchen is a sink.  But the slant of the sink looks far more like an autopsy table than it does a kitchen.

Grasping for support, the appraiser noted a freezer was two rooms away in the basement.  Along with a washing machine and a dryer.  I am surprised that the appraiser did not conclude I was running a Chinese laundry in my basement.

His error has stalled the closing process.  Until the freezer is removed and someone checks the room for surreptitious natural gas outlets (outlets that exist only in his fevered mind), the closing cannot proceed.

On Monday, the Oregon Energy Trust will drag the freezer out of the basement -- and the closing process can get back on track.

Unless, of course, the appraiser uncovers a Communist spy cell in my basement.