Twentyfirst.
Got the house. We drew ourselves on the spot at exactly the time on 21st, and our Changrissa was nowhere. Waited for some fifteen minutes, and then this lady clerk, in charge of the process, decided we should begin without her. She did arrive when I was amid signing some fifteenth paper (out of thirty or fifty, no idea anymore). My dear brought her neatly down a few times, pointing out all the things she was supposed to do but didn't... And Changrissa didn't even try to counter it in any elegant way, at times needed about two minutes to come up with an excuse. Get lost, we had to do half your work ourselves. So it goes, when her fee is guaranteed by law, and our opinion on the quality of her work has no bearing on the amount - it comes out of the total amount, on seller's expense (but we still pay all of that). The closing cost came to around 5000$, of which about 2000 was various insurances, 500 the advance interest payment (for which we then got 3,25% interest instead of 4,25%), and the rest was various paperwork, certificates, geometrist, bla and bla. Done by 15:00
We didn't get any keys, she just came with us (and we had to wait for her again, as we seem to know the city better than she so took a shortcut, while she took the regular route with more traffic light and kept her mobile on her ear) and she opened it with her skeleton key. We then replaced the locks. Took the locks with a handle, of course, not with a stupid round doorknob - when your hands are full, you still have to extend two fingers somehow to open it. This can be opened by elbow. It's a tad costlier, but pays out.
The house is very neglected, only the kitchen furniture is whole and mostly good. We already bought some provisions - paint first, tools, kitchen sink and carpet. The sink is there, but it's plastic, black and heavy. After replacing the locks, we went for some inspection, and then back to the apartment, by 16:00 to make a bunch of phone calls. Power and water I scheduled in thirty minutes, just two phone calls, and for the phone it took 45. Which is great, a year ago it took a dozen hours of ironing the ear with handset on, more than half of which was wasted on waiting, being rerouted to wrong people, being disconnected. Most of the rest was telling the same story to about six people, who each knew nothing about my case.
About the carpet: the guy at Stone Mountain (which is just halfway to Lowe's) said they have carpet mounters, who are all awfully busy all the time, but he may shove us a guy who had something canceled, if we decide within 24h. Once outside, took us just a minute to give up on that - whenever they try to force you into a snap decision, some con art is guaranteed, most probably driving more business to their pals. The mounters would take 600$ on the condition that everything's empty, or else they charge extra to remove the old carpet and move furniture. Circumstances had this shop closed four years later, there was a wall to wall sale.
Then we went to Lowe's (the hangar lumberyard) and bought a ladder, some tools and paint for the kitchen cabinets (which had a layer of some dirty pink smeared paint), asked how it goes with the carpet, picked one and ordered it, and dropped by the house to leave all that. The cost of carpet just went from estimated 3000$ to 1400. No transportation either - they'd charge 55$ for that one mile, while they rent out a little truck for 24$ per hour. And when we get to buy the washer and fridge, it will cost less to just take a truck at Lowe's and I drive (20$ per hour) than to pay them to haul it.
Thursday morning I drove the girls there so they started painting the kitchen, and to dismantle the partition wall in the big room downstairs. The wall is an obvious afterthought - the brush texture on the ceiling doesn't stop at it, and there's a carpet under it. Don't know what this wall held, you could pass a pencil between it and the ceiling. Perhaps the part we removed did.
I joined them when my work finished - took them cool filtered water, brought a few boxes and terrace chairs. At some point Lena noticed that the patio faucet is dripping, aha, we got water. Then we tried each faucet and vukašin (toilet tank, v. house dictionary) and almost all of it needs replacement. On the kitchen sink the faucet itself is dripping (the sinks here all have holes for that, so the water comes from below). On the bathtub the hot line drips at all times, and cold can't open. The vukašin there fills, but leaks everywhere when flushed; some of it does go where it should. The one below has no hose to connect to the main. Only the basins work properly, and the heater doesn't leak (a big job, must be some 120l).
As for the sink, all the new ones have four holes - the extra hole is for the small hand shower, which you can pull out to rinse, and all new faucets have it. The existing sink has only two holes, and is clumsy - there's a larger and a smaller and shallower section - we took a new one, plate only. It's quite simple to mount, connects to the pipes by small plastic hosen.
We still don't have power (they should have done that yesterday, saw their truck in the street), phone around 28th, internet a week later (knock on wood) and the carpet in a week or two. That means some 5 days offline when we move.
They finished painting the big bedroom.
In other news, Števa leaves DBA, then be unemployed for a while, then to Zmaj to teach english, which he at least speaks, to differ from that tičerka that Nina had. She didn't have much of a clue, half of the classes were actually held by the eightgraders (!), and was often skipping classes because she had lots of tezga left and right. Her major qualification for the job must be the blue blood relationship with Đuđa, these guys know how to do everything.