Our Crazy Week 1 in Braga

Tuesday, Oct 9:

For friends and family who have been trying to send us text messages, we are still trying to figure out communications. We can received text messages via Facebook Messenger, but other than that we cannot receive any text messages From the United States on our old numbers. We will get that rectified A\as soon as we turn our magic jacks back on. Just waiting to be sure all of our Portuguese communications are working 1st.

Wednesday, Oct 10:

And then, things started to go downhill:

Have you ever read (or watched) “Under a Tuscan Sun”? Well, we are starting “Under a Braga Sun”! Our initial “tour” of the apartment seemed normal enough, but a lot of that changed when we did the walk through today!

For those of you who may not know, certain items that would obviously belong with a home in the USA are not necessarily part of the sale in Europe. The kitchen cabinets, for example. Believe it or not, these are negotiable. We knew this going in and asked that the kitchen to be “furnished”. This meant that the cabinets, the cook-top, the range hood, the oven, and the counter-tops were included. Dishwashers are quite rare and our apartment did not have one. Interestingly, Europeans have their washing machines in the kitchen (usually where a dishwasher would go) and that is not usually included.

Anyway, we had anticipated all of those other items. What we had NOT counter on was that the sellers took the water heater (yes…the one that heats all of the water for the apartment) and all of the light fixtures (yes…the ones attached to the ceilings and walls)! I am happy to say that this caught our agent off guard as well. Before you ask, he’s a really nice guy and as you will see, he’s really gone out of his way to help us with a lot of things that are not at all related to the purchase of this apartment. But I digress.

Now you may be thinking, “So…you didn’t close; right?” Well, because these items were not included in the contract, had we backed out, we would have been in breach and lost our deposit which was a significant amount. Besides, we were in a bind. Where were we going to live? And despite these issues, we liked the place. It’s spacious and in a good location. In addition, it would seem to be something of a good investment. Our realtor told us that we got this unit at a steal. A similar unit in the same cluster of buildings was selling for $70k more. If we flipped it “as is” we could make around 25% profit!

So we decided to proceed. Rogerio (our agent) told us that he had an old water heater (I know! Who just happens to have a spare water heater?!?), and some light fixtures that we could use until we get ones that we want. He also offered to help me install everything. As most of you know, I certainly have experience in renovations, but of course I no longer have any tools and things here are a little different (most notably the electricity).

So being cut from tough Norwegian/German/Irish stock, we saw this as our opportunity to make everything our own! Now is the perfect time to paint the ceilings and pick out the fixtures that we wanted. And we decided to gut the kitchen and renovate with IKEA. While this would most certainly be an expensive option back in the States, it is SURPRISINGLY cheap here! And when the time comes for us to sell, if the buyers do not want the new items, we’ll just take them with us!

The closing itself was really very odd. All parties (the buyers, the sellers, and the bank – the sellers still had a mortgage) met at the notary’s office where the contract (which was surprisingly simple – very little legalize) was first read in English to us and then in Portuguese to everyone! When was the last time you read your mortgage contract? Yeah. Us either!

Afterward, Rogerio accompanied us to the government office to turn on our electricity (which was not on in the apartment, not that you could tell because there were no lights), gas, and water. Not exactly real estate agent stuff.

Later we returned to the apartment to get some measurements. Now, you would expect one, maybe two keys with your house. Three if you include the mail box. Our place came with SEVEN (one of which looks like a high security lock similar to what you might see in a prison, that is to say, the key was very atypical) and so far, I can only account for four. One would also expect the keys to (oh I don’t know) WORK!?! NOPE! They obviously worked earlier in the day, but when we returned, the front door key (the weird one) wouldn’t work.

We must have tried for at least 30 minutes before we finally threw in the towel. So in addition to everything else tomorrow, we are having a locksmith come out to change the front door lock!

I cannot say what the condition of the place will be by Thanksgiving, but we’ll keep you all entertained through it all. Stay tuned for more news in the days to come!!!!

Thursday, Oct 11:

Quite a mixed day today. So far, Roger has been with a locksmith for several hours trying to get into the front door of the apartment. Not sure what the prior owners did, but they seem to have scuttled the lock. Now we’re into checking the warranty to see if we can cut the door.

On a brighter note, while it poured rain overnight, there is no rain today, and it’s a nice cool temp. I spent an hour or so choosing our bedding and towels, assuming of course that we can get into the apartment today.