Kevin and I returned on Wednesday morning to finish up and meet up with some of the estate cleanup people I had called while driving down on Monday. A nice bonus of having Kevin drive; I got to call and arrange all this on Tuesday morning.
There’s three of them; not much point in talking about the specifics BUT the spread in their estimates was noteworthy. The lowest was $400, the highest was $1700. I have no belief anything in the house can be resold for any value BUT they are certainly welcome to try. Will do that cleanout the next time I’m there. Will have to hire someone else (or do it myself) to rip out the kitchen and all of the carpeting. At a minimum.
Met the neighbor just next to the house this morning; I understood from the first neighbor that this woman had checked on Dad about a year ago when he didn’t come out of the house for a couple of days and the papers started to back up. She is black; the first neighbor had said that Dad was not very nice to her (his racist ways seemed to be very prominent in the retelling) when she knocked on the door that one time. She seemed very nice as I talked with her….and I apologized for whatever the hell he did back then.
Spent a lot of time on the phone cancelling subscriptions (he had paid AARP through 2018. That’s optimism!) and services. Only Comcast was difficult….they want a copy of the death certificate. Everyone else handled it in a pretty straightforward fashion (except maybe Pittsburgh magazine, who seemed flabbergasted that I would ask for a refund on the unused balance).
Drove down to downtown Pittsburgh because we thought I needed to probate the will. The probate clerk advised me not to do that; since the only assets not in both of our names are the car and house it should be pretty straight-forward. The title and registration can be handled by a notary….and if I sell the house I can do a abbreviated version of a probate with that.
Various things about the house I should mention that I haven’t already.
1) Dad had a flagpole installed outside the front door….took the flag down and added that to things that will come home with me.
2) One of the last things I did, and I wish it I had made it one of the first things, was checked the bathroom cabinets. Of course there’s some Old Spice. Bring it upstairs to show to Kevin and explain to him how I’ve never even thought of using this aftershave because, well, that’s the smell of Dad. Spill some on the floor so he can smell it….should have done that almost as soon as we got there instead of putting up with the stale cigarette smoke smell that is going on.
3) Found the user manual for the thermostat; turn everything down to 60 degrees. I didn’t turn the water off and in hindsight, I should have. Will do that on the next trip.
4) The car. I think I’ll make that a post of its own…..
