We Did It

We bought a house last week. Our first house. Wow. Our offer was accepted, and that's where we are currently. I don't even know what to blog about it. Click here to see the pictures (with the current owner's stuff, of course). It's a traditional 2-story house, which is not all that easy to find around here. Some bad architects were let loose in the 70's and 80's, went nuts and built far too many bi, tri and 4 level houses around here. So not interested in those! The house has a living room, a family room, a kitchen/eating area, 4 upstairs bedrooms, a small basement with it's own nice bathroom, and an attached two car garage. For now the basement will be used as a guest suite. If nothing else, it's private! We've looked at a lot of houses, and I am housed-out! Some were small, some were huge. This one, even though it's in a "starter home" neighborhood, seems right. It's a good size for us, in a good location, and the town has lots of families with young children. It's about 7 miles from our current place, and will be closer to Brian's work.

It's been a pretty overwhelming week to say the least. We had to get over a few hurdles before everything was said and done. The owner of the house is a smoker. Bleah! Who wants that? We originally looked at this house in July, and had dismissed because of the smell. I'm pretty sensitive to smells anyway, and get headaches easily. After seeing it again and deciding we liked the house, we had an odor removal company do an inspection to see if the smoke odor was removable. The owner has only lived there a few years, so we were hoping things could be changed. The upside - the company is confident that all odor can be removed. The downside - it's going to cost a lot. The house is over 2,000 square feet, so it will take them 4 days to do all that needs to be done! They'll clean all surfaces, rugs, air ducts, ozonate the place, etc. We wanted to be in charge of that part of the deal, so we factored the cost of the service out of the price of the house. We didn't want smoker-boy house owner to get some cheap service on his own dime that would only do a so-so job. At first smoker-boy wasn't willing to come down to our offer. But, hello, you're the one who wrecked the house in the first place! Voluntarily! On your own! Yes, I understand that smoking is an addiction, but it's still gross and disgusting. Our agent talked to his agent, and we were able to meet closer to the middle, and got it for a fair price. Right now we're in the process of getting all our paperwork together for the mortgage lending company. That's a lot of work, too. I was sick last week, and am still not fully recovered. All I really want to do is sleep. At a hotel. Away from my children. Mostly the little girl that I now referring to as Velcro, since she is clingy and only wants all mommy, all the time.

Anyway, that's really about it from the P-4 household. Our offer was accepted on Friday, and that's where we are. Tuesday we give all the info the the mortgage lender, and on Wednesday (I think) we have the inspection. Closing is sometime at the end of the month. We really have nothing to worry about, but I'm still in anxious mode. Our credit scores are very high, and the house is in good shape. Other than the smoking, smoker-boy took good care of everything. We'll have it cleaned, and most likely recarpet the upstairs. The downstairs is all hardwood floors. We're debating on carpeting the family room, since we're always rolling around on the floor with the kids. 1,000 square feet of hardwood can be pretty hard on the knees. At some point we'll need to get some furniture for the front room, but that can wait. We'll need a desk for the office first! I'm not looking forward to the move, but nothing can be as bad as packing it all up to move here! Plus, I'm looking forward to getting out of our weird rental house. I'll miss the big trees and the green golf course down the street, but I really won't miss this house, or the fact that the kitchen is on the second floor! I hate grocery shopping these days. Lugging it all upstairs will soon become a thing of the past! And I, for one, am looking forward to it!