Clean clean clean

Monday and Tuesday were designated for cleaning days! (And fixing up the things we broke around the house) 

Monday we cleaned the whole house up and down. Then I left for Texas Tuesday morning. Leaving Andrew to do all the work on Tuesday. Oops. 

But he's so great, not a complaint did he utter! 

Monday when we were cleaning, our landlords came over to show the house to some prospective renters. After talking with our landlords for a bit, they told us we were their favorite tenents of all 8 properties they rent out! Gold star for us! 

(Hopefully also a positive forshadowing of a nice deposit refund!) 

The old house is looking pretty empty. Kinda crazy! 

*the tiny fire in our oven when it was self cleaning. Now I know why the door automatically locks itself during cleaning mode!*

Celebrate!!

We had a little celebratory apple cider bubbly at the end of Saturday. 

Moving Day

Official moving day happened on Saturday. Pretty much all that was left to move by then was the furniture and big items in the house. 

Some sweet boys in our ward came over and helped with what they could. It was very nice for them to offer their service. 

Leonard, Matthew & Jared also came to help Andrew move stuff. (I was really only there for a little bit so I don't really count myself in the moving crew, really!)

Midnight discovery

Late last night while I was packing for my early morning flight, Andrew started pulling up the linoleum in the kitchen & mushroom. 

And guess what?! There's some beautiful wood underneath that just need some love to bring it back to life!! 

Too many pictures?! Sorry, we are so excited!!!

Andrew's shed

As mentioned before, our house came with a pretty awesome shed (used to be a barn) in the backyard. Andrew would be lying if he claimed any other part of the house was his favorite feature. There is so much room for all his tools and such - which is a BIG DEAL. And I'm pretty excited too because it also means that all his tools, axes, leather, etc. all have a place other than the inside of the house! 

We moved most of the stuff in his shed using Jerry's truck! Mr. E is so willing to help in any way he can, and that is one of the things I love most about him! 

A shot from today's haul(s): 

Kitchen process!

Today we took on the kitchen!

We have some big aspirations for this kitchen, but for now we just want it to be clean and livable. 

Mostly clean.

It was no easy task. 

Every drawer, shelf, cupboard was just piled with nasty. Serious nasty. 

So we spent all day/night cleaning out all the cabinets, bringing kitchen items over from the old house, and putting everything in it's clean & respected place. 

We put on the new Ingrid Michaelson CD and got to work. 

Here's just a little before & after for you on a shelf I cleaned: 

BEFORE: 

AFTER:

*now, it's still not perfect, but that's as good as it would get!* 

It does feel so good to have that large & most important part of the house finished. We can actually eat and maybe even cook in there....maybe. 

For your enjoyment, here are some of the overheard quotes as we cleaned the kitchen: 

Andrew: "I don't feel like I should have to use a razor blade to clean the dirt off this shelf." 

Julie: "I don't understand how the dishwasher could be so dirty. I mean it's self cleaning."

Andrew: "I'm very interested in getting all the hair out of the kitchen." 

 Julie : "Hair?" 

 Andrew: "Yeah, I just found a pubic hair up there." *Points to the highest cabinet over the microwave*

Sign, sealed, delivered! I'm yours!

Today was a very hard and long day. Just to give you a brief run down: On the way to sign papers today, I was on the freeway when ran over some plastic piece that fell off the truck driving in front of me. I think it tore the oil pan open so I called a tow truck to take my car to the shop, and a nice highway patrolman gave me a ride to the local Enterprise. And then, soon after that debacle (and lots of $$) we found out the down payment for the house was going to be more that what we thought it would be (a lot more). Andrew is out of town working, so I signed all the papers for him by proxy, and there were so many papers to sign, I believe he owes me a massage. Anyway, to make a long story short ("too late!"), it all worked out. 

And at the end of it all I still see this as a pretty great day because the fact remained that we now own the house! (Almost- I mean, now all that's left is for the other seller party to sign papers, money to go through, and have the keys handed to us.) 

But it's ours! And it feels so good! 

Yay! 

*celebratory sonic shake!*  

a long time coming

We just had a pretty frustrating, and at times discouraging, couple of days.

We found out that there was an outstanding judgment on Andrew's credit has been paid for (a long time ago) & should have been settled years ago.

And that's not even the frustrating part....

When we went back to the agency who needed to filed the official "Satisfaction of Judgement" to the court was when things got interesting.
To sum up, they weren't willing to do what they needed to take care of the situation, and acted like we didn't even know what we were talking about.
But....they finally got it all taken care of (only after some forceful encouragement on our part.....).

*big sigh of relief*

I'm just glad that is finally all taken care of.

Now we can enjoy our late night viewing of Divergent with family!



Note: I'm not trying to be cryptic or anything, but any more information and you would be annoyed of reading this (maybe you are already...) & there's really no need for me to emotionally relive it! 

Love at first sight!

So, not only did we love this house the first time we saw it, it was also the first house we even looked at!

I know.... It only added to my unsurety & anxiety about buying a house! Although, I had been browsing many many houses online for a few days before we went out looking, so I knew pretty well what I wanted and weeded out all the "NOs" ahead of time! And that was awfully helpful!

When we first walked through the house, the things I loved most about it were: the beautiful wood built-ins, the front door, the big window that faces the porch, the spacious feeling of the living room, kitchen & even the basement, the idea of finishing the basement!

The things I was most unsure about:  the basement ceiling was so low,

In the beginning....

Everything about buying this house has happened so very fast. 

I can almost pin point the moment we decided to just go for it, but only barley; it flew so fast it's practically all a blur. 

We have been renting houses/apartments for the past 4.5 years. Renting definitely has its pros and cons, but we were starting to run out of appreciation for all the pros of renting....Instead, we were tired of feeling like we were just throwing away money every month, when we could be investing it into our own property. And we were tired of not having any control over the place we lived: having to ask permission/not being able to: hang pictures, cut back a tree, paint walls, change the lighting, and even to have a pet cat, etc. etc.

So it was almost an impulse of "Can we do it?" "Yeah, let's do it!" In a matter of days we found a great lending company & Realtor, both recommended by Andrew's sister and set up appointments to meet with them. 

We met with Stephanie, the Lender, and she gave us great news off the bat. We knew we were in a good position to buy and  just meeting with her made our goal to buy a house so much more real! We had a real idea of what money we need for a down payment, and other things we needed to make this happen! 

I started scouring the Zillow for houses that were currently for sale, finding the few gems that I thought were worth taking a look at!  

When we first met with our realtor, Joe, he helped us to visualize & also qualify the specifics of what we really wanted in a house, and of those wants/needs, which were the priorities. This was extremely helpful! Mostly because Andrew & I were able to express our priorities to each other so that we knew what was important to ourselves, and each other. This was so helpful even when looking at houses online (you know, the weeding out process.) 

He then took us to view the first house on our view list; the house that would soon become our home. 

Appraisal

So we just heard about the appraisal on the house. It came back valued $9000 less than our agreed offer.

This could be good or bad. Good because if it all works out, we will be buying the house for $9000 cheaper, and who doesn't want that?! Although, it could be bad news if the sellers don't agree to the counter offer, and then we won't be able to buy the house at all! (Hopefully they will sign, because it is in their best interest. They have to use this appraisal for the next 3-4 months anyway!)

We have counter offered to the seller at the appraisal value and are just waiting for them to agree.

Waiting....waiting....