We've been in our house for a couple of weeks now and settling in just fine. However; they never tell you when you buy the house that you always have to expect the unexpected.
Welcome to home buying 101.
Not that it hasn't been too bad. Let me see. There was the small crack in the ceiling over the patio door that we swear wasn't there at the final walk-through, the fifteen foot corroded dryer hose or the paneling that is starting to buckle in the basement.
With visions of being an episode of Holmes Inspection (if you watch HGTV, you'll know what I'm talking about) dancing in my head, my husband and I set out to find someone to fix them. Thankfully, we found him through a friend.
Thank God for Vern (and yes, that is his name). He explained the buckling paneling (cheap paneling with no vapor barrier) and offered to fix it (for about fifteen hundred dollars). He assured us he could fix the dryer hose (which he did) and the crack in the ceiling? He'll do it when he does the paneling. Just a little mud and it's gone.
Okay, so if you're guessing that I'm a novice at all this, you're right. I'm learning to be patient with things and I'm learning a lot about houses (let's just say I ask many stupid questions).
The best part of all this, problems and all, is that this house it's ours. There's no landlord and no rules. It's just us.
I love this house. I feel like I've been here a while (like two years instead of two weeks). I've discovered Lowe's (and it should be a rule that at your closing, the bank or whomever holds your mortgage should give you a five hundred dollar gift card to spend however you want). I can do the laundry whenever I want (even at three in the morning) and that I have a garden to putter in. It doesn't matter that I don't have so much money for clothes or for Vera Bradley bags anymore.
I'm happy.... and settling in.
Until next time....
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Okay, so I've been busy. To find out why, read on....
This is a story of how we finally got a house.
Yep, we got tired of apartment living. There's nothing like the sound of your neighbor's upstairs arguing at 3:00 in the morning, especially after a rough night of partying. So, it was the motivation for my husband and I to maybe at least, um, try.
For the most part, we were comfortable (except for the neighbor, affectionately nicknamed Godzilla). There were no commitments (except to our cat, Oliver), especially if the dishwasher didn't work or the toilet got plugged (which is, in our universe, a bad, bad thing. More about that some other time). If we were truly disgusted, we could get up and move somewhere else.
Except, that got old.
Home ownership, anyone will tell you, is a serious commitment, taken not on a whim, but with a great deal of thought. I've bought two other homes with my husband, which is no easy task. Murphy's Law is one of the great mottos of his life. So, with that in mind, he convinced me that we could at least look. I agreed. There were the usual, requisite discussions about where (not the snow belt) and how much (not too much), so with that in mind, we found a real estate agent and went to work.
Now, I've heard stories of people looking endlessly through listings and on-line sites. I fully expected to do the same thing. So, it was surprising that on the first trip we took with Nancy, our agent, we found the house. Not too big. Not too small.
It was just right.
It was the place I had always dreamed of. A beautiful kitchen. A backyard (with a garden for me). An office to write in that looked out at the garden I would lovingly tend.
But most of all, it was quiet.
Throughout the whole negotiating process, I kept telling myself that it was just a house, a place to live in. If we didn't get this one, there would be something else. Something better, I reasoned. It was a tense 24 hours, but on April 16, 2011, my birthday, I got the best present.
A house. All my own. To love and to tend, forever and ever. In sickness and in health. Till death, I pray, do us part. It didn't matter anymore that I still lived in an apartment with a neighbor upstairs named Godzilla or that gas prices were still going through the roof.
I had a house.....
Yep, we got tired of apartment living. There's nothing like the sound of your neighbor's upstairs arguing at 3:00 in the morning, especially after a rough night of partying. So, it was the motivation for my husband and I to maybe at least, um, try.
For the most part, we were comfortable (except for the neighbor, affectionately nicknamed Godzilla). There were no commitments (except to our cat, Oliver), especially if the dishwasher didn't work or the toilet got plugged (which is, in our universe, a bad, bad thing. More about that some other time). If we were truly disgusted, we could get up and move somewhere else.
Except, that got old.
Home ownership, anyone will tell you, is a serious commitment, taken not on a whim, but with a great deal of thought. I've bought two other homes with my husband, which is no easy task. Murphy's Law is one of the great mottos of his life. So, with that in mind, he convinced me that we could at least look. I agreed. There were the usual, requisite discussions about where (not the snow belt) and how much (not too much), so with that in mind, we found a real estate agent and went to work.
Now, I've heard stories of people looking endlessly through listings and on-line sites. I fully expected to do the same thing. So, it was surprising that on the first trip we took with Nancy, our agent, we found the house. Not too big. Not too small.
It was just right.
It was the place I had always dreamed of. A beautiful kitchen. A backyard (with a garden for me). An office to write in that looked out at the garden I would lovingly tend.
But most of all, it was quiet.
Throughout the whole negotiating process, I kept telling myself that it was just a house, a place to live in. If we didn't get this one, there would be something else. Something better, I reasoned. It was a tense 24 hours, but on April 16, 2011, my birthday, I got the best present.
A house. All my own. To love and to tend, forever and ever. In sickness and in health. Till death, I pray, do us part. It didn't matter anymore that I still lived in an apartment with a neighbor upstairs named Godzilla or that gas prices were still going through the roof.
I had a house.....
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