happyone's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The House Wow, I just glanced at my last entry to remember where I had left off, and a lot has changed since that entry just a short time ago. The biggest news is that - no, I'm not pregnant - I've bought a HOUSE! I have been looking and looking and getting really discouraged, but it's almost eery how quickly and easily everything fell into place. So, my real estate agent had signed me up for her email database that would send me emails of house listings that I might be interested in. So far, all of the houses I had seen were either not on the side of town I wanted to be on, had features I did not like, or were already under contract. Houses are selling like hot cakes in my town - they literally are on the market for less than 24 hours and usually have multiple offers. So anyways, last Friday morning, I got an email from the database with a house listing. Despite my discouragement, I dutifully opened up the link to look at the house. As I clicked through the pictures, I liked what I saw. I immediately contacted my agent and had her set up a showing for that afternoon. We actually had to push our time up because there were already other appointments to show the house! It made me nervous that there were other people already sniffing around this house. I went and saw the house by myself because Nick was tied up at work and wasn't off yet. When I saw the house, there seemed to be "signs" saying that this should be my house. The first sign was stuck on the front door - it was a college sticker, and it just so happened to be the college I attended for my undergraduate degree. Good sign, right? I walked through the rest of the house and I really liked what I saw! The living room has a vaulted ceiling, just like my mom's house (my childhood home). The kitchen is HUGE and has all white cabinets and nice tile flooring. The master bedroom has a tray ceiling (nice touch) and the bathroom has double sinks and a huge tub/shower combo. I've always hated that some houses have the tub and shower separated because I do not take baths, making a separate tub a waste of space for me. So not only did this house had the tub and shower combined, the tub is a big soaker tub, so it's not just a standard tub for any bathroom. The house has 3 bedrooms, so enough room for guests to visit. It has laminate flooring throughout with tiling in the kitchen and carpet in the two smaller bedrooms. It has a huge two car garage and a big back yard that is fenced with a 6 ft privacy fence. This house literally had all of the features I've been looking for in a house! As I was finishing up my viewing, there were already other people arriving to look at the house. I stepped outside to leave with my realtor, and I noticed that one of the front posts on the entryway to the house has a holder for a flag. I've always said that when I get a house, I'm going to fly an American flag for my Papaw, who served in the Navy and fought in WWII, and for my cousin, who has served in the Army and been deployed to Korea. It just seemed to be another sign that this house already had the flag holder. Another sign was the trees growing in the front yard - they're crete myrtle trees, just like the one in the front yard of my mom's house, where I grew up. This house also happens to be zoned for one of the best elementary schools in the district, and it has a 4K program! My sweet little baby will have a good school to go to one day. Once Nick was off work, we made another appointment to see the house that same evening. I wanted to act fast in case this was a house we both really liked and wanted to make an offer on. If you don't act fast around here, the house gets snapped up by someone else. Nick saw the house and really liked it too, so at 8 pm on that Friday night, we put in an offer on the house. The next day, we got the call that our offer had been accepted!!!! The seller even agreed to pay closing costs too, so that literally saved us thousands! So, we are elated that we are taking that next step and will have a home of our own. No more apartment life! Another thing that has just eerily worked out is the timing with our apartment lease. We close on the house July 13th and our apartment lease is up July 31st. I had been worrying about what we'd do about our apartment lease, wondering if we should extend it 6 months or do month-to-month. The timing solved that problem for me! We'll have a good 2 weeks to move. The colors in the house are terrible, though, so I definitely want to have the house painted before we move in. I have painted so many rooms and houses in my day that I'm so over it and really do not feel like painting a whole house. The whole house literally needs new paint. Ceilings, too. I want to do a nice, light and bright almost neutral gray color throughout the whole house and maybe a light, almost neutral green color in the bathrooms (I'm thinking Sherwin Williams Sea Salt - very spa-like). So, I will probably be spending a pretty penny on painting, but hey, at least we didn't have to pay closing costs! We are going to have enough work to do with just the moving part. It'll be July, the hottest month of the year, and our apartment is on the second floor, so we have to carry everything down stairs. Luckily, the house only has one step into the house. Little to no steps into the house was another feature I really wanted but didn't think I'd get. I have a lot of family members who really can't climb stairs due to bad knees and/or obesity, so I wanted to have a house that was accessible so they could visit. I will have to write more later because suddenly I'm incredibly sleepy! It is way past my old-timer's bed time of 10:30 pm, after all. 12:09 a.m. - Sunday, Jun. 05, 2016 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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