Happy Friday!

House Hunting... Part one... :/

Good morning(ish) everyone out there! Life has been kicking my ass here lately. The kids only have a few months left of school, my youngest is a two year monster who's mood swings more than mine does, my husband is starting a new schedule at work AND, on top of everything... WE'RE BUYING A HOUSE! I knew it was going to be an adventure... But damn... Never would I think it would be like it has been so far... If everything goes well, we should have keys in hand in less than a month.... I am so ready to get out of this rental and back into something that is actually OURS! I am determined to make this the smoothest, easiest move ever. To prepare for that... I've already begun packing things at my current home AND ridding my walls of colors (they'll charge me if I leave with colored walls still here...) Yup, I am ready to go and all I need... the keys. We have been looking at houses since late last year just to see what the market was made of. Most of it... Crap. Either REALLY nice houses with NO yard or TONS of yard with a SHITTY house OR an okay house and yard in a horrible area... There were no "That's amazing!" finds that we were able to see but we kept looking anyway... It didn't help that our list had several specifics on it... Four bedrooms.. At LEAST two bathrooms... decent kitchen... YARD!.. Good neighborhood.. good schools.. Not IN the city.. and so on.. We looked and looked and of course the homes that checked off every box on our list were THOUSANDS of dollars out of our desired range. We gave up for a little while and then started back again. We had even gone to model displays to look at modular homes. Beautiful homes... just not for us. The end of January was our first real showing in a real home... A huge (over 3,000 sq ft) home with six bedrooms, three bathrooms, three car garage, in ground pool, workshop and even it's own commercial building on the property... We learned that the house was over 100 years old, the garage was a long building with three openings (no doors), the workshop was half caved in on the back of the property, it sat right next to a fire department, the pool had been covered (since 1989), and the inside of the house was like a labyrinth of turns and doors with plenty of closets and hiding places... Though we were a little deterred by the projects we would have to do, we saw what COULD be and fell in love... So much so that we even set up another appointment to see it again with my friend. We spent the week in between visits dreaming and scheming and thinking of questions we could ask the realtor about the house.. We saw it again.. still loved it, but started realizing all that would come with signing the contract... Lead paint removal... asbestos... updated windows.. new piping throughout... and the list grew.. Considering the house itself was listed for $180,000, it started to weigh us down that we would constantly be adding to that and so... we decided that wasn't the way to go. We figured we needed to find a house new enough where we COULD do things if we wanted to do to make it better and not old enough where we HAD to do things just to be comfortable. The old house... was gone... I feel like I broke the realtors heart when I told her that... She didn't even text me back. Yeah, that one was done. It was back to Google, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor, ReMax, Century 21 and so on to try to find another possibility... A few weeks went by and we found a lot of half listers but none really worth looking at. Eventually, we found a few! We had set up an appointment with a different realtor who had a listing about an hour away and he said he would also show us two other homes in the same area. I really wasn't looking forward to being THAT far out, but figured with the features listed and the looks from the photos, they would be worth a look in person. We get to the first home, the only one of the three listed by this particular realtor and he wasn't there. We noticed the realty sign in the yard... It looked like a poster board or something with some crooked lettering on it. Okay.. Instead of waiting in the car, my husband and I decided to get a private look at the back yard. It was nice. No fence or anything, but nice. By the time we made it back out front, an older man was just unlocking the front the door. The realtor. He seemed very nice and knew a lot about the house and neighborhood. Once we hit the living room, I realized he may know a little too much. I started really listening to him say things like "We just had the carpets replaced a year ago" and "We have four bedrooms you'll love upstairs". The particulars... the homemade sign... He was a "realtor" trying to sell us HIS house. Okay... We continued the tour and though the house looked nice in photos (don't they always) the rooms were not very big and there wasn't any room to GROW with all of our stuff. When we were finished and while he locked the door, the realtor says, "So, do you love it? Or do you still want to see the other homes?" We gave him a kind and courteous little laugh and said that since we were out there anyway, it would be nice to see the other ones. That's when he chimed in with "Well, one of them are already under contract. We can see the other one if you really want to  but they're going like hotcakes up here! Oh and uh, I have a man coming from Washington next weekend to see this one so if you want me to start things, just let me know!" We got in the car after him saying he's got his GPS all set and ready to go so we could follow him. After a wrong turn and going many streets out of the way, we decided to get to the house ourselves. We found it quickly, before him and so again, we took that time to scope out the back yard. This home looked GREAT. In pictures... Six bedrooms... three baths... blah, blah, blah.... After he got there and let us in, we realized that it did have six rooms that could have been bedrooms... The house was actually three bedrooms, one bonus room, and two other bedrooms that were once the dining room and family room... Yeah... As bad it sounds. It was a DIY job and it was very obvious. Well, that OR a very shitty and or drunk handyman job. Either way, it wasn't what we expected. At all. By the time we were ready to go, the old man said again "Well, I'll sell you my house! We can get it going right now if you want." We, still very nicely, said that we still had some other homes to look at, including one in our city later that same day. He reminded us about the whole hotcakes thing, AGAIN, before handing me his business card (a piece of card stock with some not so straight lettering...) and telling us goodbye. As we drove home, we decided three things... One, that guy was nuts. Two, we were going to shoot for something closer to home. And three, good looking pictures of houses... MEAN NOTHING! Later that day we met up with our realtor in town and she showed us a couple more houses closer to us. We liked the idea of one... however... no yard. It started to become an assumption that after every house we entered, we were bound to walk deflated for one reason or another. The next day while we were driving home from a store, my phone rang. I recognized the number and decided to let it go to voicemail.. The old man realtor... When 30 seconds had gone by with no DING from a voicemail, I thought we were in the clear. NOPE! Almost TWO minutes after my phone stopped ringing, a new voicemail popped up... Really? Yup. He was letting me know that there was an offer made on his house BUT he didn't like the offer amount and so if we were interested, he would help us out so that our family could get in there.... It went on... and on... and ON. I slipped my phone back into my purse and didn't even bother to call back. I figured that being a seasoned "realtor", he would probably get what that meant. Hopefully. (Days went by with no other contact so I guess he did!) We saw a few more houses here and there, all of which fell short one way (or more) or another. Then we saw it... It had only been listed a week and in writing, matched what we were looking for! It was close, nice big already fenced in back yard, two stories, six bedrooms, three bathrooms, two car garage and even two living rooms AND two kitchens! (Not like we need that, but still!) The price was the only thing that stopped us from taking it seriously at first but we decided, it was definitely worth a look. Our realtor scheduled for us to see it and on that day... we saw it.. ALL of it...

I feel like one of those horrible movie directors who decide to split a movie in half to make more money, however... There is a lot that will go into THIS house... It is very much worthy of its own post. I have a few things to do today but it will in the very least be started today! Have a great Friday everyone!

-SuperMom

New year... new look.... 2017 WILL be good!

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