Homeowners: Week 1

We made it! We're official homeowners! Friday was the day; we received the phone call around noon and picked up the keys around 3:00pm and immediately started the demolition! We were so excited.

You may notice I said "were" excited. We still are! We're just ready for it to be done. ha ha. Who knew that would happen? (Just kidding.) It's still fun seeing the progress. Within 3 days we knocked out walls, removed all flooring, got some plumbing fixed, and removed wallpaper. I am still in the process of removing wallpaper because it is such a tedious job. The place is a construction site currently and will remain that way for the next 5 days (we're headed to California for Thanksgiving!) We've made a lot of progress and our goal is still to be moved in within 3 weeks. AND the dog/cat pee/poo smells are 98% gone! Only people who are highly sensitive to smells, like me, can notice it!

Goals for the next 3 weeks:

• Frame in new walls/replace drywall
• Wire in some new lighting
• Paint
• Put in laminate wood flooring/carpet
• Replace windows
• Receive our new appliances
• Move in!

Yes, we ordered new kitchen appliances! We were thinking of just waiting, but there was a good deal at Lowes and their credit plan worked well into our budget. So with those, and open kitchen with a new island, and people to come visit...I am SO excited to cook!

Things to save up for:

• Washer/Dryer
• Master Bathroom everything
• Master Closet shelving
• Vacuum
• Doors/trim

...and for Spring/Summer:

• Lawn Mower
• ...and all other kinds of lawn tools
• Front door
• A whole bunch of other crap!

(Pictures will be posted when construction site has been cleaned up a little bit)

Finally Something To Update:

Previously on our house updates, we switched to a bank from a mortgage broker. This was done about a month ago. Yesterday, our stuff was accepted from final underwriting, and we signed to close! Just a reminder, last time we signed to close, the lenders got bought out and nothing happened. This time, it will go through because we're pretty sure Wells Fargo won't be bought out by Friday. So basically, we should be homeowners on Friday and can finally start the demolition!

I had forgotten how much stuff we had on our list of things to do when we close. We use to go to Lowes and Home Depot a few times a week and had everything planned. We basically put everything off for a couple months because the end wasn't in our sight. NOW it is! Now we have to re-find carpet and paint, and get everything in order. We'll be able to start working on it this weekend! :) YAY! And hopefully everything will be in place for me to decorate for Christmas! (I can't wait to put lights on the columns, have our Christmas tree in the front window, hang stockings on the fireplace! ahh!)

Well Well Well...

If you're wondering why there hasn't been any updating on the house, it's because there's not much to update about. Our original closing date was August 27th. It's okay that we passed that date by a few weeks...however it is now almost 2 months past that date.

Basically, here's a rundown of what has happened: We signed to close about a month ago, under the impression the house would be ours within 48 hours. Meanwhile, the lenders we were using were being bought out. The new lenders did not have the rights to lend in the state of Washington. Imagine that! (There are more professional words for all this stuff, but I am 22 and learning. I was clueless to begin). So anyway, we pretty much didn't even hear from anyone for a week or so, and then were informed this was going on. Our broker then sent our case to a few other lenders, which are just now going into underwriting. So this week we decided we should switch to a bank. We found this amazing lady at Wells Fargo who is extremely busy, and she has basically just dropped everything to help us out. She has been so so helpful and detailed and I could just give her a hug. It's still not 100% but she is doing everything she can to help us and we should know in about 3 weeks. We have been praying if this is still something we should even be trying and we still feel good about it, so I guess it will just be a learning experience if it's not meant to be. (But I hope it is because we have fallen in love with this house and are so ready to be in it!) So that's the update. We're basically back to square one.

Purchases

Here's purchase #2:

Laminate "Harvest Oak" wood flooring from Costco. We have been looking around between Lumbar Liquidators, Lowes, Home Depot, and Costco and decided the best deal was Costco for the pre-padded stuff. We still do not own the house but again, we made a purchase in high hopes! We would like to eventually upgrade to hard wood, but this will look great for a few years. We will be putting it in the kitchen, dining room, living room, and hallway in the upstairs, and probably the stairs with possibly adding a carpet runner or something. We'll put an area rug in the living room, with the couch we have now and the piano. Next purchases will probably be paint and carpet. Carpet will be going in the bedrooms and downstairs, eventually putting the tv in the bonus room.

Here was our first purchase for our downstairs guest bathroom: black and white. We'll put in the black and white vinyl tiles, white walls, black rugs/towels, maybe some other black & white decor...keepin' it simple!

So now we just need the keys to our house so we can actually use these purchases!!

9/19/10 Update

Well I didn't want to post again until we were officially home owners. However, I am sad to say we still do not have that title. We signed the papers, but not we are just waiting for the lenders to sign/the money to end up somewhere (the bank?)...I am getting lost with all the extension excuses. So basically our update this time is there is no update. Tomorrow is a maybe for everything to go through. I am just not going to set a date for when to expect a house key because each time we do that, the plan is a failure. That way, when they call us up to settle everything then it will be a great surprise! Hopefully this week?!!!

9/1/10 Update

Well things are getting a lot closer so I'm just going to start dating my updates since our projects will go on for a while. Our closing date was supposed to be the 27th, last Friday. A few things came up and we didn't hear from anyone for a few days until a couple days before closing. Then they told us we needed to fix a couple things in the house, but we were not able to finalize everything by the 27th. So into this week, we turned in a few more forms, and the appraisal was updated, so as of now we are just waiting for things to be finalized and we should be able to sign tomorrow or Friday and close!

From there the demolition begins! A few walls will be torn out, carpet will be ripped out downstairs, temporary flooring in the kitchen/dining/bathrooms will be placed, windows will be replaced, plumbing will be fixed and adjusted, insulation, and onto painting. We'll clean the carpet in the upstairs (which we'll replace when we have enough money) and then we can move in! That's all just the beginning--it will be ongoing and as excited as we are now, I'm sure we will soon be tired.

We made our first purchase (in high hopes that everything goes well)! We bought a cheap vanity from Home Depot for the downstairs bathroom. There are 3 bathrooms that all need to be redone, so we just bought one that was super on sale. I'm so excited to decorate this one. I've always like the black & white look so having 3 bathrooms, at least one could have that theme! The single sink is black with white cabinets below. It came with a mirror, but they also had some more mirrors separate for $14.99, so we also got 2 of those. One is black-framed that I may use instead. Anyway, with that I'm thinking black and white tile/vinyl, white walls with maybe black trim, and black towels/floor mats. Simple and cute! It is in my head at least :)

I tried to find a picture online but they don't have it on their website so this is kind of like it but opposite in color.

So the next update will be when we are official home owners!

Inspections Update

So we have had one home/pest inspection, and it was no surprise that there was a large list of repairs that would need to be taken care of before closing. So we had Blake (Lane's brother--general contractor) write up an estimate for his list, and a plumber write up an estimate for all the plumbing issues. Basically we had to let the bank/listing agent know what the estimates were for issues that should have been addressed before, and asked them to lower the price we would pay. They originally told us they would pay $2000 in repairs, so this time they came back saying they would just up that to $4000. So that's good news. We can probably get everything that needs to be done for about that much because of all the family/friend connections we have. However, this inspection was not the FHA inspection--which is the one we are more concerned about because that's what will get us our loan. That inspection is taking place this week, but there shouldn't be a list much longer than the one we already have, so hopefully we can get all that done and everything up to code by August 27th (closing date) with out going over budget!

So...it's still not ours yet...but almost there!

In the meantime, our minds are going crazy with everything we want to do to the house. But it will be a month by month priority list, and I will have a hard time not wanting to just buy whatever matches to make it look great! **I guess we need to get the house first anyway**