Thursday, November 19, 2009

A few changes to the bedroom.

I painted, hung lamps and hung three pieces of artwork in the bedroom. It's still a plain room, needs a more permanent window treatment and we need a dresser, as well! It will look sooo much nicer in there when we get the trim put up and the carpet squares put in this Spring. I'll be hanging some more artwork or a mirror or something on the wall to the left in this first picture as soon as we know what kind of dresser we will have.

I really love the color of the room now. When I first painted it I picked a blue so light it looked white. I was terrified of painting it any color that would make the room feel smaller, but I think you have to get a pretty dark color to make that happen.

Living Room!

Not too terribly exciting, but I hung this picture shelf today. I was missing having artwork on our walls and am not so good and hanging pictures evenly, so, voila! The shelf! I also like that it will be super easy to swap and re-arrange, etc. We don't have a single wedding picture (yet) so I was wanting to figure out a way to hang stuff while having an easy way to add to the collection.


Here is the front window and our cool IKEA lamp and another photo. This wall faces the wall in the photo above. The front door is to the right in this photo, as well.



I just hung these curtains today, they are to the left when you come in the front door. Our computer desk is right in front of these curtains, as well.


Here is another view of the artwork on the wall. You can see the top of the computer desk there in the corner and a tiny bit of the curtains that are in the above picture. You can just see the very top of an old, gross chair that we have and want to replace. It's a tough prospect because this chair is sooo comfy, but it looks like something you wouldn't really want to sit in. We have to find something equally comfy (and big!) to replace it with.

The Playroom!

I am so in love with this room. It's almost done. We are going to get a futon to put along the wall where the book shelf is now. I am also thinking of hanging something over the sliding doors-- maybe small pieces of the girl's artwork?

I took a picture from each of the four corners of the room.

This is the least exciting angle. Those two doors are the closet doors, where we currently store a bunch of random stuff and Matt's clothes.

The door on the right is the door to the rest of the house. I hung the girl's alphabet cards along the top of the wall and more kid-friendly art on the walls. Where the easel and the bookcase are is where we will put the futon.







So, come and play with us!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Frustration

Ever since our basement was re-finished I have had "call insurance company about flood insurance" on my to-do list. Today I finally called and was very surprised with what I found out. Well, surprised AND frustrated.

As it turns out, to be covered for a flood you and two of your neighbors need to have flooded, or your home and two acres of surrounding land. Even then, mostly just your appliances are covered in the flood, like a washer and dryer, hot water heater, etc. No furnishings. No flooring. Nothing else is covered by water damage. Not only that, but if we were to just have some kind of random leak in our basement, it wouldn't be covered even if we did have flood insurance. So, we could pay $326 per year for flood insurance in the case of something fairly major happening, or do nothing. Of course, you know what will happen in THAT case . . .

The frustrating part comes from the fact the we never looked in to this before we bought our house. I never questioned what the insurance company would cover. When I heard that flood insurance is separate from regular insurance, I decided I should call, and even then it never occured to me that water damage wouldn't be covered. Learning so, so many lessons from this house . . .

We have done a few things to help protect our basement from water damage, but still, you just never know. Our house is practically 100 years old. The seller was a shady asshole. He absolutely would (and quite possibly did) hide any flooding issues that the basement may have. I take a wee bit of comfort in our basement doing totally fine in the torrential rains that we had last weekend. I know that some people's basements did flood during that, but ours didn't. Clearly one weekend of rain isn't a good measure for an entire rainy season in Seattle, but it's something, I suppose.

I'm frustrated. I think this whole home buying thing is a trial by fire sort of a deal. Every time something like this comes up I think "why didn't someone tell us?!?" but that is no one's fault but our own. We needed to ask.

Here's to the driest next few months (years?) in Seattle's history!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Open concept?

I installed new shelves in the corner of our kitchen yesterday. Here they are:

I'm referring to the ones my bowls and mixer is on. The food shelf is all that previously stood in that empty corner and so now everything is smooshed in there.

I hate our cupboards. They are pieces of junk, need a paint job, need hardware and well, need to be replaced as the shelves in the upper cupboard are all bowing in the middle. Also, when you open the cupboard that is second from the right, it hits the light that hangs in front of it.


After I hung those shelves yesterday I just fell in love with the way they looked. I like the industrial feel. I like seeing my cooking and baking items. It makes me want to run in there and pull everything off and start cooking up a storm.

So, I started having a thought-- what if the cupboards in the above photo were taken down and replaced with open shelves, like the ones I already hung? We could make MUCH better use of that space.

I've started to peruse the interwebs, looking for pictures of peoples who have done this with their kitchens, but the pictures mostly are either completely monochromatic (like ALL white) or extremely sparse and modern or are open shelves just displaying a few special pieces. But what about real-life kitchens? We have nicer dishes, due to a recent wedding, but we still have a few random things, as would any family.

I also read reports saying that open shelving makes your dishes very dirty. One thing is that these cupboards are away from the stove, so that would help with splatters. But what about dust? I can't help but think that we truly use our dishes SO often (I'm a stay-at-home mama, after all) that most things won't really be sitting there long enough to get dirty!

Honestly, the bottom line is a money thing. We want/need to do something different, so what is going to be the right choice?

ETA: as I was browsing some more online tonight I found a blog who has a kitchen I LOVE. The blog is called Nest Decorating and HERE is the post about the kitchen. LOVE.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Plugging along

Not much that is picture worthy, yet, but we've been plugging along on some house projects.

Matt has been doing tons of digging on the north side of the house, as the dirt was so high on that it was covering some of our siding. The inspector suggested that the dirt was 6" lower than the siding, so we've been digging it out, and then digging it even lower further away from the house so the water just doesn't run right back in to the basement! Today as it was pouring rain outside I looked at Matt's little trough, and sure enough, it was collecting water! That's just a five foot wide strip between our house and the lot line, which is a tall fence right now. There isn't much to do there so we were thinking we might just put gravel over that part.


I have been hanging shelves like crazy to try and eek some more storage out of this house. Two shelves in the laundry room went up yesterday, one above a coat hook next to the front door went up last week and four big ones in our kitchen today. We moved in four months ago and today I finally was able to unpack the rest of our kitchen supplies!



My birthday was on Monday and Matt's is coming up soon, so my parents sent us a joint birthday gift of a Home Depot gift card and this book:




I've decided I am now ready to tackle some projects like removing the living room wall sconces from the wall and maybe, just maybe, replacing the faucet in the bathroom sink. We'll see.

I was hoping to finish the painting on the living room walls this morning but it turns out installing shelves took most of my day. As these projects usually do. I'm also about ready for a second, or bigger, toolbox! Yee haw!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Now some actual before and afters

Here is the girls' bedroom, the first room in the house I wanted to tackle start to finish. Of course, it required ripping out carpeting, taking down walls, putting in new lights and outlets, replacing windows . . . you get the idea. Here the room was right after I painted it:


Here are the girls' beds. Let's see. The frames were from IKEA, but given to us for free by our old neighbor. I painted them white. The canopies and two lights in this photo are from IKEA, too. Eloise's bed, which is on the right with the trees on the quilt, also has a flower lamp next to it. I will eventually hang a photo above the night stand and likely on that bare space of wall to the left of the flower lamp. Right now all of our framed pictures are carefully packed away and I'm not ready to start digging through them until I can hang most, if not all, of them in their various spots in the house.
Standing at the door, looking to the right. That is our old IKEA dresser, which I like the look of but has forever sworn me off of purchasing IKEA furniture ever again. It's the biggest piece of crap. The white lamp in the corner is also IKEA and was quite the puzzle to put together! It has a really long cord and I can't quite figure out how to make it look more neat. On my next IKEA trip I'll get some big throw pillows to put on the floor under that lamp to make a snuggly reading spot. I moved the table and chairs down from the playroom (there is still another set up there). Not surprisingly, both of those originally came from IKEA, too! The green rug, also IKEA. The two mirrors, IKEA! I got them at a great clearance price, maybe $5 each or something? Hard to see in this picture, but I hung two strings above the table with clothespins to hang artwork from. We had these up in our old home, too. That window will eventually get a covering of some sort, just to add some more fabric to the room. The girls' growth charts are hanging to the left of the closet.


Here's a better shot of the mirrors. You don't even want to know how hard it was to hang these in line with each other! Nothing in this room is square, not the floors or ceiling or edge of the drywall . . . I utilized my trusty level as best as I could, but there are several wayward holes behind the mirrors! I hung a set of hooks for the girls' stuff, as well. That window that is hiding behind the door will get a window treatment.


I got the bed skirts from Land of Nod for crazy cheap.



So that's about it! Next Spring we will get a floor covering, likely carpet tiles, but for now it will stay painted. We'll also get the trim put up in the Spring.

Monday, October 5, 2009

"Before" pictures

I didn't want to post "before" pictures until I had the appropriate "after" pictures to accompany them, however, here they are. The living room and the girls' bedroom are very close to being "done". By done I mean at a great spot, very comfortable, but not completely finished for the end of time.



In the past week I have painted two coats of paint on the girls' bedroom floor, hung the closet rod, moved in their dresser, hung up two lamps and moved in a rug to accompany their beds and a bedside table. There are a few things left to do, like put up mirrors, hang the canopies, hang the curtains and move a few more things down to make a comfy reading nook. The closet is far from done, I want to put in more storage, but that won't be done for a while.

Then, today, in the living room I painted and hung curtains on the main big window at the front of our house. We have lived here for four months and that is the first window that has had a proper window treatment. I bet our neighbors will be glad when stop putting on a show for them!



Without further ado, here are the pictures (and I didn't clean up. If I had to make the whole house tidy for pics, they never would have been taken!)


Soooo. Here is the living room. That is our front door. You can see I had already started taping and removing switch plates to prep for painting. That rug was only there for about half a day, it belongs in the girls' playroom.

In the right you see that huge window, if you are looking at it from the inside of the house the front door is just to the right of it. That is the entertainment center my dad built us. We LOVE it but can't find the perfect spot for it. It might look okay in this photo, but it's partly in the door way to the dining room.

The reason we can't put the entertainment center anywhere else is that it will either block a window or won't fit on the wall because of these wall sconces. The jury is out on these things. I liked them when I thought they were original to the house, but our contractor didn't think they were (then again, he was kind of an idiot.) Anyone know? Our house was built in 1917. Anyways, that desk, behind our gross chair, is directly across from the front door. It's a tough room to put furniture in, for sure.

This is the view from the playroom door through the dining room towards the living room. You can see better how the entertainment center blocks the doorway. To the left is the stairway to the downstairs, to the right in the kitchen. The junk behind the fan is there temporarily. It is also blocking wood-burning stove.



If you stepped in to the kitchen, where you can see those tiles on the floor of the above photo, this is what you see. We generally like the kitchen except for the cupboards. There are not nearly enough of them and the ones that are there are pieces of junk.

If you are standing in front of the door in the above picture, this is the view of the kitchen.


Oh hi fridge! I love you. I love your water in the door. I love your ice in the door even though you're stuck on "crush". No matter. We love crushed ice. If we wanted whole cubes we could go through the trouble of just opening the door! On the left, where you can see our SUPER taco shells, is just empty space. Why wasn't there cupboards put there? Whatever. We put a shelving unit there. It works. Sort of.

I didn't take any pictures of the loo or the playroom. The playroom looked like a bomb hit it, which it does about 99% of the time. Actually, I DID take a picture of it, to post on my other blog so I can whine about how messy it gets. But this picture here is one end of the girls' bedroom, after painting, before furniture. Their door is to the left and that window is the egress window that threw our entire remodel right in to the crapper. It's a lovely window, though, nice a big and functional.

If you stand at the door and look right, this is what you see. The closet of the room used to be along the whole entire other end, where the new egress window is now. We moved it to this end. The window here is new, too, but the hole was already there for it, unlike the egress window which needed concrete cut out for it. That little shelf peeking out from the closet was there before the remodel. It's set in to the wall and is very curious.


So there you have it! I will start posting some "after" pictures soon.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Starting again

Many, many times I have wanted to re-start this blog as a way to document our adventures as homeowners doing not only general upkeep, but some serious remodelling, as well. We bought a craftsman built in 1917 and really had NO idea what we were getting ourselves in to. Some days I want to run screaming from this house but most other days I want to give this house the TLC that it hasn't had in a long time and make it a really, truly, lovely home, not only for us, but for any future homeowners who live here.

When I left off this blog, almost exactly three months ago, we had just moved in to our new house, had realized how serious the issues were with our basement and needed to get it remodelled immediately.

We hired a contractor and the remodel that was supposed to be done by August 10th ("at the latest") was only just completed this past Wednesday. Our contractors were basically bumbling idiots. Many mistakes were made on a few parts of the job which pushed the completion date welllll past what it was supposed to be. We won't be working with them again, needless to say, and it was quite the headache, but alas, our basement is remodelled.

The only thing now is that while we have new walls that are all lovely and dry-walled, that is about it. We have no trim and no permanent flooring. After spending thousands of dollars on a remodel you would hope to have a living space that is, well, somewhat more livable, but it is what it is, which is still a work in progress.

Since the remodel was completed, which is just under a week!, I have been painting the girls' room. Tinkerbell green walls and bright pink closet doors. It's pretty darn girly! The floors will be painted, for now, and that I will start doing tomorrow. I chose a dark brown for the floors, we'll see how it goes.

In addition to all of that work, other work has been going on, as well! We've been digging and digging and digging in our yard. Removing lots of wayward, ill-placed plants, widening our dirt driveway, planting irises in our front yard, taking out many MANY pieces of cement and bricks out that were buried in the lawn and grading the north side of the house to help keep water damage at bay. We've met with some guys to have our cedar shake siding washed and stained as well as getting a real driveway poured. Hopefully at least the siding will be done very soon, though money certainly isn't limitless.

We still have many things in boxes that are piled in various corners of our house. I never imagined we would be here for three months and not be fully unpacked-- UGH! Everything is sort of waiting for something else to be done, however. Once the floors in the girls' room are painted, I can start decorating in there and moving in their closet stuff and their dresser. Once I finish painting the master bedroom walls and floor I will also move in the clothes to that room. Once all of that is done, the giant upstairs closet that is storing all of our clothing will be free to become the all-purpose closet that we need it to be to unpack lots of other things. I also need to get the living room painted so that I can hang the curtains and the art work. Oh, there is soooo much art work waiting to be hung!

All of this and we're still looking forward to the spring when we can get our deck re-built. The one we have just isn't safe-- it doesn't even have a railing or the right steps, plus the weird material it was built with is super slippery when wet (hello, we're in Seattle!) and well, it's just ugly. So that will be great to have done. Then, maybe, eventually, we'll get the cabinets re-done in the kitchen. I figure if we're doing that, then we can move stuff around a bit too, no? Oh, yeah, then there's the garage I want to build, re-do our front steps, rip down our shed . . . so many things.

If you've made it through this novel I hope you'll stick around and be a part of all of this crazy fun!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Coming in off the ledge

I have calmed down quite a bit from last Friday and am feeling much more positive about our house.

Last night and today we had contractors come over and look at our basement. The guys were both very, very nice and communicative, but each had different ideas on what we needed to do. No estimates, yet, so we look forward to getting those. Two more guys are coming tomorrow and one is scheduled for Friday, as well, though we may choose to hire someone before that appointment. I will feel pretty good having had four different people come to give us their ideas. If we are very, very lucky we can have the work started while we are away on vacation! Woo Hoo!

Friday, June 26, 2009

A New Start!

Well, we're here! All of our stuff is in our new place. I can't use the word "settled" because we are FAR from being settled.

Here's where we're at: I went to be practically having a panic attack last night. I wondered, is it too late to pull out? Oh wait, yeah, it is. The deal is done. We had done nothing but wait for this deal to go through and now I'm freaking out.

There is one giant problem with our new house. The two bedrooms are in the basement. We bought the house with a "finished" basement, but we knew it was a pretty half-assed job. What we didn't realize until we got in here was the extent of the damage from the cat pee. I ripped out the carpetting in one of the bedrooms last night and the pee is in the concrete and the wall. The floors looked like they were molding from holding in all of that moisture. I swear that the smell is worse now than it was before I even ripped the carpetting out.

So anyways, yeah, didn't sign up for this. Eloise and I are sleeping on the fold out couch and Matt and Iris are sleeping on two twin mattresses on the floor of the playroom. Thankfully, we're sleeping decently, but the playroom is practically unusable right now and the upper level of our house is filled with shit we have no where to put because we can't put it in the basement.

Added to that, the girls and I leave for vacation on Tuesday, so there will be three weeks of time we can't work on the house! I am straight up in panic mode.

We have some contractors coming to look at it on Sunday, so that will be good as far as just knowing the price of getting this all re-done. Maybe, if we're supremely lucky, they can start the work on the basement while we are on vacation?

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Day 58: We're Movin' In!

We finally got the call last night just after 5:00 that we are officially homeowners. Not surprisingly, the time previous to our realtor's call was shrouded in drama and lawyers. I was told at about 11:00 yesterday that the seller had called and told escrow to stop the deal, but then he had called back and said go ahead. Between that time and the time we were told we finally, finally!, got the house, lawyers were involved, brokers were in involved, it sounded pretty messy. ALL of it was because the a-hole we're buying this house from is a money-grubbing low-life. Rumor has it that he ended up taking a chunk of HIS realtor's commission (instead of ours). Certainly there is a special kind of karma that comes back around for guys like that.

So we're moving today! Got to bed close to 1:00 and was up at 5:30-- not by choice, mind you. My alarm was already set for the ungodly hour of 7:15. My brain just started racing, I'm still coughing and my nose was plugged, so I figured why lay there and torture myself? I got up and took the dog out to pee on the grass out front in my pajamas for the LAST time. Lots of lasts happening in this home over the past 24 hours! I made the girls take a bath last night, since we don't (currently) have a tub at our new house. Hopefully a backyard kiddie pool will suffice for them through the summer while we figure out how to do the basement remodel and get them a beloved bathtub.

I'm also wondering if I want to keep doing this blog-- turn it in to the trials and tribulations of first-time homeowners. We'll see.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Day 57: Will we have a new home tomorrow?

Or rather, will we have a new home tonight at 9:00 pm? Oooo, so exciting! Or not. Yeah, really not at all. It's 4:30 here and we still don't know with 100% certainty that we will be home owners today. My deepest, darkest, cruelest wish is that we wouldn't get thrown in jail for hiring someone to whack the seller's knee caps off his body. I have a string of expletives I'd like to unleash right now, but this is a family blog, so I'll refrain.

To catch you up to speed, on Friday I get confirmation from our realtor that the escrow company will pay for movers. I get on the phone, the first place I call gives me a quote and is available on Tuesday, so I book them on the spot. We decide to use the gloomy afternoon to go to the movies. While at the movie theater watching "Up" with the whole family, I take Eloise out in to the lobby and got some phone calls made. Eloise didn't want to sit still in the theater, so I used the time wisely. Long story short, the escrow company wouldn't guarantee that they would pay for the moving expenses we would incur above and beyond the amount of money they were already going to refund us, which was our total escrow fees. I call our realtor, I call our mortgage broker, I get annoyed and vague answers of support (meaning, our mortgage broker was there to fight for us, but still no one could say with 100% certainty that we would recoup all of that money). When I got home that afternoon I found a MUCH cheaper company and hire them, instead, satisfied that if all we ever get out of the escrow company is a reimbursement of the expenses we paid them, it would at least cover the movers.

Saturday and Sunday we tried to pack and relax, didn't make a single call to the realtor or mortgage broker.

This morning I get up and call both right away, though. Our mortgage broker said the documents were where they needed to be, with the lender, and that they were looking all of them over. I finally get our realtor on the phone at 11:00 and this is what he tells me: the seller called escrow THIS MORNING to tell them to not let the deal close because he STILL wants to try and re-negotiate our realtors commission. BUT he must have changed his mind (or maybe the threat of the lawsuit he would absolutely lose changed his mind?) and he had just called escrow back 1/2 hour prior to say go ahead with it. Apparently there was a lot of yelling, swearing and lawsuit threatening (on the part of our realtor), pulling in brokers, just about all of the drama you could ever imagine. He said he was going to call me back with more info, but that was over five hours ago now.

Here is what I've learned:

Never ever EVER put yourself in a position where you HAVE to follow through with a deal you don't want to follow through with. I feel like I made two very, very, very poor decisions in this deal. One was that we gave notice on our apartment before we closed on the new house. Yes, it would have cost us at least another $1,000 to keep our apartment for another month, but we would have still have had a home if we backed out of our house deal. The other one was that I told Eloise's school that we decided not to enroll her for next year, and then I enrolled both of the girls in a great new school in the south end of West Seattle. Both of these things made me feel like we HAD to move. If we had still had the girl's school on the north end and hadn't given notice, I promise you that I would have walked away from this house. 100% for sure. Yes, it's a good house in a good neighborhood at a good price, but this seller has made our lives a living hell and we were simply stuck going along for the ride based on our poor choices. Our realtor teaches classes to first time home buyers (which is how I met him) and he told me we would forever be used as an example in his classes of the kinds sellers that are potentially out there. He said that maybe one 1 of 500 sales gets so messed up like this, so it's hard to warn (and scare) first time home buyers. I guess when you're that 1, you feel like you would have given anything to know that until the very absolute last day, the deal could still fall apart and you wouldn't have put all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

We could have just stayed in our apartment. The girls could start in the great schools we had them enrolled in, life would have gone on hunky dory.

So anyways, I'm hoping I come back in a little while and give my dear blog the good news that we are officially home owners, but until then, I certainly won't be holding my breath.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Day 54: I couldn't even make this shit up if I tried

I am so ready to run screaming for the hills. Seriously people, this is an effing soap opera script, except, it's my life.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes. So the sellers, who were under contract, were threatening to terminate the contract if we didn't close by Thursday the 18th (hello, that's today). Well, it turned out that he was just trying to ruffle our feathers and wanted to make sure everything was going to go through on time. We got it worked out and did indeed light fires under everyone on our team to make the closing on the 18th. We got through last weekend packing and planning on this. Things were looking okay. We decided to do the final walk-through on Tuesday the 16th and had that all set with everyone.

So, Monday the 15th rolls around and we get a call from our realtor saying that we can't do the walk-through on the 16th because the sellers haven't finished the work. Hmmm. We re-schedule it for Wednesday the 17th. No biggie.

Here's where it gets interesting (as if it wasn't already). We had been planning all along to close on the 18th. We had scheduled Matt to get off of work and had double-checked that I didn't need to be at the closing that day. The 18th, which is today, is Iris's 5th birthday and also her last day at school, which I was going to be helping out at. I told our agent I could not be at the closing that day and he double-checked for me and said I didn't need to be. So Wednesday morning rolls around. I wake up to an email from our mortgage broker saying that we need to meet that day to sign the papers, blah blah blah. Just as I was processing this, the phone starts ringing and soon I come to find out that that very day both Matt and I needed to be at the escrow office to sign these papers. Um, well, it was a little tricky because we were NEVER told that we needed to do a damn thing on Wednesday. Matt had brought our only car to work so that he could bring it to the shop to have the brakes looked at. I was planning on bringing Iris to school on the bus. So somehow we needed to get cashiers checks for our downpayment and get to escrow under these circumstances. My dear friend jumped in and helped out on my end and Matt got the car back on his end and came home and got the girls and I just to drive back over to the east side to sign papers. Apparently I did need to be there after all. Oh joy!

We get the papers signed, get the cashier's checks to escrow, shake hands all around and pat everyone on the back for kicking ass and getting this deal closed on time. All that needed to be done now was the escrow company was overnighting the papers to our lender in CA and when they got there they would give us the recording numbers and we would officially be homeowners.

Later on Wednesday night we get to the walk-through. By this point in the day Matt and I are so bone tired we're just running on fumes. But we get to the walk-through and meet our agent, the seller's agent and our inspector there. Did I already mention that the seller's agent had called ours and told him that all of the work still hadn't been done even though we moved the walk-through back a day? So the seller's agent gets his seller on the phone, and Matt talked to him on speaker phone, got his word that the work would be done (with many witnesses there to hear it) and we sigh, get on our way for the night, knowing that we would wake up on Thursday mere hours away from this process being over. Oh my, how wrong we were.

This morning, Thursday the 18th, it's our daughter's 5th birthday. We wake up happy, excited about the big day! It was the girls' last day of school, as well. I had volunteered to be there to help and was thoroughly enjoying myself-- until my cell rings and it's our realtor. I answer it and he asks me if I'm sitting down. The escrow company had sent our documents to the wrong lender's office . There was nothing that could be done to make the deal close today. It would have to close on Monday (because Friday is some bizarre state holiday). I couldn't really talk, I let Matt know to call our realtor and I tried to get back to the task of school fun.

Later, I talk to our realtor and get some information about the escrow company saying they will pay for any costs we've incurred because of this screw-up. I debate all of this with our realtor for a few minutes before I tell him I will talk to Matt and get back to him. Matt calls him and tells me that they worked it all out, we will still be able to move on Saturday, but that we will be renters until closing, with the escrow company paying our rent. Okay, that's fine. Not the absolute best, but still fine.

Later tonight we all sit down to our daughter's birthday dinner. My cell rings, it's our realtor. He asks me to put him on speaker phone, which I do. We get the news that the seller went to the escrow company to sign the documents and realized that he didn't want to pay our realtor as much commission from the sale as he was entitled to get and so he called him and left a message saying as much. Apparently the seller's agent then called and left our realtor a message saying that if our realtor didn't take a cut in his commission, that the seller wouldn't allow us to move in on Saturday (a little tit for tat, no?). Having this info on his voicemail, our realtor gets his broker and the seller's broker involved. Lots of words ensue, but the bottom line is, the seller won't let us move in early-- and he's being such an asshole, we don't even want to anyways. We don't want to be in the house until it's rightfully ours.

So now what? We were planning on moving on Saturday the 20th, we had a crew of fantastic friends all set to help, and now there is no house to move in to. Well, we decided that what we wanted from the escrow company was to have them pay for movers to move our stuff on Tuesday the 23rd. Now we just have to find someone to do it for us.

This has all been an insane nightmare. Tonight I really wanted to walk away from this deal but Matt talked me off of the ledge. We're dealing with a money-hungry seller who owns these properties as investments. Money is his absolute bottom line, no matter who he is stepping on in his quest to get it. It's still a good house for us, despite this awful insane seller. I am so glad that I have him here to help temper my emotions, because if I was buying this house without him, I would have walked a long time ago.

I am sure this is no where near the end of this drama. It can't be, we've gotten this far in to this level of insanity, let's go a little further!

Matt and I have both been asked if we're excited to move, excited to be homeowners. We both respond the same way-- with a shrug and an "eh". I mean, we are, but won't be jumping up and down until the deal is done. Right now, I'm not sure that will ever happen.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Day 47 part 2: Shit.

I got an extremely disconcerting call from our agent tonight. He called to tell me that the seller's agent told him that our closing date, June 19th, is a state holiday and therefor we can't close on that date because the title and escrow office aren't open. We were totally baffled, what the hell holiday is June 19th? Turns out it's Juneteenth, aka Emancipation Day, the day the commemorates the abolition of slavery. 31 states celebrate this holiday, including Washington. Okay. So what are the sellers trying to do? The said that if we don't close a day early, on the 18th, that the contract we have will be terminated and the house will go back on the market.

So there's a few problems here. The first being that everything about closing now lies in the hands of our mortgage broker. He's a freaking rock star and has worked his butt off for over a year for us so that we could buy this house. He was working very hard to close on the 19th, and it turns out he does believe he can get us closed on the 18th without problem.

Here's the rub, though. According to the contract that we signed-- which, ironically, the sellers changed to make our original closing date offer of June 16th to instead be the 19th--if the closing date falls on a holiday, then we legally have until the next business day to close. Whew, right? It's good for us, but clearly the seller's agent is trying to be very, very shady and break the contract to pull his shit. Our agent is amazing, though, and nothing gets past him. He is pulling his broker and the seller's agent's broker in to it, to put the smack down on the seller's agent. Truth be told, the seller's agent has been a little shady since day one. So by law, we do have until that following Monday, but we are hoping beyond hope that our mortgage broker can make this happen on the 18th because we are lined up to move on the 20th!

The main thing we're worried about at this point is, if these sellers are trying to get out of the contract, what else will they pull at this point? We were scheduled to close on the 19th, which is a week from tomorrow. If we close a day earlier, that's a week from today. That is like NO time. No time for these people to be pulling all of this shit on us. It's ridiculous.

Sure, we can sue them if they break the contract, but still, what happens in the meantime? I don't want to sue anybody, I just want our house on the day we agreed to buy it.

Needless to say, Matt and I have stress levels a gajillion times higher than they already were. We are pissed and scared and stressed. We want this to be over and for us to have this house without incident.

The other rub is that they want to close on Iris's birthday, which is also the big celebration day/last day of preschool. UGH. We did NOT want to close on that day, but it's probably all we can do at this point.

Day 47: Yay for Mortgages!

We finally got word yesterday that our loan is totally approved. So, YAY! Also I a providing the lender about eighty billion more pieces of information, like bank statements from my deceased grandmother's second uncle. Or at least, that's what it feels like. I can't even believe the amount of paperwork involved in this process! At least it's for a good cause. It will all be done soon!

Our realtor called today to let us know we can schedule our final walk-through on the house, which will probably happen next week Thursday. Our inspector will come with us to make sure that the work was done that they said was going to be done. It's going to be so neat to see the house for the first time with all of the renter's stuff out of it and ready for us to move in!

Other than that, not much else is happening on the home front. Packing all of our junk has taken up alot of our time. I'm not looking forward to cleaning our apartment out after we move-- I'd rather spend the time focusing on our new home!-- but it has to be done. I'll just have to buckle down and do it in a day and get it over with.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Day 37: paperwork and packing

Having never bought a house before, I have nothing to compare it to, but OH MY GOD is there alot of stupid paperwork to do for our loan!

For instance, for our down payment. The money essentially came from three different bank accounts. From our joint checking, joint savings and my personal savings. For whatever reason, our mortgage broker is having me gift the down payment to MY HUSBAND. I have to fill out an insane amount of paperwork to do this. I have had to print off, scan and email many, many pages of bank statements. To (mostly) GIFT MONEY FROM OUR JOINT ACCOUNT TO MY OWN HUSBAND. It's insane. But we're jumping through these stupid hoops because that's what we have to do in order to buy this house. But please, FHA people, this is STUPID and is wasting your time, our broker's time and MY time!

We've also started packing. It's going to take more days than we have left in order to complete this chore! Not only do we have to do a ton of packing, but we have to do a million little things to get this apartment back together so that we might possibly get something back from our security deposit. It's already annoying, but it's just part of the process. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Today I was going to visit a friend who lives near where our new house is, so I decided to swing by and see how everything was looking at our place. I was excited to a couple of guys out there hard at work fixing what I can only guess was the siding.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Day 32: Signing our lives away AND exciting changes!

Last night our mortgage broker came over to go over the plethora of forms for Matt to sign (not me, sadly, as I'm not on the loan. Bwahahaha!) It was mind-boggling, how much nit-picky information there was to go over. Our broker said it has gotten like this over the last couple of years due to so much fraud in the industry. Oh well. It sounds like everything will go through and now we just wait!

I'm thinking of taking a drive past our new house one of these days to see if they've started the work on the outside of it. The need to finish the siding and put up gutters, as well as add some vents to the roof.

I have been reading the West Seattle Blog quite a bit lately. It has really helped me to feel more connected to our new neighborhood! Through this blog I have learned that the playground down the street from our new house is going to be completely renovated. It should be done by the time we get back from our MI vacation! How exciting! They were looking for volunteers to help with it, but sadly we won't be here. That would have been a fantastic and fun way to give back to our new neighborhood! Also, they are putting in a skate park near our new house! Um, not for us to use, but they are so fun to check out and watch the skateboarders.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Day 28: Appraisal

Just got word that the appraisal went great! Everything appraised at it should, though ne noted that the gutters needed to added to the house on the north side. Yep. Good thing the sellers are fixing that!

As this process of buying the house moves along so is the process of transferring our lives over to our new neighborhood. I wrote about it on my personal blog (HERE), but we have found a new school for the girls already. An amazing, amazing new school. Sort of makes moving to the other side of this big city completely worth it!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Day 24: Interesting

Today I was looking more online for crime stats and sex offender stats for our new neighborhood. Interestingly, where we currently live has crime stats were higher and more RSO within a one mile radius! I was shocked. I consider our where we are a safe neighborhood, safer, I thought, than where we were moving. Little did I know!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Day 23: Notice of Disapproval

Okay, I've calmed down a bit. Talked to all of the people who have good insight in to the situation about the work that needs to be done on the house and got to chat with our realtor today, too.

It sounds like the bottom line on the house is that for being close to 100 years old, it's in pretty decent shape. It could have been a whole lot worse and the good news is that none of the major stuff is wrong.

BUT there still is a laundry list of stuff that needs to be done! (by the way, where did the term laundry list come from?). We are submitting our notice of disapproval and have given them a good chunk of the work to do. There were a few things we kept out ourselves that were either fairly small, not that important, or stuff that is important enough for us to be done correctly that we don't want the seller to half-ass it together just to call it good.

However, after all of this, even if the seller fixes every single thing on our list, we'll have an entire basement that can't be slept in until we do some work on it. We will have to put egress windows in both of the rooms for starters, but the bigger issue is wanting to re-model the basement. If we do it before we move our stuff down there we have the benefit of having an empty space to deal with. Of course, we need money for that, which we don't have. Now we are questioning the sensibility of getting a loan to start these home improvements right away. On one hand, I am like "what the hell, ANOTHER loan?!?!" but then on the other hand I am like "it IS to make the bedrooms livable. It's not like we're going to spend the money to put in a marble tile throughout the house or something". So, Matt and I will have to hash that out.

But before any of that, there's the matter of waiting to hear what the seller says about doing this work. Some of it will simply have to be done in order for the seller to sell us the house (ie for us to get our FHA loan). For instance, they have to put gutters on it. If they don't, we won't get the loan and we are forced to walk away from the deal. It will be interesting to see how motivated the seller is because this is an investment property for him. Would he really basically back out at this point by not doing the work just to go through this all with another buyer? I'm not sure. I would like to think not!

We did want to get a sewer inspection scheduled but alas, we can't get it done before we have to give our notice of disapproval on the property to the sellers. We still can do the sewer inspection, but can't include it in the things we want them to fix or that we can walk away from the contract over. Of course our wiley realtor might find another way out of the deal, but for me, the bottom line is, do we do the inspection and live with the results, whatever they are, or do we save the money and not do the inspection and live with it not knowing what the problems are?

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Day 21: Terror.

We did the inspection today. It was truly eye-opening.

Let me tell you, all I heard was "blah blah is not up to code, blah blah needs to be fixed, this blah blah blah siding is a total hack-job" and on and on, ad nauseum. My brain was so full of information about what was wrong with the house that I could hardly hear when we were told that the electrical was in excellent shape, that the plumbing looked great and that the roof was pretty much solid. So all of things are huge. HUGE! Those are all of the things that you absolutely don't want to have wrong. I wasn't prepared for, however, all of the little nit-picky things that were.

My biggest concern is the basement "bedrooms". Clearly having bedrooms in the basement is not super-ideal, but you know, we don't mind that much since all we do is sleep in them. We had some big ideas on re-configuring some walls down there to have it all work exactly like we wanted. Little did we know that when we looked more closely at the bedrooms they weren't code-compliant. Neither had a source of egress (a way--besides the bedroom door-- to get out of the room should there be a fire). Um, yeah. So technically we only have a one bedroom house.

There were plenty of other things too. Well, a big thing is the half-assed job that they did on the siding. They pretty much stopped putting the wood shingles on about 7/8 of the way down and then chose a random mix of ways to deal with the exposed house on the bottom. Affixing plastic to it, hammering up some plywood, leaving it bare, all delightful options! We were told that the sellers were already planning on fixing it, though.

I got a little terrified with being faced with the realization that there is so much work involved in home buying--especially in our price range, I would think. Alot of work and, lets face the facts, not much money. I would be more than happy to do all the work in the world on this house (or any house!) but money is just going to be so tight for us.

Of course, we haven't sent our notice of disapproval to the sellers. We'll see how much they are willing to fix, though clearly it won't be every little thing that we found that needed to be. Of even more concern is, will we even be able to get an FHA loan for this house? Lots of what-ifs. Here I was under the very-mistaken impression that all of the questions would be answered with the inspection, but it only opened a whole host of new ones.

Anyways, the last word from our agent and inspector today was that it is a good house. When asked what he would measure it on a scaled of 1 to 10 the inspector said "7".

I also should add that while I came out of the inspection shell-shocked, Matt came out of it very excited. He thought the news on the house was very positive, considering all of the big stuff was golden.

Oops, one more add as a mention for Abby is that we talked to our agent and the inspector about getting a scope of the sewer lines and will likely be getting that done. Our agent said that isn't something he ever really sees buyers want to do but that if this process of getting one goes well he will likely start recommending them to other buyers! So yay Abby for the recommendation!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Day 19: Um, whoa.

Well holy crap, I had NO idea how much was involved in this space between saying we're buying the house and actually buying it.

In the past two days I've had alot on my plate. Let's see. We scheduled the inspection for Saturday afternoon. It was all set and great. The inspector was all set to go, we got child care so Matt and I could go and give it our undivided attention, and our friend is coming with us to look at the basement for us and give his ideas on re-doing the space. We had planned the inspection closely around some time we were spending with family that afternoon, as well. Wouldn't you know it, I get a call from the realtor today saying that time will no longer work because the tenants are coming home (we thought they were going to be out of town) and that time doesn't work for them anymore. Um, excuse me? I want, really really want, to be empathetic to the fact that it sucks that they signed a lease on a house that was for sale and therefor are forced to deal with all of this crap, but OH MY GOD I was livid. I had Matt get on the phone and talk to our realtor to get the original time to work OR ELSE. Or else what, I don't know. Or else I'll cry, I guess.

The other "fun" thing I've been doing is trying to figure out the deal with home owner's insurance. Having never purchased it, I am not really sure what I'm doing, and am being asked tons of questions about the house I have no answers to as all I know about it is the 15 minutes we spent touring it last weekend (yes, we decided to plunk down $300,000 on a house we were only in for 15 mins). And then I call the realtor to explain how I don't know how to answer these questions about the house and he tells me to not answer anything, that they should be sending someone out to look at the house to get those answers themselves. So I'm like, well, no one is doing that, they're just asking me questions. And I am not even clear on what the lender even needs to have as proof of insurance. More phone calls to our realtor/lender commenced. Still no insurance but lots and lots of time lost on the phone.

What else? I dropped off a giant check for earnest money at the escrow company this morning. Eloise liked the "store" because they had a jar full of candy.

I have had to scan and email countless papers to our realtor. Fun times. Matt has had to initial/sign/date countless times, as well. I even had to forge his initials once. Oops.

In addition to house stuff I've been researching schools in our new neighborhood and have set up an appointment to go visit a school that looks really wonderful, so we're excited about that. Annoying to know that the hours and hours of time we spent researching schools on the north end was all for nothing, but you know, there was nothing else we could have done. We knew we would likely be moving, but didn't know where. We had hoped we could stay in our current 'hood, but alas, it wasn't in the stars.

It's all plugging along, though. Stressful, but good. Hopefully at the inspection on Saturday I'll get some good pictures of the house to post. The ones online don't really do the house justice, I think.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Day 17: Offer Accepted!

Holy crap! It's really all happening!


Here's OUR new house:


They accepted our offer almost exactly as written, only changing a few very minor things like pushing the closing date out three days to June 19th. We close the day after Iris's 5th birthday, which is also her and Eloise's last day of school. This is only ELEVEN days before we leave on our three week vacation. Wowzers. It CAN be done! Right?

It's all too exciting. We'll be doing the inspection by the end of the week and that's definitely the next big hurdle to get over. Cross your fingers that the foundation isn't crumbling and the roof isn't about to blow off!

I am going to ask a friend who does carpentry work if he can come during the inspection to look at some walls we want to move around in the basement and give us an idea on cost, etc. We also want to put in a bathroom in the basement-- and a laundry room!-- but with our budget, we'll just start with the walls. There already are existing walls, but we're not big fans of the way it's all arranged and thought that if we're going to move walls, doing it before we move in would be the best way to go :)


Day 17: Twiddling Thumbs

In case you didn't know, the technical term for what we are in the middle of right now is "thumb twiddling time". Yep. We put in our offer last night and the sellers have until 9:00 pm tonight to respond. We are waiting, rather impatiently, waiting and waiting!

It was amazing how much work it was to put an offer in on this house. Our realtor spent many hours on Sunday-- Mother's Day-- putting together a CMA (comparative market analysis) and then was up until almost midnight explaining it to me over the phone. Matt and I spoke on Monday morning about what kind of offer we wanted to make and then did a conference call with our realtor that afternoon to let him know. Knowing what our offer would be, our realtor spent several more hours preparing the paperwork for the offer he would present to the sellers. Then he emailed it all to me and we spent another hour on the phone so he could explain it all. I had to print off all of the forms and have Matt initial/date them all. I then scanned them all in to the computer and emailed them back. This took me an insanely long time as I'm not nearly as computer savvy as I wish I was!

Our realtor called at 10:00 last night to let me know the offer was submitted and Matt and I just needed cross our fingers and twiddle our thumbs at this point until we got a response.

I got a call again today from our realtor letting us know that the seller's agent was trying to pick apart things like our closing date, etc etc, but I think we'll come out with what we need in the end.

Be waiting for the final update later tonight!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Day 15: Time for an OFFER!

We're putting in an offer on a house today. YOU READ THAT RIGHT! Maybe this will be a short-lived blog?

We set up appointments to see three properties in West Seattle this afternoon. The first was the winner! So of course, I'll tell you about the other two, first. Suspenseful!


The second house was a total NO. I was excited to see it because it had a big lot, but it was basically in the middle of a flood zone. We would have had to finish the basement to make the total space livable, but since the basement was about 3/4 above ground, I didn't think that would have been so bad. Anyways, it was bad. The house had flooded in the past and Matt thought it had bad mojo.



The third house was fantastic. It was a lovely, solid 1940's house and had a ROCKIN' view. You probably can't tell in this picture, but the Olympic Mountain Range is on the horizon.


The problem with this one? The owner of the house divided up the property so that they could build a nice tall house-- taking away the view from this one-- right next door. So, once a house went up all you would have is a view of their living room. I would be pissed off every single day I lived in that house with a ruined view!

However, we did find a great house that we really like. It is a 1917 Craftsman with a lovely yard and a great layout. There is a finished basement but we would pretty much have to re-do the whole thing, which mostly means tearing down interior walls and putting up new ones, which isn't a big deal. We would have to put in another bathroom in the basement, as well, since the only bathroom in the house doesn't have a bathtub (only a shower). However, the basement is plumbed, it just doesn't have a bathroom in it, so that shouldn't be too bad.

We're pretty excited about it but also cautious, too. We know not to get our hopes up until the house closes. There are renters in the house right now which could be a HUGE pain. The renters are upset about this whole process of this house being sold and don't want to move out. We're worried that they will make this deal pretty hard and/or do something to the house out of spite. We'll see.

So our realtor is working on the CMA as I write this and we'll work out an offer! Wheee!!!!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Day 13: Pretty much unlucky

Matt got home from Orlando late last night and took the day off of work so that we would have the chance to go and look at houses together. I asked to see six different properties and for various reasons, we only got to see two. Our realtor said the response he was getting from people whose homes we wanted to see was "frustrating" and yeah, that pretty much summed up the way we felt about it, too.

We did see two, though. Won't be buying either of them. The first one was actually pretty nice, though. We mostly liked everything about it, except for the big negative: it backed up to a freeway. I personally didn't think it would be THAT big of a deal but our realtor put on his, well, realtor hat, and said we would have as hard of a time selling the house as the current sellers are. The house has been on the market like two years. Ah, well.

The next house I wanted to see purely for location. You know what they say: location, location, location! It didn't look too pretty from the outside, and wow, not from the inside AT ALL. In addition to the foundation pretty much falling apart.

We will be seeing the West Seattle houses either tomorrow or Sunday, though. Those are the ones I'm most excited about as I am psyching myself up for the neighborhood over there and a great alternative school that is super, super close to where these houses are.

This week has carried with it a boat-load of frustration over un-met expectations of how this process would go. Luckily we had a great chat with our realtor and I think we're all headed in the right direction, though I am sure some more stuff will come up that we'll have to work out.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Back and Forth

If you lived inside my head, you would be dizzy with all of the choices I've made in the last 24 hours. None that have stuck, mind you, just lots and lots of anger, sadness, excitement, elation, interest and disinterest that have caused me to say yes, then no, then yes again to a million decisions about this whole house search.

As I pointed out by FAR the most houses in our price range are on the South or Southwest side of the city. I am so paralyzed by my fear of the higher crime in these two parts of town that it's hard for me to see past it and realize that there are so many good points to these areas.

This morning I decided to load the girls up and get in the car and go for a drive to explore some more areas. Unfortunately my handy dandy map (see my last post) wouldn't load on my G1 (my phone) so I only stuck close to one little area that I knew of three houses in. They are all on the Northeast side of West Seattle in a sweet little area very close to where Matt and I were married. Interestingly, as I was complaining about the school choices in West Seattle to my friend at school, she pointed out that there is a great one called Pathfinder that is a K-8 alternative school. When I looked the school up I was pleased with what I found out about it. THEN I looked up the address and it was less than a mile from where these three houses are that we are interested in. Hmmmm. Maybe things are looking up? Of course, that doesn't solve the issue with getting Eloise back and forth to school on the north side of Queen Anne (which, by contrast, is six miles away and across a freeway that the city will be tearing down one of these millenia). BUT, it's still good. Still progress. I am hoping we can see these homes when Matt gets back from Orlando!

So I'm feeling better. After being next to tears last night over the lack of desirable options, things are looking up. At least a little bit.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Because Home-Buying Has Made Me OCD

I made this, which is a map of every listing in Seattle that meets our criteria for a house. I did leave out a few houses that we checked on already.



View Untitled in a larger map

You have to zoom way, way in to see the individual markers or click on the link below the map to see it bigger.

We live on the NW side of the city. As you can see, there are no markers there. Almost 100% of the homes are in fairly undesirable (to us) neighborhoods. I just spent far too much time reading about the crime on the West Seattle blog, and um, yeah. I know there is crime everywhere, but this was truly a case of the more you know, the worse it is.

Day Nine: Oh Blech

Went to look at the first house today. The pictures online were WAY deceiving. Our realtor thought there was some sketchy stuff going on in the house and wasn't terribly impressed. I soooo wanted to like it. The yard was the best part, but even that was "eh". There was a gigantic pond in the yard, about 6 ft by 3 ft by 3 ft deep. No way in hell I would let me kids play around that! We won't be buying it, though it was a nice first house to see, I suppose.

Last night I asked our realtor to investigate six different homes in West Seattle and by this morning only one was still on the market. Whew! Things move fast! There are three others, though, that I hope to see. Our realtor is right to gently steer us away from that neighborhood since it is so removed from the city that it can be a pain to get in and out of at rush hour, but it's worth it to see the houses, I think.

Onward and upward!

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Day Eight: Scoping Out a Potential New 'Hood

Today the girls and I took a little trek back up to Lake City (which is one of the most Northeastern neighborhoods in Seattle) to drive around a bit, see where the farmer's market is held and visit the playground. We met a super nice little girl and her nanny. When I asked the nanny if she liked the neighborhood she said "I love it, except for the car prowlers that have broken in to my 21 year old Honda three times." Ouch. To be fair, we've had our car vandalized in our neighborhood, so nowhere is safe from that sort of stuff, but it made more aware.
I wanted to show you something fun about Seattle real estate. I will be totally honest and tell you that our budget for buying our first house is $320,000. This is lower than the average home's selling price in this county. Right before the mortgage crisis, this amount of money would have barely bought you a shack next to a crack dealer, but now we have more options.
Here is a home in a less-desirable (though not UNdesirable) neighborhood just north of where our apartment is:

Hopefully you can tell that this house barely looks like it is able to stand on it's own. Now when you drive by it there is a large piece of plywood blocking the front door. Want to guess on the price? It's $250,000. No shit. I wish there were pics of the inside!

Here is the house we like:




Fabulous, no? Seriously, this house looks like a palace compared to some of the houses we saw. My mom thinks is terribly over-priced but she also has never looked at real estate in Seattle.
I am excited to go have a look at it tomorrow!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Day Seven (again): Sniffing out the New 'Hood

Tonight I decided to take a few of our favorite properties that we had found on the MLS and look them up on the registered sex offenders web site. I used the one on the Seattle.gov site HERE. The frustrating thing, I discovered, was that I don't know what to make of the information I have gathered. It turns out, for instance, that where we live now has nine registered sex offenders within a one mile radius. Our favorite house we saw today has 19. I don't know what that means, though. As a mother I think even ONE is too many, but what about 19? 19 that we could potentially walk past on a daily basis while out on our walks, on the way to the park, on our way to the library. But does that make this location more dangerous?

If you have any insight in to this, I'd love to hear it.

Oh, and on a side note, I forgot to add that yesterday our realtor told us that the average first time home buyer was 37 years old. I was really surprised, but that means we're ahead of the average! It sure hasn't felt like it, but it's a fun fact, nonetheless!

Day Seven: Lowering Expectations

Last night our realtor emailed us about 250 listings that matched our criteria. I didn't LOVE any of them. I do, however, have a list of about 10-12 that I liked and want to see. It's so frustrating to be absolutely in love with the neighborhood that we rent in but just can't afford to buy in. There is one lone house about four blocks away from our apartment that I want to see, but it's been on the market for over a year, which is a red flag. An affordable home in this 'hood is unheard of, let alone one that's been sitting around for that long. I am interested to see what is wrong with it (or maybe the house was just waiting for us to come along and buy it? ha ha).

Even though Matt has to get ready for a business trip, I am dragging the whole family out to do some window shopping on the houses that I put on my short list. Some are in the North/Northeast part of Seattle and a few are in the Southwest part. There are many, many great houses in the South end of the city, but that just isn't where we want to live. Well, I should say, where I don't want to live. It's fine with Matt, but I am not excited about the schools or the higher crime rates in most of the neighborhoods in the South end. I just wouldn't feel as safe. Which is interesting, before I had children I would have balked at anyone who said Seattle had "bad neighborhoods" but now that I'm a mom? I even find the mini-mart three blocks from our apartment too sketchy. Ah, the perspective!

Anyways, will report back later!

Friday, May 1, 2009

Day Six: Planning Session

Today we finally met with our realtor. I had met him last year at the home buying seminar and I really liked him, but Matt had never met him before. I had a feeling Matt would really like him and I was so glad that he did.

Our meeting was supposed to last 45 minutes but we were there for an hour and 40. We certainly could have stayed longer! I feel like I could talk about houses and home buying constantly. The whole process really fascinates me.

Tonight we mostly went over the process of buying the house, learned about exactly what our realtor would do for us and signed our contract. Loving that WA state still requires the seller to pay our realtor's fees instead of us, the buyer. Tee Hee. Seems like that part is totally backwards, but hey, it saves us money!

We should be getting a list of properties very soon that are on the MLS that fit our criteria of price, location, number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms. It will then be our job to go through the list and find five or six that we want to see in person. I can't wait!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Day three: phone tag

So far nothing to report other than playing phone tag with our realtor. He wants us to meet him in his Bellevue office to go over some stuff. Um, yeah. With two small children at home, meetings like this will reeeeeally set us back.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Thanks for the comments!

Thankfully my mom alerted me to the hurdles to commenting (or maybe it was just her? ha ha) but I wanted to let you know I've hopefully made it a little easier. Comment away!

Today's news? Nothing much. Putting in a call to the realtor!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Day One: Our First Open House. Sort Of.

As soon as we got word that we could begin looking at houses with our realtor I hopped on the internet, for the eighty millionth time, to look at houses. This time, though, I was specifically looking for houses that had open houses this weekend. I found a great one about 25 blocks away and we decided that we would take a family walk up there today and check the property out.

The only problem was, when we got there the for sale sign had a "sold" sign on it and there was a note on the door that said the open house had been cancelled. Oops.

So that was that. At least we got a great walk out of it! Almost two miles each way.

Here We Go!

I wanted to start a separate blog to chronicle our process as first-time home-buyers. It has been a long road, and who knows who much further we have to go!, but as far as we're concerned, we've already reached our goal: having our finances and credit in order so that were are even able to secure a loan to purchase our first house.

Let's see. The story starts a looooong time ago, but I'll start it in November 2006. That was the month that Matt and I decided to get serious-- like, REALLY serious, about our family's future. I picked up a book called "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey and most of it really sonated with me. I decided to put his "snowball" process in to effect to use for paying off our debts. Our goal, our distant, seemingly unattainable goal, was to get our credit in a place that we would be approved for a home loan.

We worked, every single month, paying hundreds of dollars to our creditors. While we trudged through the process of contacting creditors and sending off our hard-earned money every month we also took a few extra steps towards improving Matt's credit score. This process continued for well over a year in to the Spring of 2008 when I started really getting a bee in my bonnet about being a homeowner. I started to hear rumblings of how people with less-than-perfect credit could still get home loans and thought, well, I should look in to this, what have we got to lose?

I was advised by a mama from the MDC message board to attend a home buying seminar that was something like six hours long on a Saturday afternoon. There I met a great mortgage broker and real estate agent. After the seminar was over we were asked if we wanted to have a private meeting with the mortgage broker and we agreed. He came to our home and sat down with us and began the process of looking over our financial picture, which had two sides: on the one side we made enough money to qualify for a loan, on the other side our credit wasn't good enough to qualify for a loan. He determined that the best loan for us would be an FHA loan, and working with him we began the next stage of process to clean up our credit.

This stage brought with it another mountain of work. We kept feeling like we were getting close to our goal, only to find out that we still had to do x,y and z. During the beginning of this process two really important things happened: 1. We got married, and 2. The market crashed. Both of these events were key players in our process. The wedding gave us a little bit of a financial boost towards our goal and the market crash?, well, homes that last Spring were totally out our reach, financially, are now completely attainable. We were forced to sit and wait, the whole time watching interest rates drop and wonderful homes in our price range come and go from the housing market. And we kept chipping away towards our goal of being able to qualify for a loan.

We met with our mortgage broker again in person in early 2009. He walked us through the credit report again and had some wonderful news: we were actually very, very close to our goal. We had only one more giant hurdle and we were there! As we had been working on this process the qualifications for getting an FHA loan had gotten more and more strict, but we were still meeting the expectations and were doing great.

A couple of months ago we finally paid off the last big loan that we needed to in order to have our credit report look exactly as it should in order to qualify for our loan. Then we waited. And waited. We needed to get proof from the creditor that this debt was paid off and had great difficulty in getting anything out of them. Finally, though, last Friday, we got the letter that we were waiting for: the debt had been settled. Later that day we were told what we have been working our asses off for: that we could get our loan and could start looking for a house!