The House (A Nerve Wrenching Purchase)
Thursday, Jan. 03, 2008
**Written Jan. 2nd**
The house that we bought was not love at first sight. At least not for me. It was more of a "well this one doesn't suck as bad as that last one we saw" for me. The first time we saw the house was a week after we missed putting an offer into another house by about 48 hours.
We had been going to see houses after work about once a week starting in Oct. We had also been spending countless hours looking at homes online and driving through neighborhoods on weekends. The bad part of starting to look at houses in the fall is that it gets dark so early. It would be sunset at 4:30 when I got done with work and by 5:30 when we would be meeting the realtor it would be completely dark.
The house was the second of four that we would see that night. I was kind of unimpressed by the house, with the exception of the large kitchen and HUGE (by city standards) yard. R.H. though, saw something that night that I didn't see and he got me to agree to visit the house one more time (in daylight) before writing it off. Daylight majorly improved my overall impression of the house and after another 30 minutes of prowling around the empty (freezing) rooms I agreed that this might be "the one". That weekend we agreed to bring both sets of our parents over to the house and to get their opinion (because we're gluttons for punishment). We made it through that slightly disastrous meeting (barely) and spent the rest of the weekend being mad at both of our families.
Fast forward a week and it's the day before my birthday and there is a huge fight between my parents and R.H. regarding the purchase of the house (my parents are involved because they are helping with some of the money aspect and also doing some work on the house). Once tempers have calmed down and I have spent the majority of my birthday weekend in tears (and my birthday was supposed to be fantabulous this year�you only turn 25 once) we find some middle ground and make an offer.
Which the sellers declined to accept.
So we decided we would make one counter offer.
Then they said they would accept our original offer if we would move the closing date to the end of 2007 instead of the beginning of 2008.
Done. (Gulp�did I mention that this whole experience destroyed my nerves?)
Right before Christmas we had the inspector come and check everything out for us to see exactly what needed to be fixed on the house. We had a general idea but of course you need to know everything.
Roof on the garage needs to be replaced ASAP (you can see the sky from inside) � CHECK
Roof on porch that is completely shot and needs replaced ASAP � CHECK
Water heater and furnace at the end of mechanical life � CHECK
I don't think I need to go on. Despite the issues, there was nothing we didn't already know about and we decided to go ahead with the purchase.
So here we are at the start of 2008 and I am a homeowner. The first home purchase we've made has been a new thermostat (thrilling) and now it's time to clean and fix some of the previous homeowner's DIY projects (can anyone say "leaky kitchen sink"? What about "illegally hooked up wood burning furnace"? I can understand the sink a bit but an illegal furnace is a serious WTF).
Tonight is R.H. and my 4th anniversary. We are celebrating with a trip to the store for cleaning supplies and possibly a ladder. Who says romance fads with time?
**Edited to add that we also bought a stove during our anniversary trip to the (what I now refer to as) the evil home improvement store**
castalia at 7:21 A.M.