Week 1

Last Saturday was the Big Move.  With the great preparations we had made, we thought it would be a piece of cake and we'd be relaxing in our house by sundown.  As they say, though, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and awry our plans did go.  All seemed to be going smoothly until it came time to haul our enormous sectional down into our basement family room.  Apparently in 1948, not only were people much shorter with smaller feet and less storage needs, they also didn't need as wide of doors as we have today.  After trying both the stairway from inside and outside, it was obvious our couch wasn't making it to its intended home without some extreme measures.  Following hours of trips up and down the stairs and lugging all sorts of boxes and furniture, we all were tired, frustrated and starting to feel a bit hopeless.  Luckily, our friend, Paul, was able to pull us back from the brink by expertly popping off the door and frame, which gave us just enough space to shove the couch down the stairs.  The individual pieces were violently thrust down the narrow stairwell, leaving gouges along the walls, but in the end they all made their way downstairs.  Thanks to the assistance and forward thinking of Jessellee, our bed had been assembled and made, and at the end of the night looked like a sweet cloud from heaven and I don't think either of us had ever felt so happy to lie down.  While it might have been a crazy hectic day, it made us realize how lucky we are to have such amazing friends who all went way, way above and beyond to help us, even when they were just as tired and sore, if not more so.  So, we say thanks to Keith, Mike, Paul and Jessellee, and Terry.  We literally couldn't have done it with out them and we're so grateful we could spend our first day in the house with such special people.

In the days since, our lives have revolved solely around boxes.  Whether it be unpacking them, moving them around, tearing them open in a desperate search for something we know must be somewhere, or tripping over them, only to crash into another box.  Moving around the house makes me feel like we're contestants on "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge: Home Edition", but thankfully, minus the giant pools of mud.  I think when we're not watching, the boxes are going off and reproducing because I swear even though we've unpacked quite a few, there are more appearing in their place.  Around the boxes, we're slowly managing to arrange our rooms and if you squint really, really hard, you can almost see at some point, it might actually look like a home.


Don't...get...eliminated!!

By yesterday, John and I were pretty exhausted and overcome with ennui from unpacking, and it was obvious we both needed a day off and a big ol' dose of a well-known, traditional Swedish cure of all that ails you: a trip to IKEA.  Nothing invigorates the body, mind, and soul better than the smell of particle board in the morning.  We picked up a new bed frame (a platform to allow Dexter to hop on and off easily... don't judge us... our lives revolve around The Boys and we know it), a taller dresser to better fit in our small master, a new TV stand to complete our built-in look for the living room, and a shadow box picture frame to memorialize the Big Move by framing a few chunks of our house that fell during the Great Sectional Escapade.  We left IKEA with a cart full of flat boxes, frozen yogurt cones in our hands, and a renewed hope in our hearts.


IKEA loves our home.

What a week.  Who knew buying a house would be so much work?  Here we are, already a full week into our adventures in homeownership.  Closing feels like both just yesterday and forever ago.  The past week has been exhausting and exciting and full of ups and downs.  Even though we're both spotted with bruises, sore in all sorts of places, and a little worried someone might find us crushed underneath an avalanche of boxes... it's a labor of love and so far, we still love our little house.

It's Official!

At about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, our odyssey through the treacherous waters of home buying came to an anti-climactic end with the sound of recapping pens.  Fireworks would have been more appropriate and awesome, but I guess we can't get everything we want.  After going through and preparing offers on four other houses, signing another stack of papers was a breeze, our hands still nicely cushioned with calluses of signatures past. 



After the ceremonial handing over of the keys, we thought it only appropriate to share in the occasion with our little Dexter.  We swung by Overlook to pick him up, and I must admit, I felt a little traitorous entering our beloved condo, knowing that we now had a new home.  Those feelings were quickly dashed away upon watching Dexter scamper throughout his new home, his little toenails clicking across the hardwood floors like a troupe of tiny tap dancers. 



Dexter looking like he owns the place.

John and I were able to convince Marriah to join us back at the house for a sparkling wine toast (a surprisingly delicious choice from Mumm Napa, a winery we've actually visited out in California) to celebrate and thank her for her hard work.  She and Mike surprised us with a basket of housewarming goodies, including quite a few wine related gifts (I guess they could tell we're oenophiles) and a much needed reed diffuser to help dispel the weird, closed up house odor.  I know I speak for the both of us when I say we really got lucky in finding such a great team of Realtors.  They were both incredibly patient with our never-ending barrage of questions, always knowledgeable and quick with a response, never pushy, and we always felt like we were getting advice from friends instead of people just trying to make a buck off of us.  With our Type A personalities and my constant anxiety and mood swings, working with Mike and Marriah made buying our first home almost too easy.



From the heart of Napa Valley...

On top of all that, we were delighted to hear our lender had made some overestimates with our good faith estimate of closing costs and because of this, we are actually getting a check back for about $700. With our purse strings now basically welded shut, we're happy to hear we'll be able to eat for the rest of the year. It feels great to walk away from closing with a check in our hands and feeling like the little guys won for once. I'm sure that money will be gone in no time, considering the number of things we need for the house, but it'll certainly help ease the sting of swiping the credit card for a while.

Woo hoo!!

After our sparkling wine buzz had died off, John and I channeled our excitement into taking over our first load of fragile items and starting the grueling process of cleaning up the new place.  Compared to many of the neglected properties we toured, our house isn't actually in too bad of shape and mostly just required a good wipe down to clear away the construction dust.  John took up the most important task of all - spraying down the perimeter of the house with Home Defense.  While I respect their place in the ecosystem, no bug is welcome in my home and will surely be vanquished via pulverization or at the paws of our Attack Panthers.  We cleaned until we both feared passing out from a combination of exhaustion and the bouquet of chemicals wafting throughout the house.

All in all, it was a great start to what is sure to be an exciting journey.  We definitely expect to meet some lows along the way, but we've been incredibly lucky so far, so we'll just ride out that wave for now.  In the meantime, we'll keep on rubbing Buddha's tummy and hope for the best.

Closing in on closing...



My weekend.

 One day to go!  I can't believe after all the highs and lows of house hunting (which isn't nearly as fun or quick as they show on HGTV, but thank Cheesus we didn't have to deal with Sandra Rinomato), the waiting and the strife, we only have one day to go.  Surprisingly, my four days and four nights without John flew by.  I think this could be due to a packing trance I was under for most of the time, brought on by the repetition of carefully entombing all of our possessions in bubble wrap and paper and the sweet smells of packing tape and Sharpies.  Twenty five boxes, two rolls of paper, 1.5 rolls of packing tape, and only one (!) bottle of wine later, my weekend is over, John is back, and tomorrow we close. 

While I know we're both so excited to move into our own home, we're also sort of terrified.  Even though we've been married for almost two and a half years, buying a house feels more like the biggest, most adult decision of our lives.  It's a huge financial investment, not to mention the time investment it will take to maintain and improve our home.  At this point in our lives, I think we're ready for the challenge.  I know underneath it all, I'm really 50 on the inside.  Nothing makes me happier than watching "This Old House" on a Saturday morning while leafing through my latest issue of "Better Homes and Gardens".  We even spent our last Valentine's Day trolling Home Depot, getting all misty-eyed and dreamy checking out the tiles and flooring.  Maybe at 25 and 26, we should be renting a one-bedroom apartment in D.C. living it up, but like most things in life, I'll blame my parents for making me like this.  Some of my happier memories include the trips to Sears with my dad, hours spent perusing the tool department (granted, I may have been bribed with Slurpees...), riding my bike down to the local hardware store to pick up some screws for the newest deck project, and painting the shed in the backyard with my parents.  Heck, my dad even mildly resembles Tom Silva.  Now it is my time to pick up the hammer, don the plaid, and live out the American Dream.  It is pretty terrifying, thinking tomorrow we'll gain a house and lose our carefree youth, but I know we're ready.  We have each other and the support of our families.  What else could we need?

In the spirit of the end of our Final Countdown, it seems only appropriate to once again borrow from "Europe" to commemorate this monumental occasion:

We're leaving together
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To Eagle Ridge Lane, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving Overlook

Will things ever be the same again?

At last!

As you can see from our Final Countdown calendar, we are fast approaching closing.  As of 5:00 last night, we had yet to hear anything regarding the appraisal and I was starting to get a little worried.  Luckily, Marriah emailed us about an hour later with great news... the appraisal came back and at value!  There was one small issue with roof flashing and a bit of leaking, but the seller's contractor had already made the repair and is going back today to improve the drainage.  Although we won't be removing the final contingency since we're only 2.5 business days away from closing, I guess we can consider ourselves officially under contract.  It's about darn time.

Now with John out in California and me having so much free time for online shopping on my hands... what's the saying... "When the cat's away, the mice will play"?  Just kidding... there's no reason to cancel my credit cards, John.  Now it's time to seriously get down to business with my packing efforts and officially being able to be 100% excited about the house.  Unless it gets carried away by a freak tornado/flash flood/alien abduction. 

So, hooray for some good news!  I think I can finally relax now and just ride out my packing high until closing and the Big Move.

Elliot: Packing Extraordinare

We spent a great deal of time over the weekend packing.  Even poor John who has been battling a cold for a few days now.  With just a couple weeks left before the Big Move (assuming the appraisal gets resolved...), we need to keep on trucking.  I really don't think we could have got as much accomplished over the weekend if it weren't for the help of our boys.  Kiefer was vital in the supply of packing material.  I re-used some plastic shopping bags as box stuffing and he made sure to attack every bag, viciously clawing and biting them to make sure they didn't pose a threat to me or our things.  He was even brave enough to venture into some of them, ensuring there was no funny business going on within.  Dexter provided crucial moral support, jumping into my lap every few minutes with some hugs and kisses.  He also made sure my glass wrapping was up to par by pouncing on the wrapping paper and dancing across it.  However, one of our sons really went the extra mile and without his help and support, I think the painstakingly repetitive task of wrapping up all our breakables would have been too much for me.  As you can see from the photographic evidence, Elliot took it upon himself to crawl into the packing paper box... and nap.  Maybe he thought the warmth of his body would create a more flexible paper that would hug our things like he hugs himself while he dreams.  Or maybe he thought he could lend some of his fur to our things, adding another layer of protection.  Who can know what goes on in his tiny mind?  I'm just glad to know we have three amazing sons who would stop at nothing to make sure we know they're there to help us and wouldn't let anything (but themselves) stand in our way.

Working hard...?

Or hardly working?

Sweet deals!

Although we were supposed to find out the results of the appraisal two weeks ago, we've hit a little roadblock.  Our lender said the appraisal company has decided to do a desk review of the appraiser's findings.  Not really knowing anything about home buying or appraisals, at first we were quite concerned about this, thinking that the house's recent foreclosure and subsequent listing at twice the price was raising some red flags.  However, after a bit of Googling to learn a bit more about desk reviews, it seems like maybe in this new environment of stricter lending, it might just be standard operating procedure now.  Or at least that's what we're telling ourselves.  We were told they should have the final results for us by Tuesday, so now more waiting.  Thrown into a fit of despair and frustration, what's a girl supposed to do except to turn to shopping to heal?

Pie safe!  It's pretty huge.

I've been compulsively checking Craigslist just about every day, picking through the horrors and atrocities that someone at sometime thought was a good choice of home furnishings.  My ultimate goal is to find a dining table and set of chairs at a sweet price, thus saving us hundreds if not thousands of dollars off the set I'd die to have from Creative Classics.  However, with so many things that need to be done and us about to go horribly further into debt, we need to stretch our dollars as far as they'll go.  Besides, nothing warms my heart more than knowing I got an awesome deal.  I think I must have got that from my Grandma Korroch.  Anyways, after hours of searching, I stumbled upon something called a "pie safe".  No, it's not a pie-shaped bank, like someone who shall remain nameless (john) thought... Looking back on it, I'm not entirely sure why I thought our new house needed a pie safe... but it is pretty awesome and I think will add some valuable storage in our little old house built with small closets.  Best of all, we got it for a cool $120.  Who wouldn't buy it?

Classy!

A few weeks ago, we snagged another sweet deal from JC Penney.  Actually going into a JC Penney is right up there on my list of places I dread going (for some reason, they always smell musty and earthy, like there's a secret mushroom forest growing in the walls and all I can think of is dying from some sort of toxic mold), but luckily, I can enjoy their website from the comforts of my couch and they almost always have some deal on shipping.  We were in desperate need of some sort of entry way storage as we'll no longer have a coat closet.  I really don't know what people did with their stuff back in the 1940s and 1950s.  I guess stored it all in pie safes... I love the look of Pottery Barn's hanging shelf and matching bench, but just couldn't stomach shelling out almost $600 for the set.  Luckily, we were able to find this similar set from JC Penney for way less and saved more than $50 on shipping alone!

So, those are our first pieces bought just for our new home.  It's pretty exciting.  I've put off packing long enough, so that's that.  At least for a couple more hours until we pause to watch MSU destroy U of M.  Go Green!

Yay Packing!

There isn't much new and exciting to report at this time, but John took this picture of our sweet boys yesterday as they were helping us pack.  Can't you see the enthusiasm in their eyes?  Elliot had worked so hard, that he just couldn't take it anymore and passed out from shear exhaustion.  Dexter, of course, always wanting to be involved in everything has taken up the role of supervisor, ensuring we make the best use of our boxes and don't forget to pack any of his toys.  Kiefer... well, he's just as creepy as always, lurking in the background in his gargoyle pose.  It looks like they're just as excited to be packing as we are.  We can't wait to take them to their new home, though, and watch them run around exploring every room, closet, window, and everything in between.  Hopefully they'll love it there as much as we do.

Otherwise, we're just waiting now on the results of the appraisal, and then more waiting until the 19th.  It seems like September just flew by, so I'm sure it'll be here before we know it.