Sticks and Stars

Can I tell you about the one somewhat embarrassing thing that really solidified my decision to buy my house? In a moment of inspiration, I hit upon the perfect living room arrangement.

I am fully aware that I have a super big thing for interior design, but I never realize how much I love it until just such a new design opportunity presents itself. From the moment I set foot in that house, I’ve been mentally creating layouts and color themes and whatnot, and my plans slowly change and refine themselves as time goes on. Just yesterday I was looking over some notes I had taken back in the beginning, and it was interesting to see what new ideas had already grown from those early seeds. (And yes, that’s right, I have a whole notebook devoted to my notes, sketches, pilfered magazine clippings, etc.)

The best part is when something feels pretty good but not perfect, and then suddenly my brain makes a new connection and perfection is hit upon (as in the case of my future living room layout).

The thing with this layout (I’m sure you’re dying to know) is that it solves the issue of where my workspace will go. Currently I use our third bedroom as my workspace (as I think I’ve mentioned), but the things I don’t like about it are that a) I’m away from all the action, b) it’s freakin’ cold down here, and c) my boys want to be where I am, so they bring themselves and all their toys down into this tiny little room. Since we have no third bedroom in the new house, I knew my workspace would either be in my room or in the living room, and since all the problems inherent in my current workspace will likely continue if my workspace is in my bedroom, the living room it is.

My initial and perfectly good idea for my workspace in the living room was to purchase and repurpose a wardrobe to suit my needs. I figured I could arrange all my stuff inside with shelves for my computer and printer and books and whatnot, and then, when I wasn’t working, I could close it all up and keep it save from my curious little boys.

The only problem was that I could never imagine a space for it. Wardrobes aren’t small and my living room is. Every possible location left it jutting awkwardly into other spaces. I figured I’d settle for it because it was such a good solution, but it never felt quite right.

Then one night I was measuring out my current living room to see how it compared to my future living room and discovered that my current living room/dining room combo are almost as long as my future living room. I realized that I could keep my living room the same as it is (more or less), but I could replace the dining room area with my workspace! And not only that, but if I got a desk instead of a wardrobe, I could put the desk in front of the big wide living room window and gaze outside while I worked. I could have a workspace that wasn’t just jammed into some corner, I could have a workspace that made me happy to work there! That is such a pleasing thought!

Of course, it would also mean that I’m giving up my ability to close things off to my boys, but if I keep my desk clear (something I’m generally pretty good at), it should be okay. Plus I’ll have all kinds of drawers within which to keep my stuff, which my current table top on legs doesn’t offer.

I know it probably sounds so silly that figuring out I could put my desk in front of the window was enough to sell me on the house, but really it was. Seeing a room layout come together in a way that feels perfect, that meets all the needs for the room, that is such an intensely satisfying feeling. It makes me feel extremely excited to live there and put my plans into action.

Surely you feel just as excited as I about my new living room arrangement. But oh, just wait for the photos!

Last night I dreamed that, without their knowledge, I bought half of the house/condo/apartment/whatever that my boys’ dad and his girlfriend live in. For some reason I thought it would be okay because I understood the spaces to be pretty separate, but it turned out that my bedroom was directly off their kitchen and at the end of the dream I remember slamming and locking my bedroom door (with me inside) as I heard the girlfriend arrive home and head toward the kitchen, and I suddenly realized what a phenomenally bad choice I had just made.

That’s one of those dreams that you are overjoyed to wake up from and discover that it was just a dream.

I guess it makes sense that I didn’t have my first housing anxiety dream until the day when I crossed the point of no return (of earnest money anyway) in the purchase of my little house.

Today, however, in a surprising bit of happy news, I learned that I can apply the cost of my two (and soon to be three) inspections toward the 1% of purchase price that I am required (by my loan program) to pony up at closing. That’s going to save me over $700!

I am currently roasting the garlic for Thursdays roasted garlic mashed potatoes and man, my house smells good. While I’m waiting for roasty perfection, I’m researching hikes upon which I can take my kids on Friday. I’d like to start a tradition like that, something that we do during the Thanksgiving holiday that’s about more than just eating good food. I would have liked to suggest a post-dinner walk for my whole family, but I can already guarantee that I’d be the only one up for that, so I’m going to wait until Friday when I’m back to being 100% the boss.

If we weren’t currently so tightfisted where the finances are concerned due to impending major purchases of the ceiling-over-the-head variety, I’d suggest we go to a movie after dinner (once my family leaves, which will be shortly after dinner — they essentially come to eat and that’s it) as that seems like a nice alternative to sluggishly picking at leftovers, but maybe next year. The hike is a nice start at least.

Really, I just want to create as many happy traditions as I can for my kids. I know those are the things that I remember fondly from my own childhood, those are the memories that really shape what I remember fondly at all. Thanksgiving at my childhood house meant eating and that’s pretty much it. Eating is fine and dandy (this year’s menu is going to be super-delicious) but there’s more that can be special than just the food.

Today was/is my birthday (the big 33!) and I had absolutely nothing whatsoever planned. I thought about going out to dinner with my boys but I didn’t really want to spend the money. I thought about taking the day off and doing something special for myself but, again, I didn’t really want to spend the money. So I resigned myself to a completely unacknowledged birthday, except for the few text messages that trickled in from friends and family.

But the day managed to surprise me in lots of sweet ways:

- One of my coworkers surprised me with a cupcake and another took me out for coffee and brought in cake for our team to share.
- I had my weekly weigh-in and discovered that I had very unexpectedly hit and surpassed the 70 pounds lost marker.
- My evening bus was late, which means I caught it despite leaving work late, which means I wasn’t late to pick up my boys.
- I learned of options for building a garage that may actually be in my price range.
- The bid to replace the knob and tube electric in my house-to-be came in at half what we expected.
- My brother sent me exactly the reassuring email I needed with regard to buying my house.
- I attended a meeting of the newly elected parent leadership for my six year old’s school (of which I am one) and the expected quick but boring meeting actually turned out to be a lively evening of conversation about our plans for the year and school gossip, laced with plenty of beer and tasty snacks.

I feel mighty content with this day, a sweet and happy way to start this year of 33.

Today I am back to feeling ambivalent about buying this house. I’ve been feeling pretty content with the decision for the past few days so I’m not quite sure where this is coming from, but the issues that my brain is obsessing about are a) the fact that is has no usable garage (it has a garage but it is definitely not usable), and the ravages of age that result from it not being new construction.

Right now I live in a new construction townhouse that I do not love. The townhouse itself is fine except for the fact that it’s really dark and the fact that the only windows I have look directly into neighboring windows (less than ten feet away on both sides), means I never feel comfortable having my blinds open to alleviate the darkness…which you can’t alleviate much anyway, since the buildings on either side block out the light pretty thoroughly. And there are other things I don’t love (that have more to do with poor construction and lack of a final review/inspection and my neighbors), but there are also things that I do love. Like the walls being straight and the floors being flat and the walls being smooth and the trim not being covered with decades and decades of new paint.

This house I’m buying is 72 years old so its walls are filled with bad patch jobs and people have painted so many layers that there’s just a smooth curve between the walls and the trim instead of a nice 90 degree angle. Insignificant, I know (except that I really hate it), but I’m just so spoiled by my shiny new construction.

Obviously, I can’t afford new construction. Or I can, but I don’t want what I can afford. But maybe the compromise is choosing a house that’s just 30 or 40 years old? No charm, but no bad plaster patch jobs? No uneven, sloping floors? And maybe a garage, too?

My waffling is becoming annoying, even to me. Maybe I should just send out more estimate requests to garage builders.

I’m pretty pleased with the results of today’s grocery shopping extravaganza. I spent the amount of money I usually spend on a week of groceries, and I got not only that week’s worth but all of the needed Thanksgiving food and a brand new springform pan so that I can make pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. I waffled over the pan quite a bit, but I really want to make a nice cheesecake and who knows, maybe I’ll use it for other things too. My kids were quite impressed with it, so that’s something, right?

I’m thinking a lot about the things I need to get done before I move (assuming the purchase goes through and I do indeed move). If all goes as planned, I’m going to have a month between when I close and when I have to be out of my current place, but I’d really like to spend that time refinishing the fir floors (seems much smarter to do it before we move in than after), possibly painting (easier to do after we move that refinishing the floors, but still, probably easier to do over all before we move in), and taking the time to move slowly (since there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to afford movers…damnit). So it seems wisest to take care of all kinds of pre-move tasks…pre-move.

Mostly, the tasks are these:

1) Consign clothes. I took care of my boys’ part of this and will take care of my own part on the 5th. I have all the clothes ready to go (except the summer stuff, which will have to wait), now I just have to finish up a couple things (iron a couple items, swap buttons from old to new jacket, etc.), but then I’ll be ready.

2) Clean out all rooms for Goodwill giveaways and to determine what has a place in the new house and what doesn’t. I already have a pile of Goodwill stuff just waiting for donation, but I really need to do a thorough purge. I hate nothing more than moving a bunch of useless crap around, and I will especially hate it when I move into this little house that has no space for any crap, particularly the useless kind.

3) Sell useless furniture. It’s been interesting having a third bedroom that functions as my “office.” I’m decent about making sure it doesn’t turn into the crap collection room, but overall it hasn’t been the best solution. Yes, I can work down here, but my boys want to be with me, so now we are all crammed into this tiny little room and they are messing with everything and I’m mostly just yelling at them. Once we move we won’t have a third bedroom (which is fine), and my work space is going to move to an armoire/wardrobe that will sit in a corner of the living room and remain tightly closed (preferably locked) when I’m not using it. That means I can be in on the action when I need to be, but I can also keep my stuff safe. So bye-bye regular office furniture (and anything else that will be useless in the new place, like counter stools and our art supply dresser and the little table that sits in my boys’ room and does nothing but collect junk, etc.). This will be a hard one for me because I hate dealing with people on craigslist. But I want the money, so I’ll suck it up.

4) Finish this #$%*& continuing ed class that seems like it will never die. I’m supposed to finish this class by December 11 but they had a server outage that threw everything off, which means I’m way behind. It doesn’t help matters that I’m sick and tired of this whole thing and find it incredibly hard to get back into when I’m going to have to spend days reconstructing the work I’d already done. I can ask for an extension that would surely be granted considering the technical difficulties they’ve had, but if I am still working on this when I’m trying to move and shit, I may have to throw myself off of a freeway overpass. I must stop procrastinating and get this done!

And then, of course, there are the actual moving things like packing and cleaning and painting and getting the carpets shampooed (part of my lease agreement) that will have to be done before I go, but those will presumably happen post-move or at least during the moving month.

Today my goals are to see if I have finally resolved all the problems with getting myself set up on the new server for my course and, if so, finish recreating all the work I did (I’m about half way done with this). I’d also like to swap the buttons on my new and old coats and then, if I’m feeling really wild, I’ll start walking through rooms and making lists and piles of what needs to go. I keep thinking I have so much time (and really, I do), but it’s amazing how quickly that time slips away.

Shit, I meant to post yesterday but I completely and entirely forgot. Oh well, it’s not the first day I’ve missed this month and I can’t even sign up for NaBloPoMo anyway due to some stupid irritating problem I’m having with the site that handles the back end of the sign up process, so really, it doesn’t even matter.

But whatever, I’ll still try to keep posting, so long as I remember to do so.

Things with the house are progressing. I submitted my response to the inspection today and upped my offer price by $1,900 while asking for about $5,000 in work. It sounds a bit much when I write it like that, especially when I also mention that the seller has already agreed to pay $7,800 of my closing costs, but $4,750 of the $5,000 is work that has to happen if the seller ever hopes to sell the house to someone who needs to take out a mortgage in order to buy it, and the other $250 is my request that the seller put in an outlet behind the fridge so that one can actually plug in the fridge without stretching an extension cord around the corner and half way up the wall of the next room. The fridge has been unplugged every time I’ve been to the house and I never would have noticed the extension cord had the inspector not pointed it out. An extension cord that stretches across the wall and right to the eye level of my boys seems like begging for a refrigerator and freezer full of rotten food, so my request feels pretty reasonable to me.

Now I wait for his response. He has three business days, so it might not be until Wednesday night. Overall, I’m feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I don’t know where this peace is coming from, but I’ll take it. It beats the endless angst by quite a bit.

In other news, earlier this week I looked at my savings account and realized that I am now about $200 shy of hitting the amount of money I need to provide for my closing costs, which led me to panic just a bit. I keep having to spend money here and there, but I didn’t realize I was pushing the line so far, and considering how tight my budget is generally, coming up with that $200 won’t be easy, especially with freakin’ Christmas tidily landing between now and when I’m supposed to close.

I’m scheming all over the place to come up with more money (now is apparently the perfect time to consign a bunch of clothes that are too big for me, not to mention the perfect time to sell some furniture that will become excess in the new house), and I’ve placed a moratorium on spending any unnecessary money. I like to think that I mostly don’t spend any unnecessary money, but it’s amazing how often I take the boys out for an ice cream cone or go out for coffee in the mornings with my coworkers or decide to get take out for dinner just this once. $5 here and $10 there really add up quickly.

It doesn’t help that I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my family and I really want it to be good. Friday night is my usual menu-for-the-week-grocery-planning night (in preparation for grocery shopping on Saturday morning), and I’m trying to milk our existing foodstuffs for all they’re worth in order to fit a turkey and various fixins’ into my grocery budget. My brother is bringing rolls and appetizers, my dad is providing (canned) cranberry sauce and is reimbursing me for the marionberry pie I will pick up from a bakery near my work that makes the most fantastic marionberry pies, and I am responsible for the turkey, garlic mashed potatoes and veggie sides (and I might also make a pumpkin cheesecake just because I really want one). I could do our usual frozen corn or frozen peas for the sides, but I want to serve them veggies that are so fantastic that they beg me for more. I haven’t quite settled on what though, so if you can recommend veggie side recipes that are super fantastic, please do!

Every time I sit down to write about how I feel about purchasing this house, my mind has completely changed from how I felt the last time I sat down. One minute I’m overwhelmed by the unevenness of the floors and convinced that I’ll never be able to resell the house for a profit no matter how much I refinish the floors or how many decks and swing sets I add, but the next minute my brother is sending me links to possible play structures for the backyard and I have no doubts about this being the perfect first (owned) home for my little family.

Mostly my worry is whether I should wait until spring, when more houses will come on the market. As I mentioned when I first started looking at places, everything left on the market right now is stuff that’s been on for a while because it’s weird in some way. This house is small (which doesn’t bother me so much anymore), doesn’t have a garage or carport (which bothers me a bit more because my price limit could potentially get me a house with that kind of structure, and damn I would love to not have to scrape my car windows in the winter — plus we really need that bit of extra storage for things like bikes and our Christmas decorations, etc.), and it has some “settling,” which means that the utility room area of the house slants downward in a noticeable fashion. This is the biggie and even though it won’t cost much to make sure the problem doesn’t continue (about $500 according to the inspector), you can’t really fix the current slant without significant remodel work on the house (because lifting the corner will crack all the walls to shit) and because it makes the house feel less sturdy or less secure or less grounded or whatever, it turns people off. Both my realtor and the seller believe this is the biggest reason why the house is still on the market.

The slant of that room doesn’t bother me that much, especially once it’s been secured so that it won’t continue, but I do understand the off-putting feeling that it conveys, I certainly experienced that myself.  I wonder if I wait until spring, whether I could find a house with no weird foundation issues, with a garage or carport, with a little more storage space, but still with comparable character to this house. And, of course, a comparable yard and a comparable neighborhood, which are two huge things this house has going for it.

There’s no rush, right? you might be saying to yourself. Why not wait until spring because you’re right, there will be more houses on the market at that time and you might be able to find the house of your dreams. Here are the reasons that make that more complicated:

1) In order to afford this house (and any non-condo, really), I am using a down payment assistance program through my city (and the state). They only have a bit of money left for the year, and it will certainly be gone before the year is done. They’ll get more money next year, but, according to my lender who specializes in this program, it won’t be available until March. That means I’d have to wait until March.

2) Waiting until March is fine, except for the fact that folks who want to take advantage of the $8,000 tax credit have to be in contract on a home by the end of April (and close by the end of June). That means that first time homebuyers who are taking advantage of both of these programs (not uncommon for first time homebuyers in my city) will all have the same March-April period during which to find a home and make an offer. My price range is the bottom of the current price range for low-to-moderate income first time homebuying families, which means that we will all be looking at the same homes. Given how the potential end of the $8,000 tax credit affected the market in October (sharp spike in sales), I worry that waiting until spring will result in my trying to buy in a market that’s going to be artificially inflated (and out of my price range) due to these other factors.

3) And even if I’m wrong about that potentially inflated market, there’s no guarantee that I’ll find a house I like. Yes, two months is a longer period of time than the two weeks I’m currently wrapping up, and yes, there are more houses on the market come spring, but still, there are no guarantees.

Right now, at this very moment, valid for this second only with no future guarantees, I’m feeling pretty good about buying the house. Or rather, there’s a shitload of stuff that has to be done as a result of the inspection, both things that the bank will require and things that I just want done for my own happiness, and I’m feeling pretty good about asking for them despite the fact that the seller proclaimed that his acceptance of my offer meant no further work on the house. So really, I’m feeling good because the decision is currently out of my hands. If he says no, I can’t buy the house. If he says yes, I can, and I’ll get a good deal out of it. Tomorrow night we write up the inspection results and then we’ll see what we’ll see.

No time to write tonight, but I did want to say that I really appreciate everyone’s comments since I started posting again. I didn’t know whether anyone was still reading but I really hoped that you kept my feed tucked away in your feed reader for just such an occasion.

All of you who’ve commented are all the folks I was really hoping were still out there. I may not ever repond to comments (unless your comment gives me the opportunity to draw up a floor plan of my house, of course) but your comments make me so happy.

Next up: your opportunity to decide whether I procede with the purchase of this house.

Peg asked if I could describe the layout. Well now, I can surely do better than that! I may have a million things to do tonight, but I’m never too busy to mock up a layout!

Please keep in mind that my screen skews things wide, so this probably looks narrower than I mean it to. And of course, my dimensions are for shit.

The stars indicate the future locations of my rolley cart and my washer and dryer. You can probably guess which goes where.

Oh my, that was fun.