Sticks and Stars

What’s that you say? Where are the interior photos of the house, even if they are terrible? Oh!! Well I happen to have some terrible ones right here!!

This is the living room. You may or may not be able to tell that the floors need refinishing, but my realtor refinished her mother’s fir floors by herself in a weekend, so confidence runs high in my being able to accomplish similar feats.

This is the other side of the living room. The sole purpose of this photo is to show you the little cutout in the wall that leads into the kitchen. I like that little cutout.

This is the arched doorway in the living room that leads to the bathroom and kitchen. The other two doors you can see are the bedrooms. It’s only 800 square feet, but no space is wasted on hallways and such. My 1200 square foot townhouse feels almost the same size. And also? I am a sucker for arched doorways.

Why yes, that is a clawfoot tub that you see in the bathroom. I am also a sucker for clawfoot tubs.

This is the kitchen. And yes, this is all the cabinet space. However, there is perfect space for a rolley cart next to the stove and fridge next to where I’m standing.

This is the dining nook. Calling it a nook implies there is some larger dining area elsewhere, but no, this is it. I may also be a sucker for dining nooks.

Perhaps the worst photo of all, this is one of the bedrooms. You can’t tell much from the photo, but both bedrooms are about this size, just shy of 10′x11′. I believe this will be my room because the location of the windows, closet and heater make it really awkward to fit bunkbeds in here.

And there you have it. By tomorrow I may have learned that the seller won’t compromise on the repairs and so the deal’s off, but for tonight I’m still planning for pale sage green and white in the bathroom, with natural wood accents.

Here’s the post I wrote on Friday but forgot to email to myself. Mostly it’s just a bunch of detail about the house. I’m less concerned about the size than I was because, as someone pointed out to me, you fit yourself into the size you have available, and also I really like small spaces. Plus it’s a fun and interesting challenge to think about what of our crap I might purge, and what clever storage/space usage solutions I can come up with for the rest. I have the past four years of IKEA catalogs and I was marking pages like mad over the weekend.

What I am worried about is the inspection. The seller made it clear that his acceptance of my offer (that knocked about $10,000 off his asking price) meant that he would do no further work on the house, so if the inspection reveals problems, then I have to evaluate what I’m willing to accept and deal with versus what’s a deal breaker. That’s a hard one for me, knowing where to draw the line. But my inspection is this afternoon, at which point all will be revealed.

I think I might be buying a house. It was maybe two weeks ago that I even began remotely entertaining the idea, and here I am, heading to my real estate agent’s office tonight to write an offer.

The house is lovely. It’s small, a cottage really, with just two bedrooms and only 800 square feet, but the layout is such that it feels perfectly reasonable. And it is incredibly, incredibly charming, with all of its 1937 detail intact (except a new roof and new windows and new electrical and new plumbing and a new kitchen).

The lot is big and fully fenced, with great potential for either expansion of the house or the addition of another space later on. Someone took the time to landscape it nicely, but not elaborately, so it’s not too much for me to maintain with space for me to expand. There is a lovely circular stone-edged raised veggie and herb garden in the front yard.

The neighborhood is residential with other moderate single family homes that have been well maintained. Nice yards, but not too nice, and there are likely to be kids. The street is quiet but it just two blocks from the arterial that takes us directly to my boys’ schools. The neighborhood allows us to stay at my six year old’s school with bus service (as of next year, our current locale will no longer receive bus service) and gives us bus service to several other schools that I might actually prefer for him next year.

I worry that it’s too small. I worry that, like all old houses, it will be quirky and those quirks will become grating annoyances over time. I worry that I’m going to hate mowing with a passion. I worry that I’m overlooking something important.

With any place there are going to be worries, this is what I keep telling myself. What I try to remember instead is how I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked around the house, how much like “home” it felt, how much I liked the neighborhood, how even though I had almost, almost convinced myself not to take it this morning, once I set foot on the property again I changed my mind completely.

Update: Well, the inspection was…revealing. There are a few semi-major issues that must be fixed before my financing can go through, there is one issue that I would definitely like to have fixed for my own peace of mind (and that might be rolled up into the aforementioned issues), and then there is one last issue that must be resolved before the house is livable for my family (the wiring is not as updated as the breaker box and the outlets suggested and none of it is grounded, meaning danger as far as using computers in the house). I told my realtor that I was willing to concede $2,000 back to the seller in order to get this stuff taken care of, but the repairs needed are quite a bit beyond that. So now we see whether the seller was bluffing.

I stopped by to see if I could chat with neighbors about the neighborhood and to take some exterior photos that I should show to everyone who wants to see.

I’m not sure that this photo captures its terribly quaint cuteness, but it’s better than the listing photos at least.

I got the house. The seller agreed to my offer and my inspection is Monday.

I keep telling people that they can only say good things about it in order to shore up my decision and that has helped. My brother watched my boys today while I took my homebuyer class and then I took him to see it and he approved. We stood in the kitchen and discussed building a deck on the back and convincing our dad to contribute a swing set/play structure for his grandsons.

Tonight I talked to my dad for over an hour and mostly we discussed the details of having the dilapidated garage torn down and replaced with a new little garage. He’s coming to my (current) house for Thanksgiving and is really excited to check out the new place. He was amenable to the play structure idea.

I like the house as it is (well, once it has a washer and dryer anyway), but when I imagine it with a new garage where I could store our crap and where I could park my car in the winter (and NOT have to scrape ice in the morning), a deck where were could relax in summer, and a play structure for my boys, wow, it’s hard to imagine how I could make it more perfect.

I need to keep reminding myself that there’s still the inspection and the finalization of my financing to get through because my heart is getting mightily attached to this idea of “home.”

I wrote a post yesterday at work but forgot to email it to myself before I left. And then I was too busy yesterday evening to remember to even look for it to post (which I couldn’t have anyway).

Mainly, it was a description of the little house I saw and loved and upon which I decided to make an offer.

It’s a nice place with many pluses, but I won’t go into those until I can grab the post on Monday because I’m currently in too much of a rush to rewrite.

However, I will tell you that I loved the house yesterday and looked forward to making the offer, then when it came time to make the offer I was so anxious that I almost hyperventilated and made my real estate agent reassure me and discuss the pros and cons for literally hours.

Eventually, at about 9pm, I finally wrote the offer and told her she could send it that night (as opposed to giving me the chance to sleep on it before sending it in the morning), and then I laid awake last night agonizing over whether it was the right decision. I finally went to sleep once I decided that it was a terrible idea to buy this house and that I would cancel the offer first thing in the morning.

This morning I am feeling more relaxed about the whole thing. Still anxious, yes, but less inclined to back out at the moment. My agent offered to go over and measure the rooms for me and then email me while I’m in the home buying class I have to take today, and once I compare those measurements to my furniture, I’ll probably feel better (or worse, depending on how it works out).

A friend who’s known me through many big decisions in my life informs me that I am always, always like this when making a big decision, and that makes me feel better too.

So stressful, these huge financial decisions.

I found two houses, one that I love that might be less practical, and one that I like reasonably well that is more practical but has no character.

Now I am deciding between the houses and a nice condo I looked at yesterday. The condo is easier in the short run, a bit cheaper overall, but a much slower investment should I want/need to resell relatively soon. The houses will require more work (although are perfectly livable at present) and are probably going to be more expensive in terms of utilities at the very least, but they provide more space for my family and will become profitable in terms of an investment much sooner.

I am torn.

I looked at 24 houses and condos today.

Many of them were weird; the ones that weren’t weird were expensive or problematic in some probably-fine-with-most-people-but-won’t-really-work-with-my-family way. I think I’ve narrowed my list to five potentials, but I’m not willing to commit one way or another until we see the few more that we couldn’t get to today.

My favorite was probably this condo that had a huge loft and spiral staircase leading up to it. Were the loft not the master bedroom, I probably would have bought it, but the loft is the master bedroom and because my boys are two people and I am just one, and because they have so many more toys than I do, they get the master bedroom. As you might imagine, if they had the loft and I ever had friends or, god forbid, a date come over, it wouldn’t really work for them to be playing/sleeping in the loft above. It’s a shame. Most of the time it would work out really well, but on occasion it would not.

My second favorite was a really pretty condo with a very nice kitchen and good spaces and layout. It was pricey, one of the most expensive places I considered, but potentially worth it…except that I think the complex was filled with retirees (retirees + 2 fairly rowdy jumpy boys = potential trouble) and the location is far enough away from where we are currently centered that it would probably be wise for me to consider moving my boys to new schools/daycare. Although I wouldn’t have to, and at the very least I could wait until summer when such a change might feel less abrupt.

My six year old went with me (school was out for him — the reason I stayed home as well) and his favorite places were a) the place with the “curly” staircase (the one with the loft), b) the place with the chocolates (and only because of the chocolates), and c) the place that was staged with a glass jar of some kind of layers of pickled veggies (again, only because he liked the jar). His criteria may not prove to be the wisest in the long run.

Man, I really love running. I had no idea I’d love it so much. In the beginning I really did not love it, but I loved how I felt afterward, so high on the accomplishment and so loose and relaxed in my body. Those feelings were enough to make me forget that I didn’t like the actual running part…until I was doing it again, and by then it was too late.

These days I love it all around. I run on my lunch break at work and during the afternoons afterward (like today), I feel like I’m sitting here and gently glowing with my happy contentedness over the whole thing.

I’m doing the Couch to 5k program and I’m midway through Week 4 (even though I’ve been running for probably two months now — I don’t always get to run as often as I want and I tend to run four times per “week” instead of just three, which stretches things out a bit) , which means that I run for three and five minute intervals. It makes me feel pretty proud to write that and it makes me feel prouder to know that next week, when I’ll be running for five, eight and then twenty minute intervals, I’ll be able to do that too.

Never thought I’d be a runner. Never in my wildest dreams.

Yes, I’m only going to talk about home buying forevermore. Or 21 days, whichever comes first.

So far I’ve worked with four different lenders on this journey. The first lender was referred to me as someone who was really familiar with these first time home buyer programs but turned out not to know anything. He gave me a lot of incorrect information, namely that I couldn’t afford anything and I took his word for it and decided to give up on buying a home. The same day, my boss gave me a referral to his realtor who he raved about, so, on a whim, I contacted her and she gave me names of more lenders to contact and told me about different home buyer programs that this other lender hadn’t mentioned. I contacted the lender she recommended the most highly and he gave me better, much more promising information about getting a loan, but then he stopped responding to my emails, so I emailed a couple lenders I found on a website (about this first time home buyer program, not just a random website) and one called me back. She gave me ever better information, suggesting that I get a conventional loan instead of an FHA loan because then I wouldn’t have to pay mortgage insurance (since I’d be putting more than 22% down) and she was the one who got me all excited about getting this done quickly as the pot of money was dwindling fast. But even though we discussed at length the short timeline, she also stopped responding to my phone calls and emails despite telling me she’d get back to me at a certain time (which she did not). So then finally this other lender-from-the-website called me back and instead of fucking around like everyone else, she answered my questions and, in the space of about 45 minutes, approved me for the first time home buyer program and gave me pre-approval for my loan.

So I may buy a house this week. I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to vomit just a little.

My three year old is extremely sensitive about getting the bottoms of his pants wet from walking on wet ground, to the point that he insists on wearing shorts or, if we battle over the shorts and I win, he pulls his pant legs up to his knees and walks around holding them in a death grip. It’s not an ideal situation (although sometimes kind of funny to watch) but this weekend while consigning away half of my six year old’s Thomas goods (keeping half leaves us with more than enough), I spotted a pair of size 8 duck-faced boots and snatched them up. Once I got him past the weirdness of new shoes (and boots even), he was thrilled to clomp around in them. Today he was wearing shorts but tomorrow he’s excited about the prospect of keeping the cuffs of his jeans clean and dry.

It was the coup of the weekend.