Well over a year ago we started house hunting. We really got serious about finding a house when we saw a steal-of-a-deal foreclosure for sale. It looked like it had been halfway redone and updated, like maybe they ran out of money before they could finish... Then we heard the house was up for auction. So we did tons of research and found a Realtor really quick so we could see the house before the auction...
That house was a dump. Like not someone trying to fix it up, but like a few people paid a few dollars to paint half the wall to take a better picture for the internet and then not paint the rest of the wall. We would have to clean up the messes they made to "fix it up" before we could fix it ourselves. Like the floor was very uneven and the breaker box was not big enough for the a/c unit someone recently installed. Here are a few pics I took so we could remember the time "we almost bought that crazy house."
Like this first one looks like some of the pictures we saw online. Fun red kitchen (you couldn't see the bad trimming on the paint job in the small picture online), updated fixture in the dining room, pretty green paint, dark solid wood floors.... right?
I stood in the same exact spot to take this picture, I just turned to my right. Sure, we'll just stop painting right there... and behind me was worse, if you can believe it.
So it was a no-go on that house. But there was a house I had been admiring online for about 5-6 months, and it still had not sold. And the price had just went down, probably because it has been on the market for so long. So we asked our Realtor if he could get us in to see that house...
Love at first sight. We wanted a house with good bones, a house that didn't need any repairs to live in, but could use some freshening up to make a little more beautiful. I loved this one.
It was soon that we decided to buy the house, I know it sounds crazy but we made the first offer within the week. We already had our pre-approval from the banks in process, and we were ready. It turned out to be a much longer experience than we had planned, we thought the offer/counteroffer would be the longest part. But there were many legal issues because the house was a split estate of someone recently deceased and things were not quite figured out on their side of things. We learned a lot about patience and waiting and trusting.
We first saw the house on August 22. Can't you tell Kyle loved it? We have some more of the first house tour pictures but we'll share more of those later this week.
We put in an offer on September 2nd, and we didn't close until October 11th. It was a mess scheduling things and Kyle was out of town all week the week we closed and could not be there so it was just me. (Kyle had already driven back into town on a moment's notice the week before because we were mistakenly told it was the day we had to close... oops!) The day we closed our Realtor was actually on vacation, and the bank lender representative was out of town and it really was just me and the closing lady and a random guy from the realty company that didn't know anything about the house. I had to sign each paper twice, once for me and once for Kyle. I had power of attorney for one day to sign for him, meaning I had to sign "Kyle Hess by and through his agent and attorney in fact Brittany Hess" by hand EVERY TIME on about 40 pages. It was crazy... I asked them to take a picture of me, just for the record you know... because I knew I'd be telling this story again someday...
So we closed on the 11th, we owned the house, we had the keys and everything! But we couldn't move in yet. It was weird, they tried to explain it to us and we think it was because one of the heirs to the estate was under 18 and so the judge had to approve of the closing documents to make sure no one was taking advantage of her... not sure if that's exactly why... but that's what they told us.
So on October 18th the house was ours, and I made Kyle go over to the house with me and be silly and just enjoy our new empty house. I don't think we had electricity yet so when trying to take a picture with Kyle's phone the light kept blinding us.... see?
We only had one evening to really pack because our friends had exactly one night available to help us move in, the 20th. So we literally threw things into people's cars and drove them over to the new house. It was crazy, we couldn't have done it without them. We were reminded that night of how wonderful our friends really are. Oh, moving day... this is what our back living room looked like afterwards.
But it was our first house, and somehow we figured it all out. This house really is a blessing from the Lord. How often does the house you pick out in March online stay on the market until August when you return from Colorado and drop a few thousand dollars in price in the meantime??
It's been a great year. We haven't gotten near as much as we thought on the house, but it's still ours. Well at least it's ours and the bank's.
I'm putting together a little house tour for you guys as well. Pictures of when we first toured the house and then what the house looks like now... or at least what it looked like a few weeks ago before we got another project under our belts...
Happy Hess House-iversary. Feel free to celebrate, party... cookies, as you like. Wonder where we'll be a year from now?
No comments:
Post a Comment