We've been talking about finding a house with some land for a while, we were tired of living in a neighborhood. We had one neighbor we really liked, otherwise, we were surrounded by a weird group of people. Our kids didn't really go play with friends in the neighborhood like we had hoped so we were living in one for no valid reason. Beyond it being what we could afford when we bought it. Me taking a full time job changed all of that. We had been kind of poking around for fun and went to look at a few places. We weren't really seriously looking until I kind of broke. That seems to be the way it goes. We are fine... Until we aren't. In this case it came down to being sick and having to deal with the neighbor's ridiculous barking dog. That thing NEVER shut up. We talked to the neighbors multiple times, nothing was changing. It had a deep bark that echoed off all the ridiculously close houses around us. It would sit in the middle of the yard and bark. Just sitting there, nothing was around, nothing was moving, it would just be barking. I was sick, tried to take a nap multiple times and Every. Single. Time. That dog was barking. I ended up with a sinus infection that I shouldn't have had to deal with and I was finished. Let me describe this to you..
Neighbor 1: across the street, awesome, we'll actually miss them
Neighbor 2: kitty corner, had kids out on the front porch smoking pot constantly, saw multiple times where they were buying out of a car right there on the street
Neighbor 3: rental house, people smoked on the front porch and in the summer, without ac our windows would have to be open, smoke went straight into Carson's room
Neighbor 4: The nightmare dog
Neighbor 5: They had rock up against the fence that was breaking it. Asked them to move it multiple times, they never did. Daddy finally climbed over the fence and moved the rock so we could repair it. They also had a dog that liked to break into our yard. It broke the fence in multiple places. We brought it to their attention and they did nothing, so we had to patch it to keep their dogs contained.
Neighbor 6: their fence fell down in a wind storm and they just left it. They didn't fix it for months. Just had the broken fence, which absolutely wasn't ours, sitting there.
Keep in mind, neighbors 3-6 had yards that touched ours. We actually had another neighbor that shared some fence, it wasn't much and we didn't have any problems with them.
Anyway, we were done and everything was kind of a hot mess around us. Pretty soon, looking for fun became serious. We had a realtor friend that we worked with and she was awesome. We saw three really weird houses. One could've been really cool but would've needed a total overhaul, it was trashed. Really glad we didn't go that route. We just didn't have the time to devote to a long term project like that We saw three houses besides the one we ended up with. Initially our impression was that it was too "fancy" for us. When we went back around and saw it again it wasn't as uppity as we originally thought. We put in a full price offer with $5000 earnest money and it was accepted.
Then we had to rush to actually finish our house. There was touch up to do, cleaning to do and of course... All the baseboards. We made it in time! Lucky for us we had painted the outside last summer (never again by the way). Here are the professional pictures. 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, living, dining, family, den, laundry, and bonus. 3100 square feet. 2 car garage. About 1/5 of an acre. Big for most neighborhoods here unfortunately.
Here are the professional pictures of the new house. Not all of the rooms are pictured. 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath, living, dining, den, butler's pantry, and bonus. 3400 square feet. 3 car garage and of course, the shop. On 4.5 acres. It has a few things we could do without (2 stair cases?) and we lost the laundry room. There is a room between the garage and main house with an optional washer/dryer hook up. After experiencing walking through laundry to go in and out of the garage in our first house.... we decided to put the washer/dryer in the closet upstairs where there was an existing hook up. 
Getting ownership ended up being ridiculous. The mortgage broker that our realtor suggested ended up being completely incompetent. We come up on the closing date and we are told there is an issue on OUR buyer's side. They get it sorted. Then our lender tried to push us into an FHA despite putting 25% down. We said no because it required mortgage insurance. Then at the 11th hour, we're told that there was a process that they didn't realize existed for our loan. Which THEY found and recommended. It was part of an investor's package and there was an extra approval process that was required. That our people didn't do. We were told you WILL be approved. We just have to get through the process, which there is no way to speed up. We ended up rolling the dice. We began moving our belongings into the garage and shop of the new house. Of course our buyers wanted possession Friday. Which meant none of the people we would've asked for help were available. Fortunately, Grandma and Papa H made the trip from South Dakota with their big moving trailer. We got it done, we had to take time off work and we all just about killed ourselves, but it was done in time. Grandma Peggy came down and helped clean up as we were finishing the move and we were really grateful when some of Daddy's family came and helped us move some of the bigger items upstairs. I told Daddy that if we move again, I want to hire a moving company. Or even pay some high school kids to come help. We moved in December 19th, without owning the home. We basically rented it from the prior owner until we were FINALLY able to get our loan approved and closed January 10th. We were coming up very quickly on the "I'm not doing this anymore" point with the prior owner. It was VERY stressful.
Kayda's
Carson's
Dillon's
The next project was turning the downstairs "laundry" into a mud room.
We took out an upper cabinet and the wire shelf above the sink....and got to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment