A dozen things I am excited about at the new house

Monday we got the gas hooked up to the new house and yesterday it was the water.
We had to de-winterize the house yesterday morning too in order to have our inspection later in the afternoon.  The inspection went well and only a few minor things to think about--mostly cosmetic.  Nothing that was a deal breaker.

We will have to undo all the utility hook-ups again later in the week or the first of next week since it is empty, only to start back up again permanently a month later.  HUD is a pain.

Whew!! This part has been a bit stressful.

But on the "fun" side of things we do have some things to look forward to.
After spending the majority of the day yesterday at the new house, I am getting excited about moving and the projects that I can do.

Here's my short list of things that make me happy about this house.

1. Cute little front porch.
2. Gas fireplace in living room.  We've never had one.
3. Vaulted ceiling in living room. 15' high we figured at the top.
4. Lots of windows for natural light.
5. White cabinets in the kitchen.  This bypasses any argument discussion with hubby about painting oak--as you may remember he is a true WOOD guy.
6. Kitchen island with more kitchen storage. It is about 69 x 35.
7. Screen porch off the back deck that includes a light and ceiling fan.  I want to hang up this sign out there.  We already have a porch swing (that will get painted a fun bright color) that will go there too.
8. Laundry on the main floor--and in a finished room too!
9. Master bath is not a pass through for anything.  Yeah! no kids access to our bathroom.
10. Regular height ceilings in the basement.  For us tall folk that is HUGE!
11. More than one shower!!!
12. Attached garage.

There will be lots of painting to do, eventually, in this house as the previous owner was obviously a big fan of the color brown.  I don't mind some brown--just not on every wall on the main floor.

In the meantime I am flying out to St.George, UT (via Vegas) tonight to hang with my sisters and my cousin for an extended girls weekend of sewing.  Can't wait!!!  It is -25 degrees or so with the windchill here in MN and about 70 degrees there.  Ahhhh!  It's going to be good.  

We have a House!

Well, it has taken some time and effort, but we finally have a house to move to, which is why I haven't posted lately.  My brain can really only handle so much.


We looked at this house the weekend of January 24th, which was the first weekend after we sold our house.  We hadn't been looking at all beforehand. When we got there our agent told us that they had accepted a bid on the house the day before. The selling agent hadn't bothered to let us know that little piece of information when we made our showing appointment.  RATS!!!  This was the one house I was excited to see out of all of them that day. We looked anyway, since we were there, and found that we liked the feel of this house better than the one we (or more specifically I) had been thinking about for months on end.

It is a foreclosure, through HUD, and so those bidding only had 48 hrs. to get all their paperwork in or the bid wouldn't be accepted.  So we just hoped (and maybe prayed too) that something would happen that it would be available in the following days, or that something else would come on the market that we would be happy to buy.

On the 30th this house showed back up on my email listings as active.  I got a hold of my agent and sure enough something on the buyer's end had fallen through and they were accepting new bids.  Only now it was at auction stage and we had to submit our bid by Sunday at midnight (Feb. 1).  We had no idea if anyone else was interested in the house or not.  We were told that there were a couple investors interested in the house.  Maybe that was just to get us to bid higher than the asking price, who knows, but it was slightly nerve-wracking to say the least.

We got our bid in on Saturday night and waited until Monday to hear back.  I must say I was just trying not to think about the house at all.  I didn't want to get excited about it and then end up spending an afternoon or evening crying about not getting it like I did with the previous house.  House #1, sold the week before we put our house back on the market.  It felt devastating to me.  Of course, I had been thinking about that house for months and comparing everything else we looked at to it.  This second house we had only been focusing on for a week.


Monday morning we got the word that they had accepted our bid!! and that we had until the next day to get all this HUD paperwork signed so it could be overnighted and if we didn't do it correctly they could just reject our bid and we'd have to start all over.  Talk about stress!!!

We got it all in on Tuesday and then Thursday I had to go re-sign some of the paperwork because apparently our blue ink wasn't blue enough for them and they wanted it redone.  No, seriously!  They requested we sign in blue ink, which we had, but they thought it was black and wanted us to redo it.  Honestly!  Our tax dollars hard at work.  Just shows another example of government redundancy and ridiculousness.  But hey, I drove down to the realtor's office and did it.

Our bid contract is all signed and completed and official now.
Relief!

We took our kids to see the house last Saturday for the first time (and actually only the second time for hubby and I).  We still love it!  Good thing, because nothing else has shown up for sale that interests us.  The kids were all excited and checked out their soon-to-be new rooms, etc.  We were able to talk with one of the neighbors, Tony, and he filled us in on all sorts of neighborhood info.

This house has been empty for 2 yrs.  Guy lost his job, found another one out of state, but was unable to sell the house and then just walked away and let the bank take over after a period of time.  Tony also says there has never been any water issues in this house (hallelujah!).  Considering our yard backs up to a pond, we were happy to hear about that.  Tony and another neighbor, Kevin, have been taking care of the yard during this time.  So it sounds to me like we've picked a helpful friendly neighborhood.

Next step is the inspection and if all continues to go well, we'll be moving in March right before Spring Break around here.  That will give our kids a week off in the new house to get used to everything before we start back at new schools.

I have to say after worrying for about a week after selling our house that we may end up "homeless", I am getting excited about our new adventure.  More to come in the following weeks.