Sunday Monday Funday

Here is a quick recap of our second (and probably the most exhausting) weekend as a homeowner:

View from the dining room floor

617 miles driving a U-Haul from Springfield, VA to Roswell, GA
83 degrees in our house before turning on the AC
14 boxes purchased at Home Depot
11 hours in said U-Haul
11 paint colors from Sherwin-Williams
10 mosquito bites before buying heavy-duty OFF
4 bags of lawn clippings from a lawn that hadn't been mowed for weeks
3 instances of termite damage (but luckily no termites)
2 slurpees
2 awesome guys working on our place, Fidel and Jesus
1.5 bedroom furniture sets nearing 100 years old
1 brand new lawn mower on our brand new Sears card
1 brand new weed whacker/trimmer that won't start
1 Georgia Peach Pass placed in a very weird spot on the windshield





We had a check-in with our contractor and our painter yesterday, in addition to tackling our yard. We can't start doing projects in the house, so we'll start with the yard. We didn't want to be the only house on the block with 5+ inch tall grass. 

I did a half lap around the property and the mower bag was already full. We resorted to raking the clippings instead of constantly clogging the mower engine. I relish the fact that my lawn will never again be as hard to mow as it was yesterday.

We also raked up what seemed like years of dead magnolia leaves, and identified 4 types of ivy growing on our house. I found myself midnight googling what plants will grow better since our house faces northwest. Troy also just texted that we need to plant Tall Fescue grass in our shady, completely-mulched backyard, after a morning of research. 

"Babe, I'm not into bright colors, so that's all you."

The contractors are finished with roof and deck repairs, and put in a new back door yesterday. Wednesday they will put in the new back garage door, and a pocket door for the guest bathroom. 

Thursday, we will pick carpet and glass samples to be installed next week. We have a friend who's family runs a paint company, and we've brought them in to do our interior. That includes all rooms and hallways, trim and doors. 

Move-in day is Tuesday, August 20th. 

Our Home Tour

At last! Our long awaited journey has come to an end. Closing Time.

But don't worry Semisonic, it's the start of a new beginning. 

Home renovations will take two weeks, and we'll be decorating and furnishing one room at a time. Our first overnight guest should arrive in the middle of September, so we should get the majority of the house presentable by then. 

Here is the very first look at our new home:

Living Room. New Carpet and a new back door will be installed.

The breakfast nook going into the kitchen. Door goes down into the basement/garage.

Dining Room will be painted a super dark blue with white below.

Front office space will be a darker grey.
We'll put in an archway to the living room for a  future renovation project.

Kitchen. New clean white cabinet fronts will be put in with the renovations,
and we'll repaint it white to brighten up the space.

Master Bedroom. 

Master Bathroom, to be repainted and in a couple years, completely renovated.

Second Guest Bedroom, will be painted Electric blue.
First Guest Bedroom not shown. It's too brown...

Extra room for storage… and stuff. I'd really like it to be purple.

Half of the back deck, will be fixed and repainted.

Half of the back yard, will be landscaped in the fall.
Garden beds to come in the spring.

Pathway from the garage to the Front Door.
I want to put in box hedges and lavender in the spring. Not a fan of the pine needle mulch.

Man and Woman Buy House

After all the surprises and last-minute requirements, we finally closed on the house Thursday afternoon.  Actually, Troy closed on the house while I was away for work. Twice the signing wasn't exactly twice the fun for him. 

The closing date was moved multiple times, thanks to our bank. It seemed the communication between loan officer, underwriters and us was nonexistent. I felt terrible that Troy had to deal with all of the drama on his own. 

It only took two scanned documents from me in California, two letters of explanation, confirmation that we are currently in an apartment, and all the receipts the seller's agent "forgot" to send us from the inspection repairs, to finally finish our loan package and set the date.

I was very excited to get this pic via text.

Yesterday and today, we drove by and took measurements for our new space. Our "Christmas List" of things to get wasn't too long, but not exactly cheap. The Sears credit card will be reopened very soon, and we also ordered a Georgia Peach Pass. Taking the toll road to and from our apartment should go much faster without dealing with cash.

Home renovations should start a week from now, and painting will start depending on the construction timeline. Moving will start the week of August 19th. Utilities will be turned on next week, and we are fighting the urge to buy a lawn mower right now, because it's already overgrown. 

The next blog post will have the empty house photos, so you can take a tour of the new place. 

Closing In on the Closing

Our closing date is obviously not going to be tomorrow. 

I would liken the next two weeks to a game of Duck Hunt. You never know what else is going to pop up: more paperwork, signing things, proving you have your down payment, etc. As soon as it pops up, you have to shut it down. Take it, sign it, turn it right back around. There is no time to let something gather dust.

Duck hunt can be a daunting game, but I hope the bank and sellers will work with us and not create more setbacks.

New closing dates have been thrown around, so much so that it seems the bank is not willing to accommodate our schedule. I'd really like to be present for the closing, seeing as though I'm the co-owner and all…. Having to do a power-of-attorney to close on the house would be one more thing that I don't want to have to do. 

www.houzz.com

But, as always, there is good news as well. On one of the many calls from our loan officer, he has said that there is no reason why we should not get approved on the house. Our finances are in order and clarified, and all of the renovations we'd like to do are well below our budget and the home appraisal value. 

From that point, I felt that the time had come to start picking paint colors. I've had quite a bit of fun with my Houzz app, picking pieces and styles that appeal to me. Along with my Pinterest board, the house should have a very different aesthetic than it currently has. Muddy orange isn't the most appealing color. 

After we officially close (hopefully in a week), I will finally get to post photos of the empty space. I haven't yet because of privacy, and superstition….

Good News

Yay!!!! We don't need a new roof!!!!!

I am a big advocate for only using exclamation points once and only when necessary. However, this is very necessary. A new roof would've been a big chunk of funds onto the home renovation loan. Now, we can use those funds for other things around the house.

Another great development: we will not need to install new siding. The current wood siding has some spots that can be remediated, and afterwards, I can repaint it to the clean white that I want. With regular maintenance, the siding will keep up and not detract from the home value.

Our contractor is an FHA-approved contractor. He is familiar with the rules of taking out the type of home renovation loan we are applying for, and has done jobs in the past year compliant with the HUD standards. He was very clear about how the payment process works, and about where our money was going with each project.

On the home loan front, we finally have all of our ducks in a row. Both of our credit reports are on the bright side, and along with the contractor's quote and the upcoming home appraisal, everything is prepared for the loan underwriters.

We will probably not have final contract approval by the proposed July 18th closing date, because of the extensive underwriting process. Since we are using a big bank to finance the loan, the loan underwriting gets passed to another firm, and who knows where it goes from there. Our new (unofficial) closing should be closer to the end of July.

We've put in our notice to our apartment complex, so we have until August 24th to vacate. This gives us a good amount of time (three weeks) between the closing date and our move-in date. The contractor will need to be able to get our renovations done on schedule and then, we will be able to paint before moving in and being able to spend the night. Keeping to that schedule is waxing optimistic, but luckily we don't have that much stuff.

Once we've closed on the house, I will post pictures of the empty space and track the progress of the renovations and ideas for final touches. Also known as the fun part. 

As for now, it feels great to know that all your bases are covered. Any worries we had about our loan being denied, or being thrown an unexpected curve ball of that sort, have calmed. 

I've definitely envied other homeowners who seem to breeze through this process, but Troy and I know that we've put in the time and have very much earned our new home. Fingers still crossed...

A New Homeowner Checklist

We have put in our notice, and 60 days from now, we will be out of our apartment.

I've been scouring moving sites like The Nest and MyMove for months. Cumulatively, I've printed off four or five different checklists for preparing your move, packing your house, and dealing with paperwork before Closing. 

In addition to our home loan, we are tacking on an additional FHA renovation loan. The house does need some work done; and since it is our first home purchase, we quality for some additional tax breaks to cover those projects. 

This means more paperwork, appraisals, quotes and time spent to get everything covered. It also means that we need to clear some major space on our credit cards.

We've gotten some referrals for FHA-approved contractors, as well as movers. However, our big list so far is the list of things we should either hire out for, or do ourselves. It's like making a Christmas list and figuring out how to optimize total presents received. What should we save for, and what should we ask for?

After the contractor gives us a quote for these fun projects, the house will need to be appraised to make sure we aren't overpaying. Although, at this point, renegotiating is the last thing I want to do. All this must be done in order to push the loan through the application process. A timely manner is a bit hard to keep to when we're talking about closing 21 days from now.

An additional obstacle is moving inherited furniture from Virginia to Atlanta. When I first made the move 3 years ago, we got the smallest moving truck for under $400. The latest quote from U-Haul for the same trip? Almost $1,000. Absolutely no idea what caused that jump…

However, the furniture is mine (I'm not just stealing my parents hand-me-downs) and we will be needing it for our secondary bedrooms, and to not look totally house poor. Between covering that move, closing costs and down payments, and hiring hourly movers for our current apartment, that's not a lot of money to go around for the next two months. 

A Home Inspection

I held out a whole week before writing that we finally found a house and are under contract.

When we put the offer in on this house (offer #6), there was the usual amount of back and forth. We each made three counters, finally getting to a middle ground price that is thankfully way below our budget. 

We are almost through our due diligence, and just got back from the home inspection this morning. 

This is the absolute farthest we've gotten in the home-buying process, and yet there are still horror stories from our friends and family about the difficulties between now and closing. 

It always surprises me how many sellers put so much money into giant stone bathrooms and overworked additions, yet they neglect things like structural and water damage.

Source: My Move

We had the nicest guys for our home inspection (Joe and Jim from Medallion Inspections) and they gave us the run down of the house, as well as some good home-owner education. As it turns out, the house isn't in as bad of condition as we anticipated. 

For the age of the house (1979), there were a lot of good upgrades and fixes compared to some of the homes in the neighborhood. Many of the items on the must-fix list were installation shortcuts from previous contractors, electrical wiring and pipes. Others were items that were original with the house and were due to be replaced: windows with broken seals, vents and gutters.

Did you know that installing just one new window gives you allowance to advertise that your house has "thermal windows"? Tricky tricky tricky...

I'm hoping that the sellers can tighten many those nuts and bolts before closing, leaving us with bigger renovations: a new roof, new siding and new carpet. Kitchen, bathroom and backyard face lifts are also on the docket, along with new windows farther down the road.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our projected closing date is July 18th, and we'll be in our apartment until mid August.