What a scary thought, right? Being a homeowner.
The husband and I didn't really plan on buying something this year. I just knew that we HAD to get out of the apartment we were living in. It was ok the first year we lived there, but just went downhill from there. People fighting outside, cops making nightly visits, mariachi bands playing across the street until 1 in the morning, homeless people sleeping in the hall across from us, etc. It was time to bid adieu to our humble dwelling.
I started going to open houses just to get an "idea" about condos. We knew a condo was best for us, since neither of us are Bob Villa in the housing department, and we didn't want to spend our weekends cutting the grass or shoveling snow in the winter. We found one condo that we almost put in a bid for, but after talking to my dental hygenist, of all people, we wound up bolting. The condo association wasn't that good, it was really noisy there, and god knows we had enough noisy assholes to deal with in our current situation.
We found our current condo listed online. We went to visit it and I think we both instantly loved it. It was perfect. Two bedrooms, one which could be my office, a nice sized kitchen and a dining room, and best of all-a finished room in the basement for the husband's movie room, aka Man Cave. LOL. The only bad thing about it was the carpeting. They had two cats and a dog, and must have let the animals piss wherever they wanted, because the living room smelled like pee and there were stains on some of the carpets. The wall colors in some of the rooms were hideous as well, but painting didn't seem like a big deal to us.
Once we figured out that yes, we could do this, the fun really began. And yes, I am being saracastic. There were phone calls to make. Paperwork to fill out. More phone calls to make. Temper tantrums to have. Not everyone knows what they are doing. In the end, one of the people in our mortgage broker's office and I were barely on speaking terms in the end. I just got frustrated with her because she had to send us various forms over and over again and just couldn't seem to get them right.
We did have a fantastic realtor, who was recommended to us by our lawyer. There were some snags with the sellers, though. They were stubborn about having their cracked and leaking bathtub fixed, so we were going to walk. They changed their mind pretty quickly after that. The appraisal came in lower than we all expected, so the sellers were naturally upset. It worked out great for us, as they had to lower the price, so we were happy.
Yesterday was the closing. We had our final walkthrough first and I noticed the huge U-Haul outside, we I assumed belonged to the sellers. We were right. When we walked inside, I was aghast at how filthy it was. It looked liked they had never cleaned the place. Ever. I grimly noted the worst of the rooms, with intent to return with a bucket and sponges and industrial strength cleaner that night. I get that they moved that day, but jesus...they couldn't sweep the floors or do anything? They left junk in some of the drawers, and other garbage there.
The closing itself was pretty simple. The seller, naturally, forgot to bring the money for the bathtub, so we had to wait for her husband to get it from the bank. It was awkward at times, when the seller told us how great the area was and how much she was going to miss it. She made a ton of friends there, apparently. Good to know the area isn't filled with scumbags like my apartment building, though. She also told us that the lock on our door was a "great lock" and we didn't really need to change it. Yeah right, lady. I'm going to keep your lock and you have might have extra keys? In your dreams. She then told us she left some kind of grill downstairs (which I don't remember seeing on the walkthrough) and wanted to know if she could call me later and get. I told her sure, but I never heard from her that night. When I'm over today I'll look for it, but I don't know if it was really there or not.
Anyway, after we got our cash for the bathtub, we signed our papers, shook hands all around, and the place was ours! First stop was Home Depot, where we bought a new lock and got some painting samples. Home Depot is seriously unknown territory to me. I had no clue. Just none. But I think we did ok for our first trip there. It's not really a fun store, is it? The only saving grace is that Sonic is next door so we indulged in some limeades before we hit the store.
We headed over and managed to clean one of the bathrooms and most of the kitchen (the kitchen was the worst...*shudder*) I vacuumed the living room rug, which was the worst offender in the piss-smelling category. Home Depot is actually supposed to come out today and measure all of our carpet. We want at least the main carpet upstairs and the downstairs changed. Most of the carpet upstairs is ok, thankfully. We had fun testing out the paint samples on the walls, and just basically cleaned what we could.
Now we're just going to clean the rest of the rooms, and start bringing over stuff little by little. Our actual moving date is September 17th, and the movers are basically taking the big furniture. I think we can handle the rest.
The whole process was exhausting, and I'm glad it's over. I just can't wait to finally move in and then we can make the place our own.
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