Home Sweet Home

Well, we did it. :)  Today our offer was accepted on a house!  I was a little nervous because we asked for money off the asking price (it is a new house), closing costs, blinds (the good kind), and a fridge.  Luckily he accepted our first offer! We are set to close by Oct. 28th.

The house shell. It is obviously nowhere near done.

It is kind of a funny story. And a bit of a long one, sorry.  An old friend of mine recently moved back up here and started in real estate.  He posted on facebook a lot about how easy it is to buy a house etc. and finally I just posted on his status "if you can get rid of the down payment, I may be interested." as kind of a joke.  His response was "yeah, I can do that."

Our plan (as you may have read previously) was to move to apartments for a little while.  BUT, we spoke to the lender (Zender the lender, which is an awesome guy, recommend) and qualified, but found out we once again, were on the cut-off for the down payment thing (even though this one was way higher than the last).  This one is a USDA loan, and you qualify by living in a rural area and making less than the cut off of money.  HE, however, didn't send us off but called his underwriter and found that they would accept us because we have a child which can take off a few thousand, and I can show pay stubs to prove I don't work a full 40 hour week.  The last lady just said "sorry." With this good news, we went to go look at houses.

We headed out to Graham (like 5-10 minutes down the road).  We found the neighborhood but there weren't any examples of the floor plan to look at.  We moved to another neighborhood to find the plans and we saw Andy's old buddy Lee walk out of the house next door.  He and his wife Megan said they liked the neighborhood and we realized that the "sample" houses were about 10k cheaper than the other neighborhood.  Our agent checked and those were USDA approved too!

We thought we had decided on the house and went back to show my dad. He pointed out a few flaws (backyard was on a slope, weird family room, no space for dining table) so we went back later that night and realized that we loved the one across the street and changed our minds.  We put the offer in on Friday, and we found out today that it was accepted!

The house has a "great room" which is EXACTLY what I was looking for (kitchen, dining, and living room are the same room) and has 5 bedrooms (4 upstairs and 1 downstairs) and 3 full bathrooms.  Although the full bath downstairs is weird and just more to clean but oh well. It also has a pantry and a separate little room for the washer/dryer. It is also lacking in the window department which I see as a bonus because they let cold air in and I want to keep the power bill down. The back yard is tiny but it is a corner so it has a big (for the neighborhood) side yard to put a playset, trampoline, bbq, etc. and it is in a cul-de-sac so no traffic and the kids can play in the street (lots of kids there, friends for Sawyer).  It doesn't have a park but is right across the main street from Graham Elementary and there are sidewalks to get there. We are big walkers so no big deal.

We hope to be in this house for a long time.  We have enough space for a few more kids (4+ if we ever felt the need for that many), and we are ok with the school boundaries (Graham Elem, Frontier Jr. High, and Graham Kapowsin High School).

Anyway, I took some phone pics of the house in its current situation- wood beams.  I hope to get more as it grows.  I have to call to make the appointment for picking the colors tomorrow.

Sorry these are kind of out of order, and won't make much sense to most people besides ourselves since they just look like wood beams.

This is at the top of the stairs, to the left will be Sawyer's room but you can't really see anything

Our bedroom's closet

Standing in the living room looking at the room downstairs and storage under the stairs

Stairs and to the left you see the bedroom downstairs (aka play room for now and office in a few years)

Andy's in our room

The living room. That box is a gas fireplace and the hole above is where the TV goes. The downstairs room behind it

I am standing where Andy was 2 pics above, with our closet on the left and bathroom directly behind him

The soon to be kitchen (island to the left where the pipes are) and Andy in the pantry

The Harry Potter closet, Andy throwing Sawyer in the hole to the under-house storage place

That beam is the bedroom door beam, and we see sawyers room in back and the laundry room