The House

Everything is falling into place. :) The inspection went well. The appraisal came in at $10,000 over the purchase price we got (which was below the listing price). (I have quite the haggling hubby.) The home warranty looks good. We've found our insurance company. The underwriters (or whomever) are almost done with putting the loan through. We just need to save a little bit more money, and it's ours! We are putting down a hefty down payment to be able to get a conventional loan (and avoid the mortgage insurance) rather than go with an FHA loan. (Thank you, Grandma Boling, for your help, and thank you Citywide Maintenance, for the paychecks that make up the rest! And I guess thank you to ourselves for having some money saved.)

I have been avoiding putting up pictures, because haha, I'm a horrible house photographer apparently. I took over 30 pictures, and these two responses pretty much sum them up.

Jeff: "So, you're not very good at taking pictures of empty houses."

Amy (my sister): "Well, you took some good pictures of . . . corners."

It's a sad fact, but yes, most of my pictures ended up being of corners. I don't know what my problem is. I should try again the next time we get into the house. Almost all of the pictures just show corners, so you really get no feel for the house or the rooms.

To satisfy the curiosity of the masses (and I know you're just dying of curiosity), here are a few pictures though.

Here is a picture of the front of the house. It is a tri-level, so it is basically a ranch with two of the bedrooms on top of the family room. As you might notice on the right, the garage has been converted into a third bedroom, the master, with a walk-in closet and full bathroom. So, it will be the coldest room in the house, but I'm a girl who sleeps with the fan on during the winter, so that will work for me. More quilts and more snuggling!

There is some siding in the front, and the sides and back are entirely brick, so it's almost all brick. The roof is brand new, which is fantastic. The previous owner (who flipped it) couldn't do any landscaping, because if you plant bushes right now, they'll die, but he did put down nice mulch, and now I can choose whatever plants I want and not have to feel guilty about removing any existing plants. There are lots of mature trees though, so that's great! I'm hoping my mom and one of my best friends (Emily) can help me out with selecting and planting. I need their brains. ;)

One of my favorite features is the front door. It is original to the house (and by that I mean the previous owner didn't put in a new one when he flipped it). I don't know if the door was actually there back in the 50s when the house was built. I love the front door! It doesn't have a peephole, but I guess I could peep through a window instead . . .

There is ceramic tile in front of all of the doors to the outside. (In this picture it's covered by a leftover carpet piece.) The tile continues in the kitchen and both bathrooms. The rest of the house is carpet, brand new carpet. There is hardwood under at least some of the carpet (in the living room for example), but I don't know if we will ever be able to go back to that, because the living room used to have a sunken floor in half of the room that the flipper took out, so I'm not sure what it will look like under the carpet. I do like the carpet though.

A terrible picture, but it shows some other things I like. I like the brick and the exposed beams. Sadly, both have been painted. I will have to do some research to discover if there is any way to remedy that. I would like to have the beams looking like wood again and the brick looking like brick again. Even painted though, they add a lot of character to the room.

We will have to put up new railing though. Jeff doesn't like the metal, and it is high enough that Jill could crawl under it and wide enough that her head could get stuck in between. (Not that I'm planning on leaving Jill alone long enough to do either, but babies are fast, and you never know.)

This is a picture of one of the bedrooms that is original in the house (the two upstairs ones are). They both have that cool lighting feature. Instead of ceiling lights, they have that like . . . ledge lights. I'm not sure what it's called! Either way, again, I think it adds character, and I like it. That way the room is illuminated, but if you're reading on your bed, the light is not blinding you in the eyes. You can't tell in this picture, but the house has no attic, so all of the ceilings are sloped up, giving it a cathedral/vaulted/tall feel. (And by all ceilings, I mean all but the family room that is under the two bedrooms. It's impossible for that room to have a cathedral ceiling, haha, unless you want bedrooms with sloped floors!!)

All three bedrooms have two windows each.

Here is a shot of the backyard. It is already fenced, and it is quite big, which I love. There is definitely room for Jill to play (Jeff to throw a football haha) and me to plant a garden. I didn't show a picture of it, but the living room and family room both have double glass doors to walk out to the backyard, and there is a patio area in front of the family room door. It is just a cement floor (with a drain) and a rock retaining wall around two sides of it (since it is lower than where the front room walk out is).

I don't know if you can tell, but behind the two trees there is a sort of little ditch with a little creek. Very little. Like only when it rains or snow melts. I do like having a place for the water to go other than my house!

The end of the backyard juts up to some uninhabited property next to the elementary school Jill will go to. Cool, eh?

The shed will be very nice to keep things ordinarily put in a garage (since we don't have one). We have tossed around putting a one-car car port on the side of the house or putting a two-car detached garage in the back, or just leaving it how it is. We'll see what happens.

I very much love our new home! :)