Oh. My. Goodness. I can’t believe it has been over three months since I wrote a blog post! Well, actually, I can. It has been a crazy few months. Did you miss me while I’ve been away?
Finding Home
When last we saw our hero, she was freaking out about finding a place to live. Oh, and preparing for a Festival.
I am happy to report that we found a new home, though it was quite the roller coaster ride to get there. And the Festival was amazing. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.
The first hurdle to overcome was finding financing for a house. You can’t really look at homes in your price range if you don’t know what that price range is. We found a mortgage broker who was willing to work with us, and I had to clean up some old debts (which, by the way, feels REALLY good to have done).
When we finally started to look, there wasn’t a whole lot on the market in our price range. At least not in the city that we have been living and working in. When I say, not a whole lot on the market, I really mean there were five – two of them had accepted offers, and two of them were WAY too small for our family. The last one wasn’t ideal, but with limited options, we would find a way to make it work.
House Inspection
We knew this house would be a challenge. It clearly needed a lot of work, and it was near the top of our price range. The plus side was that it was extremely close to work and school, so we could probably walk a lot of those places.
Then we got the inspection report. The first line said, “The house is a state of disrepair.” When the owners would not allow an extension for financing, we were relieved. And then panic set in. It was the beginning of October.
I immediately looked on the MLS listings, and noticed a listing that we thought had sold was back. We went to view it the next day, put an offer in, and had it accepted. The down side? It was in a town an hour away from where we work. However, if the choice was commute or risk being homeless, we would take the first option.
Did you miss me?
With all the hoops we had to jump through to secure the purchase, as well as the underlying worry about what if they don’t approve us, I had very little time for anything else. Yes, I KNOW. Focus on what you WANT, not what you don’t want. Believe me, I spent a LOT of time and effort changing up those thoughts.
We actually went from offer to close in about three weeks, which is remarkably quick, though it felt like forever at the time. Then the work REALLY started. We got possession at closing, because the house was (thankfully) vacant. And we had some work to do before we moved in.
First, we had to wash the walls in preparation for painting. Then painting. As an aside, I had no idea how ridiculously happy I would feel painting my home in colors I chose! We also had to make some changes in the main bathroom, which turned into a whole bathroom renovation.
All of the above was made more challenging by the hour commute – we couldn’t just pop by after work and put in an hour or two. It was a whole day adventure. There’s also almost no stores here, so if we forgot something, it would have to wait until the next trip.
Settling in
We got everything moved in November, in time for the US Thanksgiving. We didn’t have all the renovations complete, like we had hoped. And we still have a ton of boxes to unpack. We probably will for quite a while, honestly.
Part of that is because shortly after we moved in, the snow started. We have had a crazy amount of snow, almost daily for the last three weeks. It’s still coming down now. Hand in hand with the unusual amount of snow is power outages. I am extremely grateful we followed the advice to get a generator, and that we have wood stoves to keep us warm.
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, whichever one(s) you celebrate, and that the new year brings you an abundance of love and joy, peace and prosperity.
Blessings,
Mary