Weekend Wrap Up

I got back from our honeymoon last Monday and I got to work on unpacking right away. My office/game room was full of my boxes that needed to be unpacked and sorted and I just couldn't stand it. 

I took the entire week off from work (I got 3 days bereavement for my sisters' death, and then I took an additional day off) and so I spent it unpacking, organizing, cleaning, and shopping. There were still many things that needed to be purchased for the house - including food. 

Thomas had Monday off (since we arrived in the morning) but he had to work the rest of the week so I had my mom help me. (What would I do without her?). When the weekend came, though, I told Thomas he needed to sort through his things. 

That was the difficult part. I guess I now understand what married couples always meant by nagging wives and men who sit around all day.  

Thomas had a dentist appointment on Saturday morning so I went over to my parents to finish packing some things and enjoy some time with my mommy and daddy. I had planned on going to the bank during the week to close my account since I opened one with Thomas at a different bank, but I hadn't gotten around to it so instead I went with my dad on Saturday to close my account and then to close my sisters' account. 

While I was at the bank I ran into an ex-boyfriends' mom. This guy had been the first guy I had actually thought could go long-term. I was with him when my aunt passed away and he was very kind to me. I run into his mom every now and then and she updates me on his life and I tell her about mine. He married the girl he met right after me and has a baby. 

I was happy I could show her my wedding rings :). 

Saturday night was interesting. I was finally able to wash my hair after the perm I got on Wednesday, and then... then I fucked it all up. You will want to come back tomorrow for that story and pictures. 

After my emergency trip to Super Cuts Thomas and I went to Target to pick up an entertainment center/TV stand. We had our living room TV placed on the wall on Thursday, but I wanted to have a stand placed under it so that we can put our DVR and other electronics as well as decorations. 

By the time we got home it was late and dark, so Sunday morning after breakfast we began to work on it.

It was a very complicated and long process but we were able to get it done! 

After we finally finished getting it done I did some wifey things like grocery shopping for the week. 

Thomas' parents invited us to dinner at their house Sunday night. Grilled steaks! Yum!

Hey! It's Okay.... Tuesday!

I really needed this Link-Up today!

Buying a house and getting married simultaneously is hard work and very stressful (among other things!). It started to catch up to me again on Monday, so telling myself it’s okay… really helps!  This is my first time participating! Yay!

Hey! It's okay... that I indulged this weekend and ate what I wanted! 

Hey! It's okay... that I got really upset at our realtor doing a craptastic job in communicating with us. She's working for us and she will be paid a lot of money!

Hey! It's okay... that Thomas and I went to a movie on Monday night! We saw Non-Stop which was pretty nice. It really had me guessing as to who the bad guys were! 

Hey! It's okay... that I feel sad about moving away from my mommy and daddy (even we are moving down the block!)

Hey! It's okay... to want our wedding to be a certain way and to be sad when things don't go my way. 

Hey! It's okay... that I want to buy a new french door refrigerator even though the condo we are buying has a side-by side one. It's not in great condition and it seemed to have missing shelves. 

(doesn't it look amazing??)

Hey! It's okay... that I can't think of anything else I'm okay with right now. 

Happy Tuesday! 

Pit & Peak!

This was quite the week! Unfortunately my post is a bit lopsided. 

PITS

• My best co-worker was not at work on Monday or Tuesday. Work is pretty boring without her. 

That's about it as far as pits go. I sat here for a few minutes trying to think of pits for the week but everything was pretty positive for the week. So let's get to the...

PEAKS

• Thomas and I got to go and see a condo that I thought I would like. 
• Thomas and I liked the condo and signed an offer for it right then and there and handed it over to the seller. 
• The seller, Thomas and I were able to come to an agreement and we entered into escrow on Thursday! 

(the fireplace in the condo)

• Today we complete our inspection and are now waiting for the official report. 
• My sister and her family came into town on Thursday night! I am very excited to have my nieces in town. They live in the Bay Area so I see them only a couple of times a year. 
• We celebrated a co-workers birthday on Thursday and had some Claim Jumper pie. Delicious!!

(my coworkers cubicle)

• On Friday morning I went to a special breakfast hosted by the American Red Cross. I'll go into detail about this in another post in a couple of weeks. 

So as you can see I had a lot of positive things going on this week. I'm very excited for this weekend with my girls and nephew and seeing what the next step is in buying our new home! 

House Hunting: It Sucks!

I knew that buying a home was not going to be an easy thing to do. There are so many aspects to it and so many ups and downs that it had to be a trying process. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be, though.  

I had been telling Thomas that he or we should buy something for over a year. The market was right in 2013 with homes available and price pretty low. However Thomas wasn’t ready and honestly it wasn’t a good idea to buy a home together without at least being engaged. Unfortunately now that we are engaged and ready to buy together home prices have risen quite a bit and interest rates are also on their way up.  Nevertheless we need a place to live and I really don’t want to rent.

Thomas grew up in a regular single-family home while I grew up in apartments and townhomes. When we talked about where we would like to live once we moved in together Thomas had indicated to me that he wanted to live in a house. This was fine with me. When I picture raising a family I see my children in a backyard with a place to play. This is not something that is easy to do in a condo or townhome. Although I did grow up in a townhome it was located across the street from a park and it was during a time where I could go out and run around and my parents didn’t worry. That isn’t something that can be done today. No matter my opinion on that we have decided that for now we have to settle for living deeply within our means so that we can save money and buy a house later on.

I have to say that I was disappointed in having to pull out of the home we wanted to buy originally. It had everything I had wanted in a home to raise a family. Some things just aren’t meant to be and when one door closes another one opens, right? In my last post about the housing situation I mentioned that we had been looking at 2 condos. Shortly after putting our offer in for the one we preferred we were informed that it had been sold to an all-cash buyer. There wasn’t much we can do to compete with that.  I hope we don’t keep running into these types of buyers, if we do we will be doomed.

The same day that we put in the offer with the condo a townhouse came onto the market. While it appealed to me initially, I was happy with the condo we were trying to buy so I disregarded it. When the condo went off the market I e-mailed my realtor and asked for a showing to the townhouse.  I had written a whole description of the townhouse really thinking we would get it, however before I was able to post this, they informed us that they sold it to someone else. I am very disappointed.

Since we are now searching for a 4^th home to purchase my hopes are very low. I have gone over and over the homes available in the area we want to live in for the price we want to pay and there are very few options. The homes that do go on the market are quickly sold – and not to us. Right now there is 1 condo left that fits our criteria (in a good neighborhood, over 1,000 sq ft, 2 bedrooms and 2 baths – with hopefully a garage and windows that don’t face other windows).

We will be looking at the condo Monday during our lunch hour. This home is not listed on the MLS yet and they are not showing it to others. I think they will officially list it in April because there are tenants in the condo until 3/31/14. However we are being allowed to look at it because the listing agent feels bad for our situation. The listing agent is the same as the other condo in the same complex that we had put on offer in last week. I guess having someone feel sorry for you is a good thing. The bottom line on this is that if we like it we can get it. No one else has access to it for now.

The condo has pros and cons before even seeing it in person. The pros include it being down the block from my parents’ house. This will be very useful when we (read: I) have to drop off our future children with my parents when I go to work. It is also large, with 1,310 square feet.  It has the 2 bedrooms and 2 baths that we want as well.  The cons right now include that it does not have a garage and there is no window over the kitchen sink – 2 things I wanted to have, but that I can live without. Another con that might or might not be true is that it is only accessible by an outdoor stair case. Although we are a young couple, I have nerve damage in my ribs that does not allow me to carry heavy things, especially up and down stairs. I am not completely sure if this location has that issue or not. It might be accessible by elevator only which would be fine. Finally, another con is tandem parking. This is an issue because our schedule’s are different. One of us will either have to move the others car every day to get in and out of the parking garage or the other will have to come down to move our vehicle. This is not very convenient, but something we can work around (especially if there are guest parking spots we can use).

While I am hopeful for this location I am very hesitant to get excited about it or to even think that I will like it. I am going in without the best feelings. Maybe that’s a good sign. Either way, wish us luck to find a location to move into before we get married!

House Hunting

One of the reasons that money was (is) something that has stressed me out when it came to the wedding is that Thomas and I need somewhere to live. Currently we both live with our parents so we will be starting fresh. We have plenty in our savings and make enough together to afford to buy a place to live. Unless we spend our savings in a wedding. Luckily Thomas did not want something huge and our parents have helped us out enough that we will be able to stick to a $5k budget.

We began looking at houses to buy in January and we started out rough. While Thomas’ main concern is how much we spend on a home, I am more concerned with what it looks like, how many rooms it has, where it is, if it has a back yard, etc. Unfortunately the budge that Thomas had in mind does not match my requirements – mainly the location need. There are homes in the budget (about $350-$400K) but they are in areas that I do not want to live in. Ideally I (we) want to stay near our parents and our work.  The homes in the budget that was set are located much further from where we live currently and our jobs (which are near each other).  

We found a place at the end of January that I really liked. It had 3 bedrooms that were decently sized, it had a backyard without a pool, it had a fireplace… it was just exactly what I wanted. But it was over our budget by nearly $25k. We put in an offer at $410 and settled at $416k. Thomas was very stressed because of this. While we could afford it, the down payment would use up most of our savings and we wouldn’t have too much left over to save on a monthly basis. We were set to go for it anyway, though. However the inspection report found many things that needed to be fixed – including a couple of big things. While the sellers did inquire about quotes for fixing one of the items, Thomas and I decided that it was too much for too high a price. We backed out after investing $400 for the inspection.

After pulling out of that deal things got hard between Thomas and I. We argued over what type of home we should look into and what budget we should stay within. We blamed each other for not understanding us. After a week of going back and forth we sat down and worked things out for the most part, although it is a work in progress. A lot of compromising had to be done when it came to looking for a place to live.

We have decided that since there are no homes in the price range we are comfortable with we going to look into condos or townhouses instead and lower our budget. We are lowering the budget because we don’t want to spend as much on a condo as we would want to spend on a house. Finding a condo or townhouse has also been difficult. In looking into these type of homes we have to consider the HOA fees that we would need to pay on top of our mortgage payment.

We had the same trouble as we did with homes – some were in the price range but did not meet my expectations or needs, others met my needs but were more than what we want to spend. In having to live in a condo/townhouse my requirements included having laundry in the home and ideally for there to be an enclosed garage for storage. While the former is mostly available in everything we’ve been finding, the latter is not. There are townhouses that have garages but they are a bit above our price range. Compromise!

We spent a weekend going out and looking at basically every condo and townhome that fit both our requirements. We settled on 2 that we liked. One was gorgeous on the inside with updated everything. It looked like the realtor had staged the home it was so nice. The downside to this home included the location and that the windows faced other windows. The other location we found is in a better neighborhood (that by name only will sell more easily than the first) but isn’t as nice out of the box. The owners have been at this location for 20+ years and while it has been kept in good condition it isn’t as pretty walking in. It has some things that made it my preference. These include the location, that the front windows look over the pool and the back windows face a courtyard and not other windows. It is also about 200 sq ft bigger than the first. It has a few draw backs which are all fixable: kitchen isn’t updated and it has to be repainted immediately (the man smokes so the house smells, but a little paint and airing out should take care of that). Eventually we would want the windows updated to be double-paned so that we can save on our AC bill.

Before we could get a hold of the realtor we had switched to the 1^st home I mentioned went to “pending” status (meaning that the sellers have accepted an offer and the house is going into escrow). The 2^nd home is still on the market and we are trying to put into an offer for that one. The price is slightly high but still within our budget and the HOA fees are the same budget wise. I’m hopeful that this condo will be the one we buy. While it does not have a garage it is very spacious and I could see us living there comfortably and starting a family (although our hope is to buy a home in 4-6 years to raise our children).