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Experienced Home Owner Here

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Edit This 0 Comments »
So now that we've been home-owners for almost a month, I can pass on my wisdom to those less wise than I.

- First, don't believe anything on HGTV. When they show their rennovations, they choose to show you the easy stuff. They don't show you all the work you have to do to get to the easy stuff. For example, they show people painting their walls. Well first, you have to wash the nicotine off the walls. Twice. Then you have to fill all the holes in the walls. Then you have to sand down all the bumps on the walls. Then you prime. In some cases twice (nicotine). Then you paint. A total of about two week's of work.

- Second, if you think you're the type for rennovations, maybe volunteer to help a friend or test it out before you buy a complete fixer upper. I've more or less enjoyed this process. Scottie on the other hand has not. He does not have rennovating in his blood. Which we had a sneaking suspision he wouldn't. We didn't realize however they he would hate it... Loathe it... Despise it.

- If you think something will take a week, it will probably take two.

- If you think something will cost $1,000, it will probably cost $2,000.

I love owning a home, really! I can't wait to actually live in it, though. I hope to live in it in two weeks. At least partially. I was so nieve at closing when I said I thought we'd be in the house in two weeks. Ohhhh the humor.

Anyhow at least now we are at the stage where we are done ripping stuff out. Now we're bringing the new stuff in.

Here are some pictures of day 1 for you to enjoy. I do apologize if smoke/nicotine starts fuming out of your computer screen.
Living Room. Great picture window. All the 70's fixtures have been taken out.
Dining Room Area. The top cabinets facing the dining room has been removed to open the space up more.
Master.
Closet in Master.
Second Bedroom.
Bathroom.
Tub. *Gags*Vanity.
Third Bedroom. Shelves are removed.
Third bedroom. Built in desk and shelves are removed.
Kitchen. Built in desk is removed.
Kitchen.
Let the work begin! Taking the cabinets out.
The nicotine drenched carpet being ripped out. It smelled pretty bad.

We Are Home-Owners!

Thursday, November 05, 2009 Edit This 1 Comment »
Who would have known owning a home was so sexy? Scottie and I have been proud owners for exactly one week. On October 29, Scottie and I closed on our first home.

The day we closed we went for one final walk through before the closing. The previous owner did a great job with cleaning - especially considering she was no spring chicken and it probably took a lot out of her to clean so much.

We went to closing not knowing what to expect. The closing went just how they show it on HGTV! Scottie and I bought some champagne and handed it out to everyone as all of the checks were distributed. What I found strange was the our Real Estate Agent and our Mortgage Broker both said they NEVER had champagne at a closing! OK so maybe HGTV does exagerate a bit on the closing process but I couldn't have imagined our closing without a little bubbly!

That night we had my parents and Scottie's mom over to pretty much rip EVERYTHING out. The previous owner was a smoker so we had to remove carpet, counters, the entire bathroom, amongst other things. She really hadn't done much to the house in about 25 years so there were old built in desks and super old light fixures that had to come out.

I will post "before" pictures soon. At this point we pretty much have a completely gutted house. This past week has been a ton of work but hopefully by next week we can start bringing new things in. Right now the two biggest projects include priming and painting all the walls, sanding down the bathroom walls since they were tiled and now the old ahesive is on the walls, and installing our new hard wood floors in the dining/living room. Yes, we are doing that all ourselves. Luckily we have so much support around us so we are getting tons of help.

During this past week, I have felt the following adjectives:

Happy, relieved, fortunate, complete, nervous, anxious, excited, exhausted, mad, annoyed, sad, patient, impatient, cold, hot, overwhelmed, confused, strong, weak, wet, smelly, bloody, bruised, defeated, empowered, did I mention exhausted?

But most importantly I have felt BLESSED to drive up to the house and call it OUR HOME.
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