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.
This area on both sides of the fence used to have huge clumps of old leaves and mulch. It looks so much better now that it is all cleaned, I am so excited!
The awning area, again completely cleaned up. Prior to this you could not see the ground at all.
The garage door view. We kept the original garage door color. We are going to wait to see how the main color paint comes on and hope to find a nice compliment color for it.
The next pictures give you an idea of what the garage color USED to be. This is the door to the small patio that is attached to the garage.
This is a window frame right before it was primed.
More of the old color.
Close up of the old color. As you can see in this picture, there was practically NO chipping anywhere. Big bummer. But, the color is pretty retro so I suppose we eventually would have changed the color. Probably not the first project we would have chosen, though.
I love this mirror. Eery! The pumpkins are white and were spray-painted silver. I love that look. I also love the orange old-fashioned candies.
The Garage. Note that the yard is totally fenced in for Baxter. He is so excited to have his own yard!
The Living Room. The window fixtures will be goners. We will also have to replace the carpet since she was a smoker.
The basement. Needs tons of work. We will hold off on any basement renovations probably for two years or so. It needs a little cleaning. It reminds me of my grandpa and grandma's house on Van Buren which brings back great memories.
The bar will be great once it is all done up.
