Our Little Project

As you know from Facebook, we bought a house.  It is a long and sordid tale but I'll give you the quick overview.  Last year over Thanksgiving vacation we decided that we wanted to buy a house.  We promptly called a realtor and started looking at our options.  We were excited because it seemed like there were a fair amount of houses in our price range which was very low.  From December to mid-March we only went inside 3 houses.  No joke.  Our realtor was very good about only looking at houses in a pre-stated budget and he also was very kind to tell us about all the houses we did not want.  The other problem we would run into was the fact that there is a shortage of houses on the market under $250,000.  A house in good condition and in a nice neighborhood in that price range will sell in less than 90 days and probably in just a matter of weeks or even days.  We would excitedly call our realtor and told him about a house we'd seen on the internet.  We learned to expect a phone call the day of our showing to let us know that there had already been a good offer made or the house was even under contract.  About a week before Easter, our realtor told us about a largish house in our price range that was in a desirable neighborhood.  All the other houses in the neighborhood looked great.  However, the house we were supposed to look at was at the bottom of the hill and flooded and it smelled musty and needed a lot of work.  We didn't even look at the whole house.  As we prepared to leave, the realtor told us about one more possibility.  He said that it was vacant so we could go look at it tonight.  We were hesitant but decided to give it a try since we were out anyways.
We really liked it.  Sure the living room walls were a bile yellow and it needed a new water heater but it was definitely the best house we'd looked and it was definitely in our price range.  The house was selling kind of like a silent auction.  Only owner-occupants (no investors) could make bids for the first 30 days and after the time was up then whoever made the highest bid would get the house.  This made the bidding process tricky.  We wanted to bid high enough to get the house but we also didn't want bid more than it was worth.  We actually ended up bidding over the asking price but it was still within our budget and we decided that even if we had to sell it as is, we could probably make a profit.  We made the offer on a Saturday and by Monday we heard that the offer was accepted.  This is where it starts to get tricky.  If you want to buy a house without complications or headaches, I suggest not buying a foreclosed home and not getting a loan.  They sent back our paperwork and asked us to resign it because Aaron forgot to put in his middle initial.  Seriously.  We actually had just about given up and decided to buy the house we are currently living in but then we remembered that we had signed a paper giving the government the option to sue us if we backed out of the contract.  Oops.
After two months of waiting, the closing day finally came.  There was a kerfuffle with the company in charge of selling the house for the government which included them asking our realtor to forge our signature, pay a fine because they failed to look at our closing info in a timely manner, and us having to take a lunch break in the middle of the closing while we waited for the right papers to arrive.  Fortunately, we didn't end up having to pay any extra stupid fees and our realtor was honest enough not to sign anything in our name.  Two months after the original bid, the house was finally ours!
It needs a lot of work but here is a before and during picture to give you an idea of some of the stuff we've been up to.

Knocking out the wall has made a huge difference!  Now we just have to paint the cabinets, install a new fan/light fixture in the living room, smooth over and paint the ceiling, install new flooring and paint the walls and then we can fix up the rest of the house and move in.  

We've only had the keys for a little over a week and we've already knocked out the wall, disinfected the bathroom and kitchen, started the ceiling process, rid the house of hundreds of cobwebs, nearly painted all of the office including the ceiling walls and trim, and planted a small garden.