WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOUSE!!

Soooo excited. My vlog on how we got it.

Our First Home?

We took a second look at the house last night. We brought my mom the first time a few weeks ago when we found this among six we were viewing that evening. This time we brought my in-laws who just returned from vacation. They liked it, too. They agreed that it seems like this was a solid, well-built and well-cared for home. We met the owners for the second time as well. They've lived there for over 40 years and now wish to permanently retire to their second home in Florida. The husband is a retired firemen, which further boosted our hopes that this is a well-constructed, well-wired, safe home

We like its character, too. Since it was built in 1930, it has lots of charm with old wood and leaded glass windows. There will have to be several cosmetic updates including the destruction of outdated wallpaper and carpet. These will be fun (hopefully) weekend projects in the future. I wish the kitchen was a little bigger, but it's definitely 'doable, and better than my 5x5 'kitchen closet' I cook in now at the apartment.

Our realtor is taking her kid to college this week, so we're meeting next week to write an offer. I'm getting pretty excited, and have alredy began my 'mental move-in.'

Our House Hunt

We may have finally found our future home! The search was not without frustration, and to my surprise was not as an enjoyable experience as I hoped it would be. We got so tired of looking at 'dumps' in our price range and beautiful places that were either beyond our budget or a reasonable commute to my husband's job. It was stressing me out BIG TIME - worrying that we won't find something in time to take advantage of the US Stimulus' 1st time home-buyers offer - 8k if you close on a house by Nov 25. It would be silly for us to pass this up.

However, we may have found one. It's a 1930 all-brick colonial that's close to my husband's job, and it even has a separate workshop. This was a 'must have' on our list, as my husband is a machinist and can't wait to finally use the machines he got from an old job that closed and are stored in his parent's basement. This limited our search somewhat, of course. There weren't too many homes with a separate building for a workshop in our budget.

So, we're thinking that this house may be ours. My husband got that 'feeling' as soon as he walked in. I definitely got the best feeling in that house, but I was hoping for a slightly larger kitchen. However, I still have not found anything better after almost a week of additional searching.

We're scheduled to go looking again on Wednesday. If we can't find anything by then to look at then we're going to put in an offer for the colonial - which fits everything on our checklist and happens to be our ideal price.