March 26, 2010 in
home buying with
or when this:
turns into this:
We moved. And yes, it was entirely as hellish as one could imagine. No matter how organized you think you are, moving out of a place after 8 years will throw your world into total chaos. And it did.
BUT, we have some amazing friends and family and without them the day would have been 10,000 times worse. So super big thanks go out to Eric’s parents, Sue, Tim and Lauren. They worked tirelessly for 6 hours to help us pack and lug all our junk down 3 flights of stairs. Andrea, John and Tyler helped us unload on the other end. And the superstar of the day was Bob. He drove the insanely huge truck that thankfully grew 8 feet from the time of the reservation through Manhattan and got our goods safely to our new door.
** mini shout-out to Weetzie who decided to add peeing to her car ride repertoire of pooping. she’s a peach!
March 19, 2010 in
decor with
OK. We haven’t even moved in yet, but I’ve decided we need this.
So pretty and yellow and on sale! It’s a little bit crafty and a little bit modern. Something worth decorating around I think.
March 18, 2010 in
home buying with
So it actually happened. We bought a house. Lil’ ol’ us. Can you believe it? I certainly can’t and that’s probably why, 3 days away from the big move, my mood has been jumping from sheer excitement to sheer terror. Deep breaths.
The closing was pretty uneventful. Except for a little “bank’s not ready” scare, we closed on time. I didn’t know what I expected a closing to be but what it is is approximately 30 minutes of signing your name and then you hemorrhage money. Fun right?
Even more fun, packing. Yup, that is what we do. We pack and we tape and we purge and we pack. Mr. Eric lifts, I take anti-inflammatories. And because packing is time consuming and tiring we decided no cooking this week. Instead we’ve embarked on one last delivery tour of Greenpoint / Williamsburg! (Maybe embarked it not the right word since we aren’t leaving the house. Whatevs. Details, details.) We’ve covered pizza, Thai, then pizza again. We’ll round out the week with some Vegan sandwiches and possibly some Chinese food. We shall hug all our delivery men goodbye and then we will tend to our heartburn.
The point is, we are home owners! Yippee…Holy Crap…Yippee…Holy Crap!
January 31, 2010 in
home buying with
Let me tell you, kind readers, a funny little thing about home buying. It’s a colossal pain the bum.
Exhibit A:
Well, isn’t that house cute? Dreamy even. The truth? That house fills me with more rage than Tom Hanks. It was supposed to be ours and it’s not. However, it taught us a valuable lesson: Don’t start mentally decorating until you have the keys in your hands, you will be sorely disappointed. We were.
“What happened?” you ask. Funny thing about home buying, you can offer whatever you want for a house. Chances are the sellers will be greedy bastards and not think it’s enough. None of that matters. What matters is what the bank thinks it’s worth. In this case two, count them two, banks appraised this house at roughly $65k-$120k less than what we offered. When that happens, even when you are putting down 20%, the banks will rip that mortgage right out from under you. The best part of this story is that after our deal fell through the sellers went and put this house on the market for $50k more than it was originally listed as and wound up with buyers paying $15k more than what we offered.
Sigh. We can only tell ourselves it was meant to be. Had we gotten this house we would have been packing our apartment right around the time complete wedding madness took over and I’m not sure either one of us would have survived that. So it’s all good. We’ve since moved on and from that house we learned something very important about home buying; If you cry really weepy tears when you find out your offer was accepted that is not a good sign. Either you are not ready to leave your current home, or it’s an omen of bad things to come, or both.
And so now we know that things could change at any moment. Notice I haven’t said much about the house we are currently in the process of purchasing yet? We’re being cautious. That’s because I don’t want to jinx it, it could very possibly fall through and that is why this blog could stop as abruptly as it started. Positive thoughts. Positive thoughts.
January 22, 2010 in
home buying with
This all started back in the year 2009 (remember that one?) It was May, Mr. Eric and I were happily engaged and we were planning a “craft your pants off” wedding. For some reason, amidst all that craziness we decided it might be a good time to buy a house too. That tax credit was calling our name and our overfilled closets were begging for mercy. Nine months later, here we are, married and about to ditch our Brooklyn lives for greener pastures. Let’s hope it doesn’t kill us.
I’m writing this because we’ve learned a lot along the way and we’ve got a whole lot more learning to go. Plus if this all pans out, there is going to be lots of DIY madness and crafty goodness to share. It might be fun to document the bumpy road ahead and maybe even help some other young folks contemplating ditching city life for a quieter existence. Or it will scare the crap out of them. We shall see.
