House Hunting

Well after looking for what has seemed like FOREVER, we signed a contract this weekend on a house Northwest of Winfield! It's a five bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home on 8.5 acres. The house is listed as having about 3700 square feet. So we are finally going to have PLENTY of room!

There are two guest bedrooms upstairs and three downstairs. We have a huge laundry room upstairs that has a bathroom and sink in the laundry room. There is a living area upstairs and two seperate living areas downstairs in the lower level underground. The master bedroom and two kids' bedrooms are also downstairs along with another bath.

Our tentative closing date is October 9th though we still are waiting on the appraisal which could be an issue. The bank says that if they can't find a comp to compare the house to, then the appraiser may not be able to complete his appraisal and then that might cause the mortgage to fall through. So we are waiting to see that the appraisal goes through well. Otherwise if all goes smoothly, we could be moving in immediately after we close.

Right now our minds are running about a mile a minute and luckily other than a little paint (mainly because one bedroom is pink and there are a couple colors that I don't like) there is nothing that needs to be done to the house!

So we are pretty darned excited in case you couldn't tell!

The listing photos were really poor but Andy snapped some photos on his cell when we were there Saturday. They are not great but you get a better idea at least of what the house looks like.

Not Even Friday the 13th Could Get Us Down

Our weekend was good but was way to short as always. We looked at three houses Friday night and two were a disaster. There is just not much on the market in the way of rural properties. But we did see a place that we are very interested in. We still have some discussions to have with the bank and want to have it inspected and to do some more looking at it. There is no denying that it is a wonderful buy.

We could get this home and acreage for much less than it't worth and the selling price would be below what we set as our upper limit. But there is always the chance that the taxes and the insurance would make this home be a little out of our range once they were added onto the montly payment. Unfortunately the taxes are high. The location and square footage took care of that. So we will see. I think this is one of those "this is the one" properties.

I have done nothing but daydream about all the possibilities with that home. And so has Andy. This is the first property that we have both even been close to agreeing on and we were in complete agreement. It's so fun to think about the colors of paint I would choose and flooring and all the fun stuff about having a house that needs work. You get to choose what you want. Right now fantasizing about more bedrooms is pretty cool too!



The boys went to their Grandparents in Freedom yesterday (Andy's parents). They've never been gone like this before and I am not dealing with it really well. Last night was pretty tough. Today I got excited about hearing their voices after they got home from school and then realized that I was not going to see them after school like normal. But I am looking forward to Mama and Daddy time and that's good. We need a little time to ourselves.

Tommorow night I'm having dinner with friends at Nieves' in Winfield and then not sure what else is in store for the week.

Life is good right now though. I'm really excited and hopeful and truly feel like we are really starting to get to the good stuff!

Excited

It's snowing and even though it's not sticking, I'm excited because I love snow. And there's no soccer practice tonight and that is SOOOOO cool. I've been daydreaming about houses all day. Thinking about what I would do with a fixer-upper. We have found a house that is probably not something that we would be interested in. We haven't looked at it though. It's probably going to sell for about half what it's worth because of the economy and because it has not been taken care of. So it needs some TLC. And that might not be the kind of project that my husband is up for. I would love it though. So even though it probably won't happen for us, it's nice to dream about a house with 5 bedrooms and a full basement and tons of storage and room for each child to have their own room and a room for guests and a room for another child and a toy room and a den and blah blah blah. I can't imagine how much easier housework would be if we have more room to spread out things a bit. And am dreaming of my own room just for dressing and storing my jewelry, clothes and shoes. OK, now I'm really fantasizing. But it's kind of fun.

Sometimes dreaming is pretty fun, even when you know it probably won't come true. But then again, sometimes life has a funny way of surprising us...

4 bedroom, 3 bath rural home with basement dirt cheap...

House hunting sucks!

I am getting really sick of this and we are no where near finding what we want. I was so excited yesterday because I thought we finally found something that I would really say yes to. This house was really exactly where Andy wants to be and was fine with me too. The price was within our range and was on 10 acres which would give us some breathing room. We called the realtor to set up a time to see it Wednesday but decided to drive by and look last night. Well the house seems nice on the outside. The barn is great. It has a Morton shop and some other outbuildings, pine trees in the yard, nice huge yard etc. But there is a house next door that is close enough to throw a rock at. So here we find a house that could be "the one" and we have a neighbor immediately next door. And that is so not really what we want. And there is only one bathroom. Of course we could add on, but this house is priced in a range that we should not have to add on to have what we need.

So I told Andy last night that we really need to make a list of the things that are a "must have". And then we need to make a list of deal breakers and a list of things we would like to have but are not deal breakers if they aren't there. My husband thinks I am such a nerd. He makes fun of my lists. I am so analytical. He's the complete opposite. So we didn't make a list. So I'll just make a list myself.

I keep telling myself that if we keep looking we will find something that we wouldn't feel like we were settling for. Is it really that hard to find a 4 bedroom, 2 (preferrably) 3 bath home with a basement on at least 10 acres with no in your face next door neighbor?

If we don't find a bigger house there will be no baby.