Two Weeks In September 4, 2009

Still no pictures, although I swear this weekend I WILL BRING OVER A CAMERA.

Major accomplishments:
1) Plumbing…DONE!
2) Carpet…ORDERED!
3) Sewing room…PAINTED!
4) Carpet in bedroom…REMOVED!

Okay, so we’ve had some setbacks too…like how we can’t use the bathtub unless we entirely replace it (meaning redoing the upstairs bathroom) and how the hardwood floors aren’t really that nice and we’re going to need to do some significant refinishing work. But those are just minor setbacks.

This weekend’s the major push to get some big projects out of the way so we can actually move in. That includes tiling the shower, doing a lot of outside work (gutters, lawn clearing). Luckily it’s labor day and the hardware stores are all having major sales. Really excited about what we have going on, though!

one week in August 27, 2009

Okay, so after one week, here are my thoughts on being a home owner.

1. who knew gorilla glue expanded to three times its size (okay, it says so on the bottle, but whoa) – use strong clamps
2. fixing the plumbing on an old house sucks. it sucks more when they cut a big gaping hole in your dining room wall.
3. the more expensive the piece of ikea furniture, the more parts you have to assemble, and the more tools they require. and you’ll still end up putting a piece on backwards and having to take the whole thing apart before your through.
4. you can have too many allen wrenches (is it allen or alan? or maybe neither…you can tell i know next to nothing about tools), but you can never have too many screwdrivers
5. don’t call your grandfather and tell him about how you can’t figure out how to turn the light off in the basement, even when you switch off all of the breakers. apparently unscrewing the bulb is not the solution.
6. plan to spend at least $200 every time you walk into home depot even if you were just coming for a $2 paintbrush
7. don’t pull up the carpet. there’s a reason they covered up the hardwood floors in the first place.
8. the plastic stuff that comes attached to metal weatherstripping won’t stay connected to the metal. buy glue. and while i’m on the subject of weatherstripping, when you put  on the foam stuff, don’t stretch it to make it last longer. it shrinks back and then you’re left with too-short weatherstripping.
9. it’s not always good to be an intuitive person. it makes your husband frustrated  when you say, “just do it this way because i know it’s right.” especially when you don’t know the words for anything you’re trying to say and are referring to the tool in question by “thingy”, “it”, “gizmo” or any similar nondescript tool term.
10. houses are expensive and leave you poor, but at least when you’re standing on a ladder in the middle of the family room changing the lightbulbs to compact flourescent, you can say to yourself, “hey, i own this light fixture. it’s mine.”

hopefully some pics of something sometime soon. wish i’d taken before shots of the kitchen, like the dead bugs in the fridge or the nasty dirty oven.

We closed! August 23, 2009

On Friday afternoon, at around 4:30, we officially became landed gentry. I’m now eligible to vote in elections and Rachel is now eligble to rear children and oversee the house affairs…hmm…wait, that’s not how it works anymore, is it?

In any event, Friday was eventually fun, although it took a little bit of doing before we actually got to close. We met our agents at 10:30 as planned. When Nancy came out to get us, she mentioned that The Closer (and yes, she actually called the settlement agent from the title company “the closer”) was running late.

In the meantime, we went to hang out in a meeting room, expecting to be landed gentry by lunch. We were wrong (cue thunder and lightening).

On Thursday night, during the final walkthrough (or, in my case, the 2nd time I’d even seen the house), we reviewed the settlement sheet (commonly called the HUD) from Brennan Title with Nancy and Tom. Strangely, the downpayment listed on the sheet was approximately $3,000 more than we were expecting. Rachel and I weren’t happy campers because we really didn’t have just a spare $3,000 to throw around. Nancy and Tom, though, assured us they’d have it straightened out by close on Friday morning.

Fast forward to Friday morning: we’re waiting in the room and Nancy gets the revised HUD. The amount went up instead of down! She was really pissed. I was really pissed. Rachel was really pissed. Tom, for some reason, was wearing plaid pants and kinda amused because he was hoping to see Nancy go ballastic. She calmly called up Lynn, who seemed to be what amounted to an intern at Brennan Title. At that point, Nancy learned that Brennan hadn’t sent The Closer because we hadn’t yet finalized the HUD. We literally saw Nancy calmly put Lynn the Intern on hold, walk out of the room, presumably go scream in a soundproof padded room, walk back into the room and say “OK.”

So, at that point, Nancy and Tom asked if we could meet back over there later. We went to have lunch, and, since they had already given us the key, went to the almost-ours house.

Rachel bilged out the nasty fridge which had about 38 million dead bugs. I carried a bunch of boxes from the car to the house. We had celebratory pizza. It was fun. We ended up meeting Nancy, Tom and The Closer at 3:30, at which point we both signed approximately 24,000 papers and then, presto, the house was ours!

Don’t worry, the thrills don’t stop there. Next post is all about the exciting world of weather stripping a door. Stayed tuned!

Our House August 14, 2009

Closing has been moved up to accommodate our realtors (hereby the Bobbseys). So, now we have a week until closing! August 21! Then we become members of the landed gentry.

Our new house in Hyattsville.

Here’s a pic of the house, from its MLS listing. I realize when I took pictures of the house during the inspection I didn’t take any that I’d want to post online. Instead I took pictures of all of the problem spots and things that were wrong. Oh well.

Anywho, we’re making our way through this nasty house buying process. I just transferred an incredibly large sum of money from our savings account into checking. It’s going to be terrifying being paupers again after having a bunch in savings, but it’s worth it. We’re landed gentry now, right?

It’s happening August 7, 2009

Crazy, but true, Doug and I are joining the landed gentry, moving into our own episode of “This Old House” by buying a 1927 Colonial in downtown Hyattsville, Maryland.

Let me restate…the City of Hyattsville, not unincorporated super-sketchy, might-as-well-be-Langley-Park, police-and-crime-tape-reporter Hyattsville. We promise. And we’re super excited.

So, this blog is going to be my attempt to document the wonders of the home renovation process as one first-time-homebuyer couple attempts to singlehandedly fix the mortgage crisis. Yeah, the house is a foreclosure. Super duper fun time.

Closing is August 25. Until then, prepare to hear about the hellishness that is the home buying process.