Home Sweet Home

Wow, has it really been over a month since my last post?  I guess I didn't even realize it.  The last few weekends haven't been terribly exciting, mostly the typical cleaning and/or errand running.  The only news I have to share is that we've been house hunting, and we found one!  Long story short, we put an offer in on it, it was accepted, and we are under contract for it.  We're only one or two steps away from being homeowners to this lovely house:

Home Sweet Home!

The house hunting process was really interesting, to say the least.  Our first night out Matt and I went to four homes, with varying degrees of success.  The first home was "grandma's house," a 1970s home with wallpaper from top to bottom - even on all the closet doors!  Though the bones of it were good it was a little too outdated for my tastes.  The second was just squirmy... the neighborhood was not at all nice, and the house was rundown and dirty.  The third was a bit better, but the backyard was a deal breaker for me.  It was on an incredibly steep - practically vertical - hill, with weird partition-wall landscaping.  The fourth house was a bit further out than I was wanting to live.  But, it was in a really quiet and peaceful neighborhood.  When we arrived, we opened the front door and realized that its power was disconnected - and being late in the evening we could hardly see anything.  But Matt let out a little "Ooooo!" and ventured inside.

The living room, though modest in size, had vaulted ceilings and skylights, giving it a great, grand presence.  The vaults carried through into the dining room, which led right out into a fenced backyard.  The kitchen was somewhat small, but laid out nicely.  Upstairs had even more skylights, along with a bedroom that overlooked the nearby reservoir.  Because it was so dark we weren't able to go into the basement, so we reluctantly left the home.  We both knew it was something special, but we wanted to return later in the week to see it in the daylight.

Later that week I was joined by Angela on another day of house hunting.  Matt had to work, which was (and has been) incredibly frustrating.  We'd requested that he have Saturdays off for a month or two while we searched for a home, but of course Matt's work decided that was just asking too much, so he was only able to go house hunting with me twice.  Gotta love retail, how they just run their workers into the ground and crush their souls!!  That second day was mildly successful, with two hits and several SERIOUS misses.  The final house of the day, a little split-level home with an amazing kitchen, was the only home that really leapt out at me.

When Matt was finally able to go out with me again we went back to that first house and fell in love all over again.  This time we were able to see the whole house in the light.  We noticed it needed more work that we'd originally thought, but it all appeared to be cosmetic work.  The two rooms upstairs were painted in some atrocious, bright, neon colors, while the bathroom on the main level had silver swirls painted on the walls.  But we finally got to see the basement, and it was HUGE.  We both felt like it was the perfect home for us, so we decided to put an offer in on it.

While we were waiting to hear about that offer (it is a HUD property, so we had to wait a few days to hear back) we decided to view a few more homes.  We found another home that we fell head over heels for, so we put an offer in on that one too (what can I say?  We really want to get a house!).  When we did we found out the house had 6 other offers, after only been on the market for one day!  The seller picked a higher offer, which was fine, but we were more bummed about it than we expected.
A few days later we found out that our bid on the HUD house was rejected - but then again, so was every other bid.  So, we put in a second bid, raising our offer minimally.  With that process, you are basically shown how much you need to offer to "qualify" for purchase, so we offered the minimum plus about $500.  A few days later, pow!  Our bid was accepted and we started down the road toward buying the house.

So, now we're onto home inspection, which will happen next weekend.  After that we get to schedule closing, and then we're going to pay a big chunk of our savings toward a home I hope we'll live in for many years to come.  It's been nerve-wracking, exciting, terrifying, stressful, and wonderful all at the same time.  I guess there's a good reason for the lack of Pinterest posts and other such shenanigans!

In other news, Matt and I had a really lovely date day today.  We grabbed a quick lunch then visited what will be our new coffee shop if/when we move into our new home.  It was pretty good!  It'll be so amazing to live near a good, independent coffee shop again.  After a quick drive-by of our house (we can't get enough of it!) we went to a large antique mall in north Denver, where I dropped a chunk of change (which I'm still mildly regretting) on an antique butter churn by Red Wing Pottery.  Afterward we went to one of our favorite little local restaurants for dinner, then came home and watched the Avalanche beat the Canucks!  All in all, a lovely day indeed.  But now it's tomorrow, so I think I'd better get some rest!