The only thing more lengthy and arduous that I’ve experienced has to be pregnancy.
This might be because we actually bought a “short sale”… I guess. It’s been unclear. And the things that you might expect to cause us problems in buying a short sale were, in fact, the simplest of all things to deal with!
We put in our offer in January after house hunting for about 5 months (which was preceded by about 7 years of looking online). The house was in a great price range for the size and area, as we’ve seen many seemingly inflated prices go on the market recently, and the whole fear of another housing crash just kept us on the safe side as far as how much we felt comfortable spending.
It was/is sort of a fixer upper. It was once a nice house, maybe not even that long ago, that “let itself go” and by that I mean nobody really seemed to bother to fix anything (or mop the floors) for years.
Most everyone’s reaction looks something like this…”it’s a big project.”
Thanks. We get it.
We could see past the carpet that smelled like cats and the torn up wood floors… oh and the sinking rotten floors around the kitchen sink and dishwasher.
THAT is a real problem.
But, after months of waiting on the seller to get their ducks in a row, we finally closed in May with little assurance or hope that it would actually, really, truly, close and be ours until we literally had the keys in our hands.
Somehow, this was convenient mentally in a way. We never had ANY freak outs about buying a house. No remorse. Nothing. It never even felt like anything was really happening until it was done. Eric and I signed our paperwork in a wood paneled office straight out of the 60’s and just kind of shrugged our shoulders. Is it really happening now? Not sure.
Since our plans were up in the air for so long, we had about 4 days to move out of our rental and into the new place… which also needed a long list of work just to make it liveable.
With our family’s help, half the group set to painting the new houses interior walls. Eric ripped out the carpets (which technically was a part of our purchase contract.. but in this process I learned that nothing is guaranteed when you’re buying a home AND that people just don’t really care that much *jaded*). Half the group helped with moving. And I tried not to go totally insane being 30 weeks pregnant and basically handling a toddler on my own for a week+ while everyone else worked.
Currently, we live in 2 rooms of the house, plus a bathroom and a kitchen that still has issues (and if I wasn’t pregnant, I might take a sledge hammer to for stress relief). Eric is in the midst of a DIY project: refinishing the living/dining rooms wood flooring… a lengthy process full of noisy sanders and smelly things… dragged on as we also try to have some normalcy for the sake of our child and our business.
*Fingers crossed* floors are done this week! Finish up the painting and then we have new carpet on order to be installed in about 2 weeks… then the kitchen it next on our hit list.
You might think that it’s the pregnancy hormones that make me a lunatic when it comes to getting settled in somewhere with spectacular speed, but then you might not know me at all. Any time I’ve moved in the past, I essentially lock myself inside until everything is in a place. Art hung. Books on shelves. Clothes neatly arranged in closets. A stocked kitchen. It is the only way I can feel non-frantic.
So, yes, this time is incredibly challenging. The battle between getting things done and “please someone just take my tantrum-having, clingy child for 30 minutes so I can mindlessly scroll Instagram” because I am not getting anything done myself really…. Eric is the super hero of all things house, home and making sure us ladies are fed.
More updates (and photos) to come.
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