Dolphin’s Dock

Since last time I updated you on the house, our closing date got moved AGAIN, but this time it got moved in the right direction (earlier). We’re now closing on Friday! It’s hard to believe that by the end of the week, we will be homeowners. I’m excited and nervous, but mostly I just want it to be over so we can get settled into our new home; and, just as importantly, out of our old place. Especially since our old place is pretty much packed up at this point.

Just about everything is completely packed up. We have even broken down the bed and are sleeping on a mattress on the floor (more on that in a minute). All the clothes hanging in the closet are packed except for only what I’ll be wearing this week (clothes in the dressers stay where the are because what are dresser drawers if not just a stack of boxes to begin with. What remains to be packed are the dishes, the television and entertainment stuff (NetFlix box and DVD player), my computer, and the larger paintings on the wall (they are safer left hung up until there’s a place to put them on the truck). We dropped off about five bags to GoodWill and have a couple of boxes of old books to take to the local bookstore.

We still have to toss out the cat trees. We will be replacing them, but these ones are old and tattered. We were supposed to toss them last move, but I argued that we should bring them so the cats would have something with their scent on it to ease the transition and then once they were settled we could get rid of them (the trees, not the cats). Over a year later and we still have them, so I guess that argument isn’t going to work this time around. We also probably need to toss the bed.

The bed we’ve slept in as long as we lived together has been the daybed I had growing up. It’s a single with a trundle unit which we had popped up and pushed together forming a king-sized bed. Between the gap between the two beds and the sheer age of the bed, even the two layers foam we had piled on top did little to make it all that comfortable. But a new bed isn’t in the budget. It was also a concern to my parents though (what is that bed doing to our backs), and they have offered to buy us a new bed as a housewarming gift. Meanwhile TheBoyfriend™’s mom was getting rid of a queen size mattress that was not in great shape but tolerable for a guest bed. So we broke down our current bed last week and put that mattress directly on the floor. It was only after we broke down the old bed that we realized that the “queen” was actually a full. Nonetheless, that’s what we’re now sleeping on on the floor and will be after we move until the new bed comes in.

What had to be in the budget was a new fridge. There is no fridge currently in the new house. So we went to BestBuy last weekend just to look around, since it happened to be a tax-free weekend. We wanted brushed stainless, side-by-side or french door style (though I figured french doors were outside of our budget) and under $1,000. We found a Frigidaire that we liked pretty well for $899. But one of our fraternity brothers is the supervisor of the appliance section at the local BestBuy. He happened to be working that night and saw us and of course came over to say hi. When we told him we were interested in that fridge, he commented that they just got a brand new Whirlpool in that hadn’t been put on display yet that we might be interested in instead. He told us that they get alot more service calls about Frigidaires than Whirlpools (I’m not knocking Frigidaires, never owned one, just repeating what I was told). So after he brought the fridge out from the back so we could get a look at it, we decided we’d go with the Whirlpool. Some how, he was able to offer us the Whirlpool, priced at $939 for the $899 of the Frigidaire. Combine that with tax-free weekend and free shipping and we purchased our beautiful new fridge for only $900.00 even. It will be delivered on not this Friday (which is closing) but the next one. So for the first week, we’ll be getting by with my old college dorm fridge. Fortunately, we don’t have to be out of the current place until the 31st so we can leave or frozen stuff there in the meantime since the freezer in the college fridge is of course tiny as can be.

All in all, it’s very exciting and I just can’t wait to be moved in. I took Friday and Monday off of work. Friday to close and Monday to continue to unpack and hopefully take some time to just breathe. Electric and water is scheduled to switch over on Friday. I need to call on gas because they didn’t have an online form to start new service, but the only thing gas powered in the house right now is the furnace which we won’t need right away (in August) so I’m not super concerned about it. Internet is scheduled to be turned on Saturday (Monday at the latest). I’m counting down the days…

It’s finally August, the month when TheBoyfriend™ and I will become homeowners. In fact, I made the last rent payment we will ever have to pay (knock on wood) today at lunch. Still, there’s been a few more disappointments as we inch closer.

You may remember that our closing date was originally supposed to be this Friday, but got pushed back to the 22nd. We found out today that because the 22nd is a Saturday, we won’t actually be able to close until the following Monday (the 24th). Which is a bit obnoxious to me; if someone were giving me that much money, I’d certainly be happy to receive it on a weekend or any other day. That throws our plans out of whack because we’d planned on closing on Saturday and moving in on Sunday. We hadn’t rented a truck yet or anything, but we had lined up some friends to help with the move.

As I see it, we now have two options. We can move on Tuesday, but likely will be moving by ourselves as I’m not sure how many friends would take a day off work to come help us move. Otherwise we can wait until the next weekend, however our lease in the rental will be up on the following Monday, which means if we wait til the weekend to move we have one weekend to get everything out of the old house, on a truck, out to the new house (~1 hour drive), in the new house, AND get the old house cleaned and ready to be turned back over to the landlord. That’s doable but, dear god, we won’t sleep at all that weekend if we end up trying to pull that off.

TheBoyfriend™ suggested we pack up the truck (with help) on Sunday, then drive it out to close on Monday and unload it (by ourselves) on Monday immediately after closing. That’s certainly an option that would allow us to have help for at least the loading part of the move (which frankly is worse than the unloading in my opinion), and give us a week to clean up the old house once all our stuff is out of it. It would mean however that we’d have to rent the truck for two days. I have no idea what the cost difference would be for that, but I’m almost curious if we want to do that, would it not be easier to rent a PODS container, which would give us a good week to get everything unloaded. We’d have to compare prices I suppose.

Ultimately, it will all be worth it once we’re finally in our own home. And to be honest, I don’t really think we can complain too much. From what I hear from others, the headaches we’ve experienced on fairly normal, and all in all the process has gone pretty smooth for us. Still, I’m be so glad when it’s over.

Sorry to get your hopes up. This isn’t the post I’d most like to be writing under that title, but I found it amusing all the same. Yesterday, TheBoyfriend™ and I went to submit our official loan application (for our already pre-approved loan). One of the forms we had to sign (I’m seriously considering getting a signature stamp made…) was a form that really was meaningless except in the instance of a random IRS audit, at which point it would serve as proof that we had gotten credit jointly.

The funny part was the label on the line I signed on. It was labeled “Spouse.” So there you have it, I’ve signed my name as TheBoyfriend™’s spouse, and I kinda liked it.

Those following on Twitter already know that our closing date on the new house has been pushed back two weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s an anti-flip provision for FHA loans that indicates that we cannot buy a house that the current seller has not owned for 90 days. We’d been told by the sellers that they purchased the home on May 7th, so we’d be able to close on August 7th. Accepting their word for it, we scheduled our plans around that date. Unfortunately, now that the bank has informed us that, while the sellers may indeed have purchased the home on May 7th, the deed change was not processed until the 22nd, so we can’t actually close until Aug 22nd!

The plus side is that our current rental office doesn’t pro-rate leases so our lease there doesn’t actually end until August 31st (Yay! we won’t be homeless…), but the down side is TheBoyfriend™ had already scheduled his transfer at work based on the 7th date so now he’ll be making a hefty commute for two weeks.

That is how the home inspector described our house purchase this morning. There are a few bigger problems that will have to be taken care of by the seller before we close (for example, removing an old gas line that used to go to the hot water heater before it was switched to electric), and a several minor things that hopefully the seller will take care of but if it goes above what they are required by law to fix, and they refuse, we won’t mind doing ourselves (for example, the kitchen sink isn’t caulked). The inspector certainly didn’t give us the impression that we had anything to worry about.

The inspector (who, while not a real estate agent, clearly sees his share of houses being purchased) seems to think that with a little love, we could have a house that will bring us $40-50K more than what we’re paying for it when the time comes to sell it once the housing market has rebounded. That would be wonderful news indeed. I believe in buying a house because you want to live in it, not just because of the investment value (unless you don’t plan to use it as your residence and really are just buying it as an investment property), but it’s sure nice to know that the home you want to live in is a good investment as well!

Front of house

The front porch

The foyer

The kitchen

The backyard from the back porch

Of course there was one other concern that I had regarding getting out of our old place. Namely, what if we needed back in! I mean, there are things that can fall through in the best laid plans. For instance if something big showed up on the home inspection and our land lord had already found a new tenant for the house we’re in now, we would need to find something in an impossibly short period of time or find ourselves homeless. Turns out, like every other concern that has popped up in this process, the solution has popped up just as quickly and effortlessly. When we went to give 60 days notice to our landlord, we voiced the concern. Turns out, they want to put a new roof on the house after we’re out anyways (side note: that’s good, it needs it). There for, they won’t start advertising the place until after we move, giving them time to install a new roof before the next tenant moves in. Meaning, if something does fall through with our house purchase, our current place will still be available for us!

It’s really been amazing how everything is just falling into place for us on this. We’ve placed an offer, been countered, and accepted the counter (though we haven’t yet heard back from the seller). It appears the only other obstacle left to cross is the home inspection. Wish us continuing good luck!

Longtime readers will know that TheBoyfriend™ and I got some property for a VERY good price awhile back and it’s been our intention to build our dream house on it. That is still our plan however we don’t want to build less than what we want on the property (because once it’s built, it’s there, and it’s not like you can just knock it down later and live in a tent until you get the new one built), and right now, we simply can’t afford to put the house we want there (not that we want some huge mansion, but I’m guessing building the house we want is maybe $40-50K above our current budget. In the meantime, we’ve been dumping our money into rent payments that don’t do any more than put a roof over our heads for another month and fund our landlord’s retirement. Neither of us are that financially minded, but we’ve come to the conclusion that THAT is probably not the best way we could be using what money we’ve got.

We’re all moved in (at least all of our stuff is in the house though not all of it is out of boxes yet). We’ve actually got most of the main living space put together, so when people have come over it looks more or less like it’s done. The bedroom is in somewhat rough shape and the office looks a bit like a warehouse at the moment (there are paths through the boxes to get to each of our computers). All in all, I think we’re in good shape for having just moved everything over last weekend. All the pictures I’m including are from prior to the big move (there was perhaps a car load moved over when I snapped the pictures).

I have a tendency to become less patient as whatever I’m waiting for approaches, and I’ve reached about peak impatience over moving into this house now that move in day is Sunday. Fortunately, I found out today that since the rental office is closed on Sunday they’d prefer if I picked up the key tomorrow instead of having somebody come in on Sunday (and yes, once we have the key we can start moving in so, score, we’re getting a day and a half of the house for free).

After making the decision to rent this house (referenced in the two posts below), I knew money was going to be tight for a couple months (and probably a month after or so in order to get my bank accounts back where I’d like them to be). The security deposit, pet fee, and months worth of double rent because of the lease overlap was going to be alot of money I was handing out in a short time. Now I’m already realizing that I had no idea.