About the house...

Before I forget -

Anna, we have wall paper in only one room in the house, the living room. It's a brown-ish color with a diamond pattern and a border at the top. The blue dining room is just a faux paint job, and actually it's not blue anymore, it's now Desert Camel, as is the family room and entry way. The kitchen is still white. Our bedroom is a FUNKY purple faux paint job with a border at the top. Once the border comes down, we will be painting it Gentle Rain, which is a very pale, soft gray color. Emma's room was just plain white, but we've painted in Pale Daffodil, which is the exact same color she had in her old room. We figured the more we could make it feel like her old room, the easier she'd adjust to the new house. We have wall paper borders at the top of the kitchen, the spare bedroom, and the half bath on the first floor (the walls in the half bath are the same as the walls in the master bedroom). We plan on leaving the wallpaper in the living room for now because it's not SO bad, but will be getting rid of it eventually. We do plan on getting rid of the borders everywhere as soon as we have the time.

Faith - I know I already facebooked you, but just for everyone else' sake, I'll say it again. You were so right. I am sooo sooo sooo in love with my new washer and dryer. The washer took longer than I expected, but then BAM! The dryer took 27 minutes to dry an extra large load. I almost peed my pants with excitement!

But, just so you don't think I'm bragging, Anna, I'll go ahead and tell you all that my dishwasher sucks Butt. Big time. In fact, my plates don't even fit in them. Anywhere. It is so bizarre. And it's like mom and dad's OLD dishwasher, where you have to actually use a sponge and soap to pre-wash the dishes before you put them in the washer. Sort of pointless. So. Bah.

I'll take more pics once we get things in their place, get furniture situated (OMG - Mike and I are actually getting bedroom furniture this weekend! Can you believe it?) and things put away so you can see the improvement with the paint jobs and whatnot.

Let's all let out a heavy sigh...

It was late when I took this pic. Sorry. I was tired.
Master Bath. Tub is to the right, behind the door.

Master bedroom. Yes, those walls are purple. Very purple.

Master

Spare Room

Emma's Room

Bathroom

1st floor laundry room

Entryway

Dining Room

Living Room

Family Room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Ok, the Universe just wanted us to sweat a little. You know how I said about fearing The Jinx? Yeah. Well, I was fairly certain that I would never again in my life share good news with anyone ever. Why? Because the day after I announced our good news about the house to the world... we got a call.

Call #1: The house that we were supposed to buy went into foreclosure. Apparently the seller decided to stop paying the mortgage, because he had moved out and his soon to be ex-wife was staying in the house. So he just didn't pay the mortgage for 8 months or so. And nobody knew it. Now, yes this is bad, BUT the timing of foreclosure didn't make any sense. Apparently a mortgage lender can't send a mortgage to foreclosure lawyers if it is under contract. We'd been under contract for a month, when they sent it to foreclosure on Wednesday. So, the likelyhood that we'd get our house was looking bad. If we DID get it, it would probably be a good two weeks after we THOUGHT we'd get it.

Well, we thought it wasn't so bad. We were selling our house, and if need be we could stay with either set of the rents for a couple weeks, or even a month of two if we needed to find a new house.

Call #2: This phone call came on Thursday at 7:00 pm. At this point, the ONLY item left in the house was one bucket of cleaning supplies, and I was sweeping out the garage, the very last part of the house left to be cleaned. We were literally about 10 minutes away from locking up and leaving. Call #2 was to let us know that the buyer for our house was likely not going to be approved for her mortgage.


BUT HOW CAN THAT BE? We got mortgage confirmation from her on March 18, and we got our final HUD-1 sheet earlier that morning??? Makes no sense?? Well... apparently our buyer gets paid in cash, and her mortgage confirmation was conditional on her continuing to provide bank statements. Well, this Monday her mortgage company decided that they wanted a letter in writing to prove that the cash deposits were indeed from her employer. So, she provided one. So, she thought that was done and done on Monday. But NOOOOOOO her mortgage company underwriters decided that they couldn't approve the loan without the approval of the Head Underwriter. So, by Thursday at 7:00pm our buyers agent had called our agent and told her that they were still waiting for final word from the H.U., but that it was looking like our buyer wouldn't get the mortgage.

So, that meant that we'd have to move back into the house that we had JUST EMPTIED, and then put the house back on the market IN MID-SPRING while the market is saturated... EXACTLY the conditions we wanted to avoid by putting it on the market in January. UGH.

So, we went to bed Thursday not knowing if we'd actually close on our house at 10am like planned, or if we'd close on our house at all. If we didn't sell our house, we couldn't buy the new one. And at that point, even if we DID sell our house, we still didn't know whether we were going to be able to buy the new house out of foreclosure.

So we slept realllllly great on Thursday night.


Long story short, we spent all morning agonizing and fearing the worst, until we got the call at 11:30 am that our buyer had been approved for a mortgage! HALLELUJAH!!


AND


AND


AND


By some miracle of miracles, we were able to buy our new house out of foreclosure after it being in foreclosure for just TWO DAYS. This is unheard of!!


So, long story short, I will never be sharing good news on this blog ever, ever, ever again.

Did I forget to mention...?

No, I didn't forget to mention. It was like I purposefully neglected to mention that...

We're moving!! TOMORROW! ACK!

We sold the house after it was on the market for about 5 weeks (you were close with your guess of 1 month, Lauren!!) and have been getting things with the house wrapped up for the last 7 weeks. There was the inspection, and the FHA appraisal, and both resulted in us having to do some major, but not TOO major work on the house. And then there's been the packing. Lots and lots of packing. And cleaning.

But, I'm glad it's almost over. I didn't really tell anybody (family included) about the move until very recently, because I have this thing about jinxing myself. (ask Darin, she knows) I have been petrified that something would go wrong, or our buyer would back out. But the day is here (in a couple hours) and there's no turning back.

We'll miss this house. Sort of. Ok not really. We'll miss the memories of this being our first home, and of bringing Emma home here. But that's about it. Goodbye, money pit. Goodbye, house in which you cannot make any noise while Emma's sleeping. Goodbye, house with the really annoying neighbors who may or may not live across the street!

We're moving to a new house in Linglestown, so it's not far from where we are now, maybe about 10-15 minutes. I don't have pictures yet, but I'll try to get some up by this weekend. It's in a very cute development, at the end of a cul-de-sac. There are some things that will need updating, (like the blue carpet, everywhere) but generally it's in great shape. The kicker that will make all you ladies jealous??? The house comes with a pretty much brand spanking new GE front loading washer and dryer. Awwwwwww Yeaaaaaaaah!

So, I'm happy.