It all happened pretty quick the second time around. We made an offer and the next day we received a counter offer that we were satisfied with so accepted it and scheduled the home inspection for the following week. The home was built in 1984 and has had the same couple living in it since (no kids), so we were hopeful that the couple took good care of the house and that the inspection wouldn't turn up anything too serious. We were pretty surprised when the report came back and showed many similar problems (but to a lesser degree) to the last house we almost bought. For a few days we really weren't sure how things were going to play out and didn't get our hopes up. Throughout this whole process with this second home I really haven't let myself get excited about the house, which I think is the reason I still will not believe we are really getting this house until I sign the papers and have the keys in my hand. But after speaking with the inspector more and negotiating with the sellers, who agreed to fix almost everything we asked for, we felt comfortable moving forward with the purchase. We signed the final agreement paperwork just a week ago, so it is pretty amazing that we are still on schedule to close on the 31st. Our realtor picked the 31st for our closing, I think to appeal more to the seller that we could close by the end of the month, but we really weren't in a rush to close because we have our apartment until the end of August. I did take it as a good sign that our closing was scheduled on our anniversary though :)
There are a lot of things we want to do to the house relatively soon, like paint the master bedroom, remove some unnecessary doors on the first floor, paint the wood paneling and built-in shelves in the family room, install a light fixture/ceiling fan in family room, paint the kitchen cabinets, paint the wood trim white, paint some doors, update the appliances in the kitchen that are original to the house, buy a washer and dryer, and possibly take out a window that looks into the garage from the kitchen. All of these projects are very doable, but still time consuming. This is probably the reason why if I spoke to you about the 1st house we wanted to buy I sounded super excited and if I spoke with you about this house I sounded a little stressed out. The other house was move-in ready, no appliances needed to be bought or updated, it was going to be easy. But honestly from the beginning we have been saying that we were willing to paint, do updates as needed and put a little work in to make the house our own and better than when we purchased it and hopefully increase the value of the house. So when I remind myself of that, I realize that this home is going to be worth it and will be the perfect home for us.
The plan for Tuesday is to go to our closing at 3pm, give them a ton of money and sign our lives away in return for some keys, drive about 2 miles from the office to our new house, celebrate with some champagne (the champagne the Colonnade gave us on our wedding night that we still haven't drank actually), unload 2 car loads of our stuff we have already started to pack up today, and then go out to a nice dinner to celebrate our wedding and new home anniversary that night. Finally, so close!
