Long Awaited House Update

Hey y'all! It's been a while, I know. Pinter at ACT has been insane! We're having a blast churning these shows out, but I honestly had no new advice for your personal finances so I laid low while we were teching (which we still are).

However, I do have some awesome news.

WE GOT A HOUSE!!!

On that first Monday we saw 5 houses. The first one was a huge bummer. We were hoping it was livable, but it was way more work than we wanted to take on, even though the location was prime. Next we saw two houses, I honestly can't remember the second one, and the third one was a disaster.

The fourth, however, was magical.

It was smaller than we hoped, only 1100 sq ft. Our current apartment is around 950, so it would be an upgrade either way. The whole house was newly renovated. A new bathroom had been added, the kitchen was entirely remodeled and there were new cherry hardwood floors. Also, the hot water heater still had the instructions attached.

In buying a house we didn't want a huge fixer and we had a medium-sized list of things we wanted. This house met everything except it had no fireplace. Ah, well.

So we spent around 45 minutes at that house and left feeling pretty good. We checked out one last house that was another huge disappointment and started to head home.

While in the car I blurted out that I felt really good about the 4th house. To the point that I wanted it. Our realtor checked in about if it was the joy of first-time home shopping or if we really wanted it. We agreed to go away, do some research, and call her in the afternoon with more info.

We went home and searched around online about the walk score (69!), schools (there's an elementary, middle, and high school all within 4 blocks), and transit routes (I get to stay on my beloved 120). We called Sarah that evening and said, "We want to put an offer on the house."

So then Tuesday we met at a Starbucks at 8am and went over all the paperwork, signed a bunch of stuff and it was official. We made an offer.

We heard back the next day. They had accepted our offer! Now we had to schedule in an inspection and a sewerscope in 7 days. During which I was going to be in 10 1/2 hour long rehearsal days and Andy was going to be in tech. Somehow the timing worked out and Andy got to be at the inspection and we both got to be at the sewerscope. We took a bunch of measurements at the sewerscope and have already started planning where we want to put things.

The inspection turned up a few minor things that were totally repairable. We asked for then to do a handful of things and give us $500 towards our closing costs so we could spend them on some electrical work that needed to get done.

Then the weirdness happened. Our realtor went out of town the  morning of our sewerscope and was basically unreachable. They were taking a while to respond to our request from the inspection (ok, it was 2 days, but that feels like a long time!). Then we heard that there was a back-up offer on the house that was better than ours. Our realtor seemed to think it was nothing to worry about given that they couldn't get out of our contract at this point. We waited with bated breath to hear what the verdict on our request were going to be knowing perfectly well that if they said no, we'd still take the house anyway.

We got the official word on Thursday that we were in escrow and the house was ours!!!!!!!

We're scheduled to close on August 16th, but given that that's right smack in the middle of my (2nd) tech for Pinter, we're going to try and move it up a few days to the Monday of that week. Also when I have a baby shower for a beloved friend I'm hosting. We mostly want to get in so we can paint and move in slowly on our days off. We'll vacate the apartment at the end of August.

Here are some pictures of the new place! I'll let you know more as we go along. This has been a whirlwind adventure of craziness and we couldn't be happier about what the future holds for us in this new chapter!

Our rockin' backyard. We'll put a studio in that far corner eventually and plant some fruit trees and veggie garden on the other side.

Our awesome kitchen from the utility room into the kitchen and the dining nook. We're going to add benches and a big table. And we can't decide if we love or hate that fixture.

"Master" bathroom. Not actually attached to the Master bedroom, but right across. See the sticker on the window? They're all brand new and Energy Star certified double pane windows.

Master bedroom window. It looks out into our front yard. We're going to put the bed on the left wall and eventually a wardrobe on the right wall. We have a tiny closet that could be useful, but we want something bigger.

 Tiny closet and door into Master bedroom. The other two bedrooms are similar in size. One will serve as the office, the other as temporary storage until we get a shed in the backyard.

 More of the "Master" bath. On the left of that shower is our hot water heater, which is just hanging out for everyone to see. We're going to put a closet door on it and a shelf overhead for storage. The other bathroom is a full bath, but is a little smaller.

And the awesome porch. Picture an awning eventually. A table and chairs, our porch swing and our grill. Ahhhh.

That's our rockin' home! More about it as life happens...