I have been MIA since October. First and foremost, all is great with us and my absence has been due to a positive change. How some bloggers have children, a full time job, undergo what we did and still make time to write, I just have no idea. I have drafted one other post in the last couple months. ONE. However, I refuse to beat myself up over this because I write out of love and do the best I can. That’s all I can do.

Let me explain.

In October I traveled to Colorado for my Uncle Tito’s funeral. He was a kind, big hearted, faithful and inspirational man. His passing brought family together like I’ve never seen before. Celebrating him made me feel proud to be his niece, regretful for not spending more time with him, and so very devastated that we lost someone with such a bright light. He is an incredible man and is resting peacefully now.

While I was away, my husband found “the perfect house”. He claims that he could feel my eye roll all the way in Washington. Since I was in Colorado with my family, I truly didn’t have much time to really entertain the idea. I did look at the link he sent and it was pretty incredible, but my mind and my heart were with my mom and my grandma. After an exhausting few days, I flew home on Sunday morning, and by the end of the day we were at “the perfect house”, peering into windows and walking the grounds. We reached out to the realtor and scheduled an appointment to see this house on Monday.

Whoa, this is getting real.

When we arrived on Monday, we were greeted by the homeowner, a kind older man named Lyle. He was sweet, and he gave us the grand tour, including all kinds of tidbits like “this is where we opened Christmas gifts” and “I switched this breaker out in ’87”. We joke that we are this couple about 30 years ago. Char, Lyle’s wife, loves to sew and make jewelry, so she had a craft room and a jewelry making room. She also had a greenhouse! If that’s not me, I don’t know what is. Lyle had built a 1300 sq ft wood shop. This is the stuff men’s dreams are made of. I swear, when he opened the doors, angels sang and Marv’s eyes were replaced with hearts, just like the emoji. And the yard…the home is on 1.5 acres and the thought of seeing our dogs run free makes my heart so happy. The things that really make this home perfect are the compromises. Marv has always wanted land, but I’m terrified to live out in the country where it gets really quiet. I grew up with the noise of a train, I-580, and BART. Silence scares me…can we say horror movie? Anyway, this home is just off of a main road, so there is noise, thank goodness. For the other compromise, with land comes a larger house, normally. I didn’t want a 3000 sq ft home. It’s just too much house and it’s not us. This home…just under 2100 sq ft. Perfection.

I am so glad that the realtor wasn’t available, and that we got a tour from the one and only owner of the home, who loved and care for the property for 37 years. He was so attentive and forthcoming with information about the house, and we really hit it off with him and were there for just under 2 hours.

We want this house, but ours isn’t ready to list.

This was around the time I began to realize that my life would be pretty crazy for a while. By that Wednesday, we decided to go for it and list the house, buuuuut it wasn’t quite ready yet. We immediately dove into the small projects that we had been putting off for years. In addition to small projects, we had two large projects — the demo of our income property that occupied the garage and buying a new garage door. Now, we had asked multiple realtors, and for our neighborhood, a garage is far more desirable than an income property. Not to mention that the income property was not done well. Simple answer…demo and turn it into a usable garage. In addition to making it a usable garage, we figured it was high time to upgrade the garage door and get an automatic opener.  So, between our two large projects, small projects, and painting the entire interior of the home –neutral, neutral, neutral– we guessed that we were looking at two weeks for completion, which really means more like 3 weeks. If you are a DIY’er, you know this to be very true. So, here we are, October 22nd, about a month away from Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season. If we cannot complete everything within 3 weeks, I feared our home would be listed during the holidays and sit, and that we would not be able to get “the perfect house”.

Here goes nothing.

Every evening after work and every weekend was devoted to getting our home ready. Our friends and family were an amazing source of support during this time. Friends came over to help us paint and do projects, and my family was constantly checking in and offering encouragement. This time was hard for us. I was exhausted, and when I was at work, I was thinking about home projects. I wasn’t eating well, and I was worried, constantly worried. Have we bitten off more than we can chew? Halloween came and went, and one of my favorite holidays barely got celebrated. My dad offered to fly out from California and help us, but what if we couldn’t get it together in time, or what if we weren’t able to get the new house, and it was all for nothing? Not to mention, we were living in chaos. Furniture everywhere, paint cans everywhere, boxes full of things that needed to go to the storage unit, etc. It wasn’t pretty.

We did it!

Somehow, someway, with a ton of elbow grease and help from our friends, we pulled it off. Our home was listed on November 16th, and so began the crazy rollercoaster ride of living with two dogs in a staged home. I have no idea how people with kids, jobs, and pets do this. Here is our staged home.

Let’s get down to specifics.

We were fortunate enough to have a ton of activity on our home. Our first open house brought through 25 parties (and that’s excluding neighbors), second open house brought through 20 parties, and we had many viewings in between. In week 1, with some parties coming back for multiple visits, we thought we might actually see an offer in week 1. The market, my friends, is a tough thing to figure out. Some parties came through three times and didn’t write an offer, and worse, they didn’t have very specific feedback.

Now, this may sound crazy, but we chose to lower the list price at day 9. Unfortunately, time was not on our side. You see, in order to buy “the perfect house” we had to sell our house, so we did what’s referred to as a contingency offer. Because of this contingency, we were given two weeks to get an offer on our house before our offer on the other house expired.  The pressure was on, and it was a very stressful time. So, at the advisement of our realtor, we went ahead and lowered the price. We had two offers by day 10, and one was simply stronger than the other, so we accepted and began the next step of buying and selling, namely paperwork and inspections.

Inspections are so important. They give the buyer peace of mind about what they are purchasing and open their eyes to what projects and costs could come up, and that gives them the opportunity to walk away if these unseen issues are too grave. Lucky for us, “the perfect home” was well taken care of and we felt good about the outcome of our inspection. We did a little bit of negotiating about some things that were nearing the end of their life and would need to be replaced sooner rather than later.

Now, to be the seller on the other side of this  –it’s a little nerve racking. “Do we do that right?” “Could there be something that our home inspector didn’t catch back when we bought the house?” “Are these novice home buyers going to be scared off by a project or two?” “How much are we willing to pay out in credits for repairs?” Oy, to be on the seller side (and to be a total worrier about EVERYTHING).

We were very lucky on both ends, and after a little bit of negotiations the inspection process was over, more paperwork was signed and now we are waiting and…

Packing!

That’s right guys, we close and move tomorrow. I can hardly believe that it’s finally here.

Sigh of relief.

This has been stressful and exhausting, but there is no feeling like it. We worked really, really hard on our first home, and it all paid off, and now we are on to the next phase of home ownership. I am so excited to get started on home projects and make it our own. Just so you all know, we are going to take our time on projects. This house is fantastic as is, so we are going to move our stuff in and see what feels right. Of course, I already have a mental plan, many, many Pins, and tons of lists already, but this is it for us, so we are going to save, do our research and make good decisions. This is a totally new floorplan for us, a different lifestyle to an extent, and it’ll be a family home.

Thanks so much for your patience and support.

xo

**all pics were pulled from Zillow.com