We Have a Big Announcement...

... we're buying a house! (Ha. No, I'm not pregnant. And no, we have no plans to "expand" anytime soon. Ask again in 5 years.)

We are actually quite far along in the process, and by that, I mean we are closing TODAY! It's so crazy! Talk about feeling grown up. I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around it. Today, sometime after 1pm, Josh and I will own a house. Weird. And exciting!

We've been renting a house two blocks from our church for the past 15 months (since we got married), and our landlord let us know there was a rent-to-buy option on the house, so we knew he'd be willing to sell. Once the first-time home buyers credit came about, we started to really think about things - especially how long we planned to be in Philadelphia. We kinda of dilly-dallied for a while - specifically concerning the length in Philly thing. But, by September (and after lots of talks with our families and friends) we'd decided we wanted to go for it.

First things first, we approached our landlord about buying. Our rental house is super close to our church, in the middle of our church community and friends, and works quite well for us size-wise. It's big enough to have people over every week, and has 3 bedrooms (or about 2.6 - the middle room is fairly small), so we can have a guest room and study, too. We have beautiful original woodwork and wood floors (about 80 years old) throughout the house, and all in all, the house has served us well this first 1+ year.

However, the house is anything but perfect. It's old to start, and was abandoned for 1.5 years before we moved in. Our landlord did a lot to fix it up, but he fixed it up to be, well, livable - not necessarily sustainable. So, as an example, we've had one of our dining room walls knocked out twice within the past year to fix a pipe that was leaking in our basement. The first time, our landlord repaired only the part of the pipe that was leaking right then... even though the whole pipe obviously needed to be replaced. So, we had a big whole in our dining room for a week (because it always takes him a while to fix things). Then, a number of months later, we got another leak in our basement. So they came back and knocked out the same wall, so they could replace the other half of the pipe. All that to say, Josh and I weren't exactly convinced of the integrity of our rental house, and we figured that if we made an offer, we could probably get it for a pretty reasonable price (especially because we know what our landlord paid and how much we've paid in rent).

Well, we were wrong. Our landlord, it turns out, truly is a business man, 100% of the way, and doesn't care about anything else except making profit for himself. He wanted about $20,000 more than the house is even close to being worth... and in our neighborhood, where the nicest houses sell for $100,000 (if that), that is a LOT to be asking for. So, we started looking elsewhere (or I should say, Josh did... he did most of the work, I must give him credit).

And we found one!

It's actually on the same block we live on now, just two blocks down. And on top of that, it's pretty much the exact same floor plan as our rental house. Yeah, go figure. However, it was owned (and lived in - big difference) by a Puerto Rican couple for about 35 years, and they took really good care of it (they actually know a bunch of people from our church really well, too). It's been not just a house, but their home, which definitely shows. It doesn't have the original woodworking, which we'll be sad to lose, but it also has a kitchen, bathroom, and basement that our rental house can't even be compared to. I will have more than an 10"x12" counter space to use to cook/prepare food! Woohoo! AND, get this, AND we can not only turn around in the bathroom, BUT WE CAN OPEN THE LINEN CLOSET DOOR ALL THE WAY. (In our rental, we can open it about halfway before it bumps into the sink.) And the basement, while not fully finished, has had the floors sealed, drywall put up to make separate "room" spaces, and has a bathroom that I actually would use. (Our rental has a bathroom in the basement that I have used ONCE since we've lived there, and trust me, it was ONLY because it was a true, desperate, life-and-death emergency.)

So, we're pretty excited.

The only thing is that we'll be doing a lot of work with the decor. Meaning we're getting rid of it all. Mostly because of Josh. Because you know how I love me some maroon carpet, wallpaper with country scenes... and you ESPECIALLY know how much I love gold-flecked vinyl paneling. Oh yeah. *grin* Needless to say, even though we're closing today, we'll be renting our other house through December so that we can do lots of fun stuff in the new house like repainting just about every room (we're saving the bathroom for later, when we can figure out if there's anything we can do with the wood paneling), ripping up the carpet, and refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. It should be a grand adventure!

So, that's going to be our grand project over the next month... since, you know, we didn't have enough other stuff going on, with it being Thanksgiving and Christmas and the crazy season at work, and all that. But all is well, and pretty soon, I'll be a full-fledged grown-up. I mean, I've been doing the full-time job for 4 years now, I've gotten married, I'm buying a house, AND I can now officially rent a car! What else is left, right? =)

For all you who have done this whole house-buying thing, let me know if you have any tips or advice, or if you like Lowe's or Home Depot better for buying paint and supplies, or if you have any fantastic office organizational resources. And sometime soon I'll post some pictures of our new little abode, which you will all be welcome to come visit... you just might have to wait until January to do so.