Under Contract

About the house thing. We made an offer on house #2. To help jog your memory, it’s this one:

House #2

This is the house that while I was walking around looking at it, I felt a lump in my throat and I almost started to cry. It’s perfect. It feels like home to me. And unlike every other house we’d seen up to that point, I couldn’t find a single thing that I didn’t like about this house.

Plus, there’s the kitchen. Oh man, let me tell y’all about the kitchen. This kitchen basically sold the house, as far as I’m concerned.

kitchen

The photo is a little blurry and doesn’t really do it justice, but that kitchen is amazing. It’s freaking enormous. I can imagine us having huge dinner parties with our friends in this house. It’s so beautiful and open and inviting. I opened the (double!) doors to the pantry, and Dave said the look on my face was as though I was suddenly bathed in a warm soft light while a chorus of angels started to sing. It’s fantastic. I want to make sweet love to that kitchen. (And no, I don’t know how the mechanics of that would work. Shut up. Don’t crush my dream.)

And look! It even has a little built-in workstation.

kitchen workstation (and Catie)
Cute toddler (who apparently has a mouthful of animal crackers) sold separately. Weird shadow brought to you courtesy of Cindy’s Crap Photography Skills. Get your thumb away from the lens, moron. Jeez.

There’s also the backyard, which is perfect for us: it’s flat, it’s shady, and it’s big enough for a playset. And besides the deck, it’s also got a really nice little patio area underneath a cluster of trees in the yard.

backyard

Love it. It’s just so pretty.

So we made a pretty low-ball offer, and they gave us a fair counter-offer (they met us more than halfway). We agreed, signed the paperwork, and we’re now officially under contract.

The sad part is that the house is being sold because of a divorce. The first time we saw the house, it was obvious that there was only one guy living there, so we wondered if maybe he was gay. (For the stereotypical reasons: the place was immaculately decorated and absolutely spotless.) But then our realtor noticed some wedding china in the dining room, and when Dave opened a cabinet, he saw several “how to save your marriage” self-help books. Sure enough, when our realtor talked to the other agent, the house belongs to a (currently, but not for much longer) married couple. So it’s sad, but it doesn’t appear that they have any kids, which I guess makes it slightly less tragic. And they’re obviously working together on selling the house, because they got back to us REALLY fast when we made our offer.

My sister suggested that I need to burn some sage in the house when we move in, to get rid of all of the bad karma floating around in there due to the divorce. I have no idea how to burn sage or what you’re supposed to do to get rid of bad marriage juju in a house, but I’ll look into it. Isn’t there some religion where they’ll bless your home? I can’t remember if that’s a Catholic thing or if it’s Hindu. (Because, you know, the two religions are so very similar, it makes total sense that I’d get their customs confused. Er?)

I am completely scared, and I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it’s because we’re voluntarily putting ourselves in debt – even though we got a really good deal on the house because of the economy. Maybe it’s because this is the first time I’ve ever been involved in a house-purchasing decision. (Dave already owned our house in Washington when he and I first met.) I think it’s also because this house is so beautiful, and so perfect, and I’m afraid this is all too good to be true, so I’m waiting for something to come along and blow up in our faces. But I really, really hope I’m wrong about that last one.

Stay tuned for my next series of posts, tentatively titled “OMFG are you kidding me I have to pack again, why didn’t we just leave our crap in boxes for the past year?!?!!”

(To be fair, quite a bit of our crap is, in fact, still in boxes. Laziness and procrastination FTW!)

real estate update

I’ll write more about our weekend later (because man, it’s been a fun one), but forgive me here while I talk about buying a house and hopefully don’t bore anyone to tears.

Last week, Dave and I went house-hunting with our realtor again. I was trying not to panic, but it was looking like we were going to be homeless after July 31st unless we magically found our dream house. On Thursday, Dave had to work, so it was just me and Cara (our realtor friend) looking at houses, and pretty much everything we saw, I hated. A few of them were nice enough houses, but it just wouldn’t have been a good fit for us. Either they were too small, or they didn’t have any trees around (a pet peeve of mine; I hate it when neighborhoods are built and all of the natural foliage is cut down), or there wasn’t a place that we could’ve turned into an office for Dave, or the driveway was too hilly (visions of Catie in a few years learning to ride a bike and wiping out in the street = no thank you). There was always something that made it a no-go. So I was starting to get a little discouraged.

All of us (including Catie) went out house-hunting again on Friday morning. Aaaand now, it looks at though we’ve found not one but two houses that we really, really love. One house is in the perfect neighborhood and location, the yard is gorgeous, but the house itself has a couple of (really minor) features that I’m not crazy about (i.e., the pantry in the kitchen is really small). The second house is absolutely, 100% perfect, but I’m not totally in love with the neighborhood. I mean, it’s really nice, and it has a lot of great features (neighborhood greenway, pool, playground, etc.), the neighborhood just isn’t as aesthetically pretty as the first one. So, hmm, which to choose? Oh, and both houses are pretty much exactly the same price. Way to make the decision even harder.

Want to see them to get a better perspective of what I’m talking about? Of course you do.

This is house number one:
House #1

And this is house number two:
House #2

I know, right? They’re both really, really pretty.

So, this afternoon we’re meeting up with our realtor again to look at both houses and try to do a side-by-side comparison of them. And as much as I hate making decisions, I’m feeling pretty good about this one, because I’m pretty sure that we’d be happy in either place. So I’m trying to relax and trust that God or the universe or whatever will make sure that we end up exactly where we’re supposed to be. Cross your fingers for us. I’d really like this decision to be made so I can start planning our next steps (like, you know, the actual move).