Home Sweet Home!

It's done!!!  We can finally talk about it!  IT IS OURS!!!

Last week Todd and I signed the papers and picked up the keys to our very first house.  I tell you what, though, it was a huge struggle to keep this one quiet.  Everyday for the last two months I have wanted to shout it out to the heavens and everywhere below it that this was happening, but after the last time we tried to buy a house ended badly, we decided to keep this to a need-to-know situation.

In the end everything happened very quickly (even if the last three weeks seemed to drag on with one drama after another).  At the end of February my MIL e-mailed me a listing for a house in South Salem that she thought we might like.  The listing looked promising so I called Knipe Realty, a complete cold call based on an ad at the bottom of the listing.  For some reason they put me in touch with Nicole Greenspan in their Portland office (a HUGE God-send), and she made arrangements to meet with us and take us around to three or four other houses that Sunday.

Well, it turned out we didn't like the first house, or the second.  The third was nice, but a bit out of our price range.  After two more "definitely not" houses, she told us to keep the third house in mind, give her a few more details about what we wanted, and go and talk to a broker about financing.  She gave us the name of Nelson Lomax at Landmark Professional Mortgage, who just happened to be a customer of Todd's.  He called us that night and scheduled an appointment for that week.

After meeting with Nelson, and getting pre-approved, we decided to not lose momentum and scheduled a couple showings for Todd while I was out of town.  The first house he saw was a manufactured home in West Salem that had come through my e-mail a couple of times.  He told me flat out that he wanted me to look at the house when I got back and see what I thought.  A few days after I got back I walked into the house and from that point on all other houses paled.

A week later we made an offer and discovered that we were not the only ones coveting this beautiful home.  The seller put it to a bid and we came out the victors.  After that it was a matter of getting inspections, appraisals and paperwork all done.  We did discover that the house needed one thing done before we could close, but that was done fairly quickly.

As I said above, it was the last three weeks that were the real nail-biters.  We were supposed to close on April 30, but after major delays with the appraisers, Title, insurance, HUD, and our lender (whom I will lamb-baste in my mind for years to come) we were required to take out not one... not two... but THREE extensions in order to keep from losing the house.  Even with the extensions we still had a harrowing 11th-hour signing that nearly required Todd to take an extended lunch just so we could get everything buttoned up in time to get the keys on the last day of our final extension.  But you know what they say - all's well that ends well.  I never appreciated that phrase until now.  Nothing else matters now except the fact that we have the house!

Oh, you want to know about the house?  Okay, here it is.  The house is 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 1,782 square feet.  It has vaulted ceilings and an open floor plan.  The kitchen is large with a wrap around counter and opens into the living room, dinning room and family room.  There is a fire place in the family room, ceiling fans in the family room, dining room, and master bedroom, and a WALK-IN CLOSET!  There is a separate utility room off of the kitchen that leads to the garage, which is split level to the house.  The back yard is uneven and needs to be re-fenced, but it has a perfect east-facing spot for a small garden.

I'm sure I will post pictures of my future remodeling of the house at later times.  But until then, thank you Lord, and everyone else who has had a hand in making this happen!