Selling, Buying, and Pregnancy Hormones: A Recipe for Stress

I posted a few weeks ago about listing our house.  In the time since, we've had five showings to three potential buyers, and one offer.  We weren't comfortable with the offer, so we countered and haven't heard back (in five days...we've stopped holding our breath for that one!).  Our house is still active on the market, and although we've had a decent amount of interest so far, we decided to drop the price (by about 5%) for one big reason:

We found THE house for us!

 We made an offer on it this morning, and are not so patiently waiting to hear back.  The catch?  It's a Fannie Mae-owned property, meaning it will definitely have multiple offers.  If I decided to be very optimistic, I'd guess our chances of winning (that's the best word for what it will be if our offer is accepted), are about 15%.  Instead, thanks in part to my insane hormones, I'm completely delusional and have already decorated each and every nook and cranny of the place (but only in my mind, of course).

I will say that we made our offer as appealing as we could to give ourselves the best chance possible.  We didn't even require selling our current house first, meaning we will probably have two mortgage payments for at least a month (assuming we get the house).  Although we're not thrilled at the idea of throwing $800/month down the drain, we know we're in a place where we can financially handle it, and feel confident enough in our house and the market to not lose sleep over it.  It doesn't hurt that we're saving about $1600 on commissions once we do sell our house, since we found a broker who would discount her commission.  We're also going to save on the buying end, getting a rebate after closing. 

But enough about boring old money...who needs that anyway?  Hopefully not us, since we would be using about 60% of our savings at closing.  Let's talk about (almost-kinda-sorta-please, please, please, God) our new house.

My favorite things:

• The location-17 minutes from Patrick's work (as close as we can safely get)
• The location-(yes, I typed that twice)-near so much!  Great malls, stores, Goodwill (yes!), parks...
• The location-I pulled it up on Houston's crime map...NOTHING.  Wait, there was identity theft one neighborhood over, but I'm not really worried about someone breaking into my house and stealing my identity.
• The curb appeal (let's hope I can learn to keep that landscaping alive)
• The front porch (fully paved with brick)
• The floor plan (not technically split since the nursery and master share a wall, but split enough for me, and so open!)
• The floors.  I've been trying to reconcile myself to the fact that our price range just doesn't include hardwoods, then BAM!  I found this.
• The fireplace.
• The master suite- We've never had one before!  Our own bathroom!  A bedroom that's not 12x13!  A walk-in closet!  These are the things (my) dreams are made of.
• The nursery- It's the only bedroom with wood floors, and it also has bead-board paneling halfway up all the walls.  Super charming!
• The backyard- One of the only backyards I've seen in all my searches with a single tree.  It's also landscaped up the wazoo and has a nice sized covered patio.

The drawbacks:

• The location-45 minutes from "home" (aka Crosby)
• Kitchen counters- midnight blue laminate.  A one-very-far-away-day upgrade.
• The floors- need to be either polished or refinished, depending on whether Patrick or I win (believe it or not, I DON'T want to refinish!)
• The second bathroom- The builder used tile for the tub surround, which is fine.  Unfortunately, they went with white, with black tiles randomly mixed in.  It kind of reminds me of a rorschach test.  But that's what shower curtains are for!
• The backyard- Although I LOVE the finishes of the backyard, it's not large.  And by not large, I mean it's maybe 800 square feet.  And with Bella now officially an outside dog, I see a LOT of walks in our future!

But the biggest drawback of all:  If we don't get this house, it will be horribly hard for us to settle for another one in the same price range.  Sigh.

We've been non-stop praying for God's will to be done in this, but I've also thrown up my share of "...but if you could go either way, God, please please please let us win it!" add-ons.  

Well, I guess that's quite enough for one post.  See ya!
-Kelli

For Sale!

 So, a lot has happened since my last post.  Let's see, I went and got myself knocked up (don't worry, it was right on schedule), suffered through morning sickness and fatigue (my initial excuse for not updating this old blog), arrived into the second trimester which somehow kicked off early nesting, then frantically started getting this house ready to sell (my second excuse for not updating) and looking for a new place closer to Pat's work.  The last five months have been an absolute whirlwind!  I can't even believe it's May.

Deets for the baby:

• Estimated due date: October 7
• Boy or girl:  We're not going to find out 'til delivery.  SIKE!  We'll find out next Wednesday, because I loathe secrets.
• What do we want:  A healthy baby.  (Duh)  But we're both kind of leaning girl, probably just because Madison is so great!  (And in my personal opinion boys can be quite gross.)

Preparing to sell our house has consumed so much of my mind (not to mention time and energy) that I haven't been able to focus much on the coming baby.  Every once in a while, I'll forget that I'm pregnant.  But then I walk past a mirror.  By the way, the whole "showing early the second time around" is SO true.  We waited until like 13 weeks to tell people, only because I was hoping for inspiration for some sort of cute announcement, and I was already getting sideways glances at church and family events.  By 14 weeks, there was no denying it!  At 15 weeks, while Madi and I were walking Bella around the neighborhood, we saw my neighbor about 25 yards away, working on his roof from the top of a ladder.  He hollered (he's a true redneck, "holler" is definitely the appropriate term) "Uh oh, you pregnant again?!"  So yeah.

Fortunately, my weight gain is on track so far.  With Madison, I gained 60 lbs (and only lost 55, dad gum it).  It wasn't pretty.  Hopefully, this time I'll gain no more than 30 and will still lose 55.  A girl can dream!

But enough about me and my rapidly expanding waistline.  Let's talk about me and my (hopefully) rapidly disappearing old house!

The big we-can't-live-in-a-one-bathroom-1100sq.ft.-house-with-two-babies blowup of 2013 happened the day before I started my second trimester.  It was just as much of a shock to Patrick as it was to me, but it resulted in us composing a list of things to finish in the house that, each taking up one line of college ruled notebook paper, filled a page and a half.  And most of the line items weren't little.  One example?  "Repair, sand, and refinish countertops in kitchen."

$500, a month and a half, and seven years off of our lives later, the house is ready to sell.  It's going on the market this afternoon.  In honor of the occasion, I thought I'd share some before and after pictures, taken from listing photos on the buying and selling end.

 

 

 

 

 

Phew.  House finished...check!  Now it's time to sell this sucker!  Any takers?  :)

-Kelli

My Macklemore Challenge

I've been absentee for awhile.  Sorry!

Anyhow, today at Young House Love, they're having a thrift store challenge.  You're supposed to take a $20 to a thrift store and see what you can score with it.  Here's my take!

Madi and I hit up our local thrift store last Friday to get this thing done.  She wouldn't cooperate for pictures, probably because she didn't want to be seen with me sans makeup.  She's 19 months old, and I'm already subjecting the poor child to public humiliation.  : )

 Here's what we scored for $2:

This thing is HUGE.  The inside of the frame is 2' X 3'.  I knew I wanted to spray paint the frame ORB, but I didn't know at first what I wanted to put inside the frame, so I hit up Pinterest and found this:

Source: etsy.com via Kelli on Pinterest

It's for sale on Etsy for $16.  I liked it a lot, but it was only an 8X10.  And, like I said, it was $16.  So of course, I tried to DIY.  First, I tried using Microsoft Word.  What a joke!  Then I pulled up GIMP (a free but not very intuitive image editing/generating software) and played around for a while.  Once I finally figured out how to manipulate text, I was able to put this together pretty easily:

It's not perfect, but it's good enough for us, for now.  And if it's good enough for you too, feel free to take it/print it/enjoy it.  Especially if you give me credit.  Or money.  Money is even better.

Anyway, blown up as big as it is on our wall, I can see imperfections (like how "protects", "trusts", and "perseveres" don't line up perfectly on the left side *shudder*) that would probably put me in the loony bin if I let them, so I try to only look at it from at least five feet away.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had it printed by Shutterfly for $8.64 after a $20 discount that came in our latest box of diapers, and was shocked at how quickly it arrived.

After spray painting the frame, I used the original "art" board to make a mat.  I just cut a rectangle out of the middle about a half-inch smaller both ways so there would be room to attach the poster on the back. 

Normally I love crisp white mats, but since the word art was printed on plain white paper and used a very plain font, I thought it needed some interest.  So I covered it in some fabric I had laying around from Madison's 52 week photo project.

I ran out of painters tape halfway through (I would have used something cheaper if I had it on hand, but I wanted to finish before Madison woke up that morning), so I switched to electrical tape, which was a complete pain in the boat to work with.

Thar she blows!  And yes, that is a fat joke.  This thing is HUGE.  I hung it to be centered behind our love seat/on the hallway. 

We are still in dire need of art for over the couch, but I've got plans.  For Patrick.  (Oh honey, did you really think I was going to let you watch the Superbowl?)  JK.  He can work on it during half time.  : )

So the total cost for this sucker was around $11.  I'll take it!

Happy flippin' Friday!
-Kelli

PS- I linked at these blogs:

young house love