Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The work begins!

Okay so just a mini post today, we had a bunch of people over from work and church and TU over yesterday to see the "before" so that everyone can appreciate the "after" that much more. It was fun just to get to show everyone how bad it looks right now and also how cool the neighborhood is and how close to our offices! It takes about five minutes to get there from work and that includes walking in the parking garage!

So Monday we signed the contract with our contractor and he starts ripping out walls today! More pics to follow I'm sure :).

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Day One!!

We own a house! Or I could say Bank of Oklahoma owns us. On friday afternoon we closed on our home! First we headed over to the BOk mortgage headquarters to sign all of the construction loan paperwork. Our friendly construction loan lady reminded us that we do have to pay for that, apparently some people these days just don't realize they are actually promising to pay, go figure. Also we must keep the house insured or she will be very angry with us, which is a little hard to imagine considering she is miss bubbly!

So then we headed over the title company and met our realtor and signed a bunch more papers and handed them the check for the property! The title now says we own 303 N. Tacoma! We headed over to the house right afterwards even though we've seen it a bunch of times because we were so excited!!! Ha our loan lady asked us if we were going to spend the night there but we decided not too considering the state of the inside :). We did stay long enough for some neighbors to see us though (which we found out the next day).

Alright work day number one!! On Saturday we headed out to start conquering the quarter acre yard we just acquired. Here are some pics of the progress (after almost two hours of yard mowing and pulling weeds and vines from the sidewalk).



Spencer mowing the gigantic yard. He's already working on ways to garden so there's less yard to mow :)



The beautifully mowed yard!



The sidewalk! Okay this might not look that exciting but before you couldn't see the concrete at all!! I piled six trash bags full of dirt and weeds and long vines.



All the trashbags!



Random art. Okay random stuff I picked up from the yard and porch.

Alright but now for the best part. We met our neighbors! Across the street is Peaches and her grand kid Niko (who has already been offered to us to help clean the ivy of the house whenever we need it ~ sweet!). Her two daughters live down the street along with a set of twin grand babies who are "double trouble" and will "tear your house right up." ha. Then today after church we met our next door neighbors who were glad to see that no weird couple moved in next store, which apparently they'd been afraid of. They thought we looked relatively normal ;). Apparently we are also "really young" according to the neighbors who have mostly lived there for over twenty years. They offered to watch our house for us though, so looks like we'll be safe. Alright not thinking of anything else right now ~ more on the construction part to follow soon!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Woo hoo!

Okay unless anything goes weird, we close tomorrow!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Change of Plans

Okay so these are a little late, but last weekend we decided to take a break from the house work and take a mini trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Conveniently while we were there it was corvette weekend! And we decided to buy this instead of a house!!!
Okay so I might be lying. But we did get to see a bunch of sweet corvettes and I decided I still like the BMW 1 series better, although the old school Stingrays are pretty sweet.

While we were there we also spent some time in coffee shops (go figure) and biking (although the trail ended up being exactly 4660 ft, which we didn't read until we had reached the end of the two minute ride) and hiking at roaring river state park in my grand old homeland of Missouri!! Oh and we also had really good Italian food and cooked our own steaks and watched four straight hours of HGTV ~ I think the house buying thing is getting to us! Oh and we looked at a bunch of local artwork and ended up with a really pretty white vase with a lily on it.
On the house front, if all goes as planned we'll close by the end of the work week! All we have to do is resubmit our construction bid to the bank and sign our lives away!

Enjoying a really froo froo drink while reading Esther and planning out the day.

A place we could have paid five dollars to picnic at (yes i know that's bad grammar). We found our own free place to eat ~ a really, really hick place in Eaglerock, MO that had pink wallpaper and pictures of eagles all over the wall, including puzzles that had been finished and then glued together!

The gorgeous view from the shortest bike ride ever!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Structural Inspection ~ Grade A+

Okay so all we had left to do to satisfy the appraiser and the bank was to get a structural engineer to verify that the foundation was secure and we weren't going to need to spend any money on that or the roof. So yesterday we had Ange's dad come out and look at it (yes that is his day job in case our loan officer is reading this ) and he said it has some of the best bones of any house he's seen of that age in the area! Looks like someone already put a bunch of work into adding supports to the roof and to fixing foundation issues.

So, our grand total for foundation repairs: $0!!!

Now all we're waiting on is closing date! It should be Thursday or Friday of next week. Then bring on the sledge hammers!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

More from our inquisitive loan officer

Jenny posted last about our quirky (but helpful) loan officer. Jenny's mostly been handling the loan side but this last Friday I thought I would help out and give the bank a call to take some of the pressure off. Anyway, here is my conversation:

Loan officer: so where did you find your contractor? Is he just some guy off the street?
Me: on the better business bureau. He had the best rating and had been around for the longest time.
Her: oh, have you seen any of his work?
Me: yes.
Her: oh, how did you find the house?
Me: our realtor.
Her: oh, ok.

It kind of felt like an interrogation. She's being really helpful, though, so I guess we'll let her ask lots of questions and think we are crazy.