Move In Day!

It's perfect. Everything about it is perfect and darling and wonderful. I had a similar feeling when I met David. I truly believe this was the house for David and I and we are so excited to make it our own. 

The 31st was our third long night in a row. We had gotten the keys, which meant we needed to unload our cars and UHaul and get the UHaul back to its home by the end of the night. David and I started by unloading my car into the garage before hopping back in and driving the only 22-minute drive to my sister's house (from our condo, it was 40+ minutes). That drive was SO beautiful. I love living in the country. I love seeing little farm houses with cows, goats, chickens, ducks, horses and alpacas scattered along their yard. There's nothing better. David and I made it to their house and he jumped back into the UHaul (he kind of became an expert driver of that thing) and back to our HOME we went. 

Moving the couch was probably one of the worst things I've ever experienced. I'm fairly certain it weighs 400 pounds. I'm not kidding. It was such a struggle and we had to take a break after moving it every few steps.

You know The Hulk? You know how he gets all mad and then explodes into a big green man? I'm pretty sure I looked like that. Or at least my eye did. I thought my right eye was going to actually pop out and roll away. Seriously, that's how hard I was straining myself to get this 400 pound monster in the house. I told David when it's time to get a new one, I will have no part in moving it out or, we'd take an axe to it and that would be that. 

(Special thanks to Andrew for getting the couch out of our condo and into the UHaul with David originally. I would have had two eyes rolling away if I had to be any part of moving that thing twice). 

We ended up moving a lot in on Thursday night since we had to leave for Bend on Friday morning for a family-friend's wedding. The timing of all of this was crazy! I can't even tell you how lovely it was to sleep in our real bed after two nights on the floor.

The Waiting Game

Waiting is really not my favorite thing. I tend to be impatient, especially when it’s for something as fun and exciting as getting our first house. I would be lying to you if I said the experience was totally pleasant. We went through USDA which is an awesome loan option for rural areas; however, the tradeoff is you are at their mercy. After our loan officer got the initial underwriting process completed, they shipped our info off to the USDA and we had to wait for their stamp of approval. 

The entire approval process took weeks (we accepted the counter offer at the end of May and it was now July) and our close date changed FIVE times before we actually closed. It was pretty stressful (apparently they were understaffed and had over 300 applications come in around the same time, ours included), especially since I am a planner.

I think the most stressful part was that the lease in our condo was up on July 31 and we had to move out and have it totally clean by then, regardless of whether we had our keys or not. I was really nervous about being "homeless" for an unforeseen amount of time. Thankfully my sister and brother-in-law and parents graciously offered for us to stay at their house until our loan finally closed. Let's just say, the days leading up to the 31 move-out day were less-than-boring...

This was our timeline:

Tuesday, 29^th: David picked up our UHaul after work and him, our friend Andrew and I loaded it up. We had pretty much everything packed except our bedroom so it was fairly easy to throw it all in there.

Side note: When you move, opt for the bigger UHauls. We were going to get a 17’ moving truck and we are SO happy we didn’t. We got the 28’ and had plenty of room so we didn’t have to play Tetris with all our belongings. Unfortunately, our neighbors who were also moving opted for the 17’ and had to make multiple trips to load and unload it at their new place. It sounds just awful.

At 6:30 pm, we got an email from our loan officer saying the USDA had FINALLY given us their stamp of approval and the paperwork would be available to sign the following day. YAY! We finally had an official closing date!

Andrew stayed until about 9:30 pm after we had a fancy Burger King dinner (without silverware, a table or chairs. David and I closed up the UHaul around after 10 pm and David drove it to my sister’s house in the Forest Grove area to park it until we could actually unload it. We then piled back into my car and got home at about midnight, but because our bed was already packed, we had to make a nice spot on our bedroom floor among the chaos. I think Hank liked it because he could easily sneak around the room while we slept but overall, it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Thankfully our sleeping bags made it less uncomfortable than it could have been. Asleep by 1 am.

Wednesday, 30^th: David had the day off so he spent the day running errands and cleaning/packing more while I was at work. Partway through the day, we got an email saying the paperwork was ready for us to sign! I left work a bit early, picked David up and we made our mad dash to McMinnville to sign the paperwork before their UPS driver came for the afternoon pick up. If we made it in time, we would get the keys the following day. If we missed his pick up, we wouldn’t get keys until Friday. Thankfully we made it in enough time and got those paper signed! It was SO exciting and really made the whole experience real. 

We both left feeling more excited than ever. Especially since we stopped and picked up Chinese food for dinner. 

After dinner, we both worked on cleaning the already emptied rooms before tackling our bedroom. It was another late night cleaning and packing but our cars were loaded and the only things David would need to grab in the morning was Hank, his toiletries and our Brita. Asleep on the floor by midnight.

 

Thursday, 31^st: Moving-Out day had officially arrived. David had scheduled our condo's walk through at 3 pm (I worked again) so I loaded up all the miscellaneous items I could in my car and let me tell you. Driving to work with a box fan, a vacuum, tons of boxes, two laundry baskets and our entire closet in my car made for an interesting trip. It’s a miracle I didn’t get pulled over. I blew the condo a kiss and that was the end of my three year stay there. I’m going to miss that little place, it was perfect while we were there (with the exception of our drunk naked neighbor roaming the neighborhood one night. That was weird). David spent the day over at his sister’s house and we got a text from his sister (our realtor) saying our keys were ready! I got off work and met David and Hank at our new house. David and I turned the key together and he carried me through the threshold to our new home.

David and I are HOMEOWNERS!

Yep, you read that right! After MONTHS of waiting for our loan to close, its official, we bought our first house. 

We originally applied for pre-approval in April and looked on an off for a little while for our perfect home. We couldn’t leave our condo until July so we had some time to kill so we spent hours looking on Redfin, Zillow, MLS, and driving around neighborhoods and visiting a few homes. 

We found one in Lafayette that we liked, it was brand new and we were early enough that we could have picked out some of the items the builders would be adding (paint colors, carpet color, etc.). We placed a very rushed offer but had little time to discuss it with each other due to our work schedules. That night, David got off work late and came in to our room to say goodnight and we finally had a chance to talk through it all. After a long conversation and some tears, we both felt it was right to pull our offer off the table. The commute, the work that needed to go into creating a backyard and our budget weren’t worth it in the end. Praise the Lord we did that. 

In May, we were shown a listing for a house that we thought was really cute! It was a two bedroom, one bathroom, which was a little smaller than we had originally wanted but it did have my dream white kitchen and a cute backyard. I called my mom to discuss it and she also thought it had potential. David and I ended up meeting my parents at the house to walk through and were disappointed with what we saw. Terrible neighborhood, a beat up backyard (they were doing construction on the lot next door) and carpenter ants galore. No room for a kitchen table either which was weird. We knew that wasn’t the one. My parents and David and I ended up looking at a handful of others that night and all fell short. Potential? Definitely, but not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But then we went down the road…

There it was. Standing SO cute in a little neighborhood near the dog park we like to take Hank to, within walking distance from our favorite Mexican restaurant, a church, a produce stand, and a ton of coffee shops. We walked in and it. was. PERFECT. 

Dark floors, white trim, MY WHITE KITCHEN, two bedrooms/one bath and the cutest little backyard. We fell in love even if it was one bedroom and bathroom shorter than we originally were looking for. David and I kept looking at each other and silently giving each other the “I’m-in-love-let’s-get-it-now-eyeballs.” My parents were also excited about it, which made it even more exciting to me. The backyard would need some work but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. 

We drafted up an offer that night (at like 10 pm) and had it submitted the next morning. We ended up getting a counter offer that we accepted over Memorial Day weekend while in Bend with my family. Then it was the waiting game...