...is that we bought a house! WHAAAA?
We heard from our landlord on a Sunday in August that the following Monday she would be listing the house we rent (well, the 2nd and 3rd floors are what we rent). We really wanted to buy it ourselves, but, as it is a huge, beautiful house in a fantastic part of town, it is significantly above our budget.
So all of a sudden, three months after our wedding, we were house hunting. Surprise! Whoops-a-daisy! We thought we had a whole entire year more to save money! To be totally honest I sort of thought maybe we'd never buy a house, since we had a great apartment we loved and a dog, making it hard to find another apartment and we had no interest in moving anyway... NOPE GO FIND SOMETHING YOU CAN AFFORD RIGHT NOW!
It was a long, honestly pretty horrible, slightly soul-crushing process (a story for in-person - or an email, if you're interested, but be warned, it is long and if I hadn't lived it, unbelievable), but it finally happened, and we own a house, and it is an awesome house. It was built in 1904, and while it's been updated a little, it's very charming. We took about a month to paint and fix up a few things at the new place before we moved in (who wants to try to paint around a couch, if we have the perk of another option?).
We moved in last Saturday, and it's starting to feel like home for most of us. We set up one of the three bedrooms as a movie haven with dark walls and surround sound and a ridiculous reclining couch that the previous owner left behind, and having friends over to enjoy the one (sorta) finished space in the house has definitely contributed to it feeling more like home already. Beorn is loving having stairs to run up and down, but can't quite bring himself to poop in our yard yet. Oh, poor puppy. He's confused.
We were able to stay in our neighborhood, about a mile from our previous house (and just a block or so further from the lake, priorities). We can still walk to a ton of our favorite places. Our friends are still close by. Amazing food is still right -----> over there. A handful of the best beer bars in the country are still within walking distance (again with the priorities). This wasn't the way we thought home ownership would happen (if it ever did), but it's worked out pretty darn well. We're halfway (2.5 blocks) between the main street of our neighborhood and the dog park.
We've both been renting various places for the past 15/16 years. One of the first things I did when we got back to the house after closing was stomp around on the wood floors, loudly. And then we did some yelling, and played music really loud.
I just really like knowing that it's our house.
Photos to come, when there are a few fewer boxes around.
Hilariously, the Monday after the Saturday we moved into our house, my car died. Now, this is nothing new. My car has stranded me at least twice a year for the last six years or so. I've been threatening to buy a different car for the last five-ish years. This time, though, when the mechanic where I was towed called to tell me what was wrong, he opened with, "So, you've started looking at cars, right?"
Which is not a good sign.
But when it rains it pours, and more on that later (long story short - I bought a car and on the way to work from the dealership one of the windows got stuck open - hilarity ensued).
Our house is kinda cool. I'll take pictures of it for you soon. We're just really excited to be semi-settled and to have started making this house into our house. Full disclosure - my house does not belong in a magazine, because my design sensibility is limited by a) what we can afford, b) sentimental furniture we've been gifted by relatives (we have so many rocking chairs...), c) honestly, a small and slightly weird little house, d) stuff left behind by the previous owner that is nice and we can't afford to replace right now (namely the curtains), and e) not all of these things working together terribly well with our own style. But hey. We're comfortable, and it's home.
