Making It Home

The main takeaway from the inspection on Sunday?  There might be water in the garage and basement.  Probably at least the garage.  The owner claims that they used to have a problem but fixed it was drains in the driveway and sump pumps.  However, my Dad and I are not so sure.  There were water stains around the edges of the garage.  But we are going to have another water-proofing inspector come in and give us an estimate.  Once we hear back, the plan is to go back to the seller with a concession.  There were some other things the inspector also found, like the chimney flue needs to be fixed, a water pump valve needs to be replaced, and the front steps are cracked due to water penetration.  I’d like to get $10,000 taken off the price of the house, but that could be wishful thinking.  🙂

After the inspection, mine and Dave’s parents came over to help us paint!  We painted all of Dave’s living and dining room area and eggshell white.  Dave and I also have been putting in a lot of hours clearing out his house, scrubbing it down, and making it ready to sell.  Dave has been working until 1am cleaning and painting and packing since Sunday!

We met the mortgage guy the other day to go over the final papers and talk to Maria about selling Dave’s  house.  She came over to take pictures of his condo and plans to list the house as soon as possible.  Let’s just hope that there is someone out there looking for a 2br 2ba North Brunswick condo!

We came out of attorney review!  It took about 10 days, and those 10 days were a bit stressful.  Since Dave has been busy with work, I have been handling all of the day to day tasks such as talking to the lawyer, faxing in contracts, phone calls with Maria.  I also had my fair share of freaking out – and spent many hours finding comparables in the area (I still think we found a good deal), researching driveway drainage problems (I think we won’t have a problem with the down-sloping driveway) and making actual trips to the house.  I also decided to find a new lawyer that could help us more with our house-buying contract.

In the end though, we made it out of attorney review and it’s time for inspection!  We are meeting Maria and the inspector tomorrow at the house at 9am.  My parents will also meet us there, and then we will all (minus Maria and the inspector) meet Dave’s parents back at his house for a painting party!  We plan on painting the living room and bedroom, as well as the moldings.  We also want to regrout the bathrooms.  We already moved a lot of stuff to my basement – Dave’s loveseat, chest and some computer stuff.  We just have to move out his bedroom bookshelf and we are ready for Maria to take pictures on Wednesday!  We are hoping it is not impossible to sell this house!  It looks like North Brunswick took a little bit of a hit with the down real estate economy.

Wish us luck at the inspection – and maybe a few dollars off the price too 😉  Once that’s over, we’re done!  Just have to wait until closing.  I will be back tomorrow with a recap and pictures.

Now that we almost-purchased a new house, it’s time to sell Dave’s house.  Looking back, we probably should have started this process a little sooner than now, but oh well.  First thing’s first – we need to start with the outside.  After two trips – one to Home Depot and the other to Lowe’s, we finally got all of the needed equipment – mulch, brick, shovels, brooms, hose.

Before:

After:

We weeded, pruned, raked and added mulch.  We also got new brick fence – things.  Much prettier!  Dave also took a shot at fixing the screen door:

It was a fun day!

Our offer was accepted a few days ago and attorney review is nearly over!  We’re just waiting to hear back from our lawyer.  The seller’s lawyer already responded and ours has been MIA over the past 48 hours or so.  It makes me nervous!  I spent many hours over this past week slightly stressing about the purchase we just made, going through all of the comparable houses for sale and recently sold in Bridgewater to make sure we are getting the right price.  (And I think we are – I bet that house can easily get $20k more than what we paid).  Dave and I also spent many hours thinking and talking about the finances of owning a home together.  And boy, is it complicated (and STRESSFUL).  I think we’ve settled on a plan that works for us.  And finally, best of all, I’ve been pouring over the pictures to the home – at work, at home, with my Mom.  I love the house more and more every day.  I can’t wait until attorney review is over and we’re all back at the house during the inspection.  I can’t wait to move in.

This weekend will be spent sprucing Dave’s current house to get ready for sale.  We’ll be doing some yard work, painting, and lots of cleaning.  I am looking forward to it!

What an exciting day!  We took our parents to see the Bridgewater Open House around 2pm.  We toured the house for a good hour and a half, examining all the ins and outs, crawling around the basement and talking with the real estate agent.  Our parents loved it just as much as we did!  The house is double the size, and triple the property, and $60k less than anything else we’ve been seeing.  It was priced to sell so we knew we needed to move quickly.

And quickly we did.  Right after we all went to Starbucks, discussed what we should do, and Dave and I met Maria at her office around 5pm.  We submitted an offer!  We went lower than asking price – $425.  An hour after leaving Maria’s, she called back with a counter-offer of $435.  We countered again with $430 and it was accepted!  So now it just goes to attorney review and inspection.  And we wait with our fingers crossed!

It was an especially good day since we ran races this morning – 5k for me and 25k for Dave.  He did amazing, with a time of 1hr48m – faster than marathon pace!  I think he’ll do great in Niagara.

Friday night we took our parents to go see the house in Berkeley Heights.  They both really liked it.  We spent over an hour inspecting, walking around, and sketching out the master bedroom extension.

The house is very cute!  Small but there is potential to add on.  The backyard is a decent sized, and the neighborhood is first class.  Plus, it’s only about 15 minutes away from my job.  More like 40 minutes away for Dave and even further from my house, and an hour and 20 minutes from Dave’s parents!  Our plan was to go see a couple of more houses the next day and then maybe place an offer on this one.

However, today changed everything.  Last week we decided to add more western towns to our list since the further away you move from the city, the less expensive and the larger the properties.  And yes, that proved to be true!  We first went to a cute house in Warren.  Pretty, but very awkwardly laid out and still very small.  Plus, it was near a busy street and it was very loud in the yard even though you were half a block away.

Next we went to a house in Martinsville which looked so nice in the pictures but a little strange in person.  Again, a very badly laid out house – it called itself contemporary.  We called it weird.  However, it was very wooded – it reminded me of being in the Poconos.    But who wants to live in the Poconos?

THEN, we drove about another 10 minutes west into Bridgewater and found this house.

It’s a cape code style house, but oversized and with a huge extension added on.  Within 2 minutes of walking in, both Dave and I loved it.  And as we toured more, there were so many more things about it that we loved.  The living room was very pretty.  Needs new floor and paint, but everything else was new.

There was a dining room right off the living room that also needed new floor, but it was a nice space.

The kitchen was recently remodeled and included granite countertops and brand new appliances.  Also, white cabinets, which I love!  The backsplash was also so pretty.  The kitchen was eat-in which has been rare among the houses in our price range.

Moving on… off the kitchen was the extension – a master bedroom SUITE.  Complete with a large hallway with beautiful shelving, a 2 room master bathroom (with a huge jacuzzi with skylights above it), an oversize granite shower, and best of all… a walk-in closet the size of a bedroom.  It was bigger than almost all of the bedrooms in the other house.

The bed part was in a huge room with these oversized windows all around.  It was also circular shape which was very unique.  It had patio doors out to the deck as well.

There was another half bathroom on the first floor next to the kitchen and another bedroom.

Then we went upstairs!  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of it.  It was the area that needed the most work.  There were two bedrooms, a fully remodeled bathroom, and a great big foyer area (maybe a future playroom!?).  The two bedrooms definitely needed new carpeting and some painting.  But all things we could handle.  And slowly, since we would never even need to go up there (for now).  Well… I think my Mom and Dave’s Mom may have plans on owning the upstairs when they come visit.  🙂

Then we walked outside.  Almost 1 acre of park-like backyard.  A huge deck and then all grass and trees.  The grass was extremely dry which is a good sign after one week of rain.  And it was a very flat yard – so there’s potential to do a lot of things with it.

Dave and I walked around for a few minutes out there – I skipped out of happiness!

Finally, we went down to the finished basement.  Which almost came as a surprise since we were already happy.  Beautiful finished basement – Pergo floors which may need to be replaced in the next year or so.  But would be a great gym.  Laundry is also down there.

We love it – it’s the first house and fits what Dave wants and fits what I want – and still big, beautiful, in a great location (30 min to work for both)…. anndddd, the cheapest yet!!!  $60k below our max price!  We need to act quick – tomorrow we’re taking our parents back to it and hopefully putting in an offer tomorrow or Monday.  I really hope it works out!  We never stopped talking about that house until about 9pm tonight.  We explored Bridgewater before going to dinner, and we found some nice things within 10-15 minutes of our (hopefully) future home.

Since Wednesday, Dave and I have been talking about one house… the 1,150 square foot, .27 acre ranch in Berkeley Heights. We both really liked the house when we toured. It was small. Too small for more than just two people. Yet there was something about it… maybe the living room with the huge windows…

Or beautiful yard…

or (for me) the kitchen, albeit a little small….

And we both really liked the front

But, it was still small.  We started drawing up the current floor plan and discussing what possible additions we could do.

This was our sketch, thanks to Google Sketchup.  We then thought adding a master bedroom off the current master and making one of the bedrooms an office leading out to the living room may be the best way to go!  Here was our proposed:

We then talked to Maria who called the township to inquire about getting approval, comparables, and the floor plan/survey from the owners.  Here is a look at the actual floor plan:

I’m excited!  I found myself doodling sketches of the floor plan when bored in work meetings.  🙂  Hopefully we’ll be able to bring our parents to go see the house in the next week or so.  Luckily, it’s about 50k below our maximum price… maybe we can get it a little lower.  At least it will leave some extra funds for the extension.

We met Maria our real estate agent at 5:30 at our first stop in Berkeley Heights.  Was a 20 minute commute for me, 35 minutes to Dave!  Nice quiet street.  Very creepy house.  So much so that I could not even go down the basement by myself (Maria was outside and Dave was not there yet).  Take a look at this picture and you’ll see why.  These people were weird!

They converted it into a bar with a nautical theme.  It was very strange.  The house needed to be gutted and remodeled so badly that it was not worth the price.  We then saw another house that was really nice… too bad it was on the corner of a really busy street.

The next house was not great, plus the owners were home, and they were wacko.  It smelled so badly in there, I can still smell it and I want to gag.  Next we went to the cutest house on the list!  The yard was AMAZING!  Too bad the house was a size of a dollhouse, no joke.  The master bedroom had no room for a bed and the rest of the bedrooms were in the basement.  But isn’t it cute?

After, we went to our favorite house of all!  But it was so small… we would definitely add on an extension.  The street was very quiet, and the yard was big!  The living room had great window overlooking the yard.  Kitchen was small.  But great potential!  And about $50k cheaper than the other houses we have been looking at!

And the last house was bland, small and too expensive.

To reward a hard day of searching, we went to Round Grill in New B runswick.  We drove 50 minutes through scary thunderstorms to get there!  But it was worth it!

After a couple of months of searching for houses in Cranford and Westfield, Dave and I have yet to find a house we really love.  Or for the right price.  Two very expensive towns with very high taxes!  It’s been fun looking around, especially since it gets us up nice and early on a Sunday morning.  We even brought our parents to look at a few houses.  As fun as it’s been, I always get a little sad and stressed after another unfruitful house hunt.

However, we are hopeful about a new town we have not yet looked in – Berkeley Heights.  Slights cheaper houses, bigger lots, more trees, and lower taxes!  Like $2,000 – $4,000 cheaper than Cranford and Westfield.  Also, 10 miles from my job and 12 miles from Dave’s.  Nice!  So our first house hunt in this neighborhood is tomorrow.  There’s something unique about each of these houses.  There are things I love and don’t love about each of them.

Tomorrow we will see a couple of ranches and split levels.  Wish us luck!