One Time We Bought a House

I've been putting off this post for months now, but I think if I just sit and start writing it out at least it will have begun, and then it's much more likely to be finished.  The Wife already posted a very good summary/photo tour on her blog, and also a great rundown of some of our projects so far, but I've been planning this in my head all summer so I'm just going to get it down anyway.

So there we were in our 2bd/1bth townhouse apartment in Provo that we really liked, going along our merry way, but then one day little Bobo was not so little anymore, and we realized the shared nursery/office space situation wasn't going to work out indefinitely.  It was getting harder and harder to schedule naptime/worktime, and besides that we knew that before TOO long we would have another little one on the way (and also our landlords rather frown on people having more than one child while living in those apartments).  Also, our contract was about to be up.  So, we started our long and in-depth process of househunting.

I'll spare you the gory and tedious details, but in the end we talked to two real estate agents and two loan officers (one of whom worked at a bank, and one of whom was an actual loan officer and also a relative) and looked at over a dozen houses over a month or two, narrowed it down to a couple of frontrunners, and then decided on what features were most important to us, what we could expect considering our budget/desired mortgage (and learned the difference between settling and compromising), and finally, some three to four months later, and just in time for our fifth anniversary, decided on this place:

It's a 4bed/2.5 bath on a nice 1/3+ acre of land that has really been great so far.  The negotiation process was pretty tiresome at times, but luckily our agent Jared was really great to work with and managed a great deal.  The poor house was on the market for almost a year without a buyer, and after dealing with the seller and even our very first experience with its curb appeal it's not too hard to figure out why, but it's also amazing what a nice mow, a thorough weeding, and a fresh coat of paint in some key spots can do for the overall look of the place (and it makes you wonder why they didn't do that in the first place if they really wanted to sell...).  I guess it's because this house was waiting for US to come along and give it some love and attention, which we knew was all it needed.  It's so nice to have a place that's actually ours, and although homeownership comes with some (pretty expected) big differences compared to renting, we're up to the challenge.  Of course it's been an adjustment in some ways, but we thought, we're done with school, we have a little guy, we're ready to move on in this next big step.

This wasn't our truck, it was our neighbors', but it's always fun to be surprised by my mom and sisters smiling back at you on the back of a U-Haul.

We took care of a few things after signing and before moving in, including getting a few appliances and even painting The Boy's room before putting everything in it.  Then we rented a U-Haul for the first time ever (since we were moving farther than a mile west, which is what we've done for the last three moves), which I had fun driving, and thanks to some family and neighbors, and NEW neighbors, we were able to get out of our apartment and into our house in just a matter of two hours or so, which was awesome.  It took a little while longer to get unpacked and finish up with all our boxes, but it was great to get most of it done so quickly.  Moving in general is such a huge pain, and really ever since we moved into our last place I've been dreading it, but it was nice to have help and to just get it behind us and check off the big things, and then it didn't take too long to feel like we've lived here for a nice long while and for it to feel like home.

Yes, well... this was SOME of our stuff.  Oy, moving.

Such a good little helper.

Too cool.

Seriously, how often do I get to drive a truck this big?

I've been learning a lot about homeownership already, like what to do about a clogged toilet (answer:  don't throw a Sharpie down there in the first place, whoever lived here before and did that).  Thanks for all your help, Handy Matt!

We thought we might get a trampoline next summer sometime, but then Matt said he had one just laying around waiting to be put back together, and asked if we wanted it.  Yes, inDEED!

 

We really love the yard.  Actually one of the main things The Wife was looking for was space, so she could feel like she's not TOTALLY surrounded by neighbors and feel a little more like her home in the midwestern woods.  This back yard has a lot of, erm... personality, but it's been a lot of fun to get to know it better.  The neighbors keep saying that they've been praying for someone to buy the house and take care of the lawn, and it's true what they said -- turn the water back on and it actually does come back before you know it.  The first time we looked at the house we almost didn't even bother looking inside because the lawn was in such terrible condition, but even a mow of the dead grass and waist-high weeds made a huge difference, and a couple weeks of sprinkling and it was even better.  It still needs a lot of work, but it's in great shape to be a more or less blank canvas come spring.

Nursery no more.

This is where I spend a significant portion of my weekday waking hours, and it's nice not to have to work around an increasingly alert and aware toddler's nap schedule.  It's also nice not to have to worry about being too noisy for neighbors downstairs or next door, and to do whatever we want to the place, whether it's paint or plant or replace things or whatever.

Our housewarming party approximately two months after moving in was the impetus that finally persuaded me to put up our art wall.

I think Julie's talking to Melody at the bottom of the stairs.

So many delicious autumnal snacks and cheeses (sans cheese!).  Nice work, Wife.  Also, lawl, The Boy back there.

Mom and Dad reading Roller Coaster (a very favorite around here) to the little boys.  Thanks for the pictures, Matt!  I didn't take a single one.

Oh, there was also that time when we were THIS CLOSE to being on House Hunters...  Yes, Julie applied, and they actually wrote back.  They emailed back and forth a few times, talking about us and who we are and what we're like and why we're moving and what we're looking for, and in the end it was just a matter of timing.  They said we wouldn't be able to move in or make any changes to the house by a certain date, and that day was past our closing date, and we thought it was just better to go into our house as soon as we could (especially since our contract was about to run out, and I did try to extend for a few days, but that turned into a pretty big hassle and mostly it's just a terrible and annoying story about how our landlady said some really rude and unprofessional things to us about losing money on us [not our fault] and how they'll be glad to be rid of us [ideal tenants], and yikes, it wasn't pretty, and mostly I'm just glad we managed to recover ANY of our deposit).  If only HH had written to us sooner!  It's a shame it didn't work out with our timeline, because I am telling you, we would have been great TV.  And that makes the third TV show I've applied for (two of them twice).  One of these days!  Ha ha.

Anyway, that's about it!  We were so close to becoming TV stars, and we had some kerfuffles with landlords/sellers, and we're slowly working through our little project list, but the end result is that we' like our house.  Not long after we moved in The Wife's (almost) entire family were in town, and although it was tight, we all fit for a couple of nights, which wouldn't even have been possible at all in our last place.  Then, some two months after moving in, we finally had our housewarming party, and it was so fun to have a lot of guests, and to have a place to fit them all, and to have a great backyard where we could send the kids to play on the swingset and the rock wall and the trampoline (thanks, Matt!), just like I always pictured.  As I've said before, I hope we really love it here, because we are NEVER moving again!  (At least not for like ten years, ha.)

Written 3 November 2014.

Thing the First: Moving

I have three things I've been meaning to blog about.  (There are actually a few more than that, but these are three more noteworthy recent events that have been on deck for a while.)  So, thing the first is moving.  We moved!  For those who haven't seen already, The Wife blogged yesterday about this as well, including a very amusing animated photo tour (seriously, go look at it, it's hilARious!), but I wanted to document the process a little too.

(Just now I wrote a couple of nice long paragraphs detailing our moving history for the last two years, when I realized I just blogged about that a few weeks ago.  Good thing I noticed, that would have been an embarrassing repeat.)

So yes, last you heard we were about to move.  And then we did!  And I learned a few things:

• Having assistance from friends and family makes a HUGE difference, even if you're only moving half a mile away.  The first night we were working, it was just me and The Wife boxing things up and loading up our lil' car and taking stuff over one carload at a time.  This was VERY slowgoing.  Once Julie's visiting teacher and my parents showed up, it was a completely different experience.  We were almost completely finished packing and moving within a couple of hours.  Thanks, Mom and Dad and Mary!  This has inspired me to be a good helper whenever possible when friends and family are moving.

• Having a family member with a truck is ALSO a huge help.  It spared us the trouble of relocating our couches by hand (again).  Thanks, Jonny!  This has inspired me to have a truck someday so that I can be a Godsend for someone in a similar fashion.

• Sometimes, no matter what precautions you take to prevent a lapse in service (especially since your livelihood depends on being connected to the technological world), there just might be some complications in transferring your internet or TV or electricity or gas service (and issues there were with all of those listed).  There were some serious headaches, but I only had to go to the library to work once or twice.  This has inspired me to take even more precautions in the future, and try not to be too bothered if even those added measures turn out not to make the transition perfectly smooth.

• Cleaning checks are rotten, and even if you spend hours getting your old apartment in far better condition than it was when you moved in, the inspectorlady may nonchalantly wander about and point out things that you spent considerable time cleaning and say it's not clean enough.  Then she'll come back to recheck it after you have another chance to fix it up some more, and probably charge you for the recheck (but she probably won't tell you there will be an extra charge until she takes it out of your deposit).  This has inspired me to be picky about cleaning checks like I was when I was a student, and also to be annoyed by that lady.

• There are a few differences between renting from a big company with lots of properties and from a family that owns just a few.  There are pros and cons to each, but for now we're looking forward to the latter situation.  This has inspired me to try to find out in the future if we were charged extra fees before it's been two years and it's pretty much too late to do anything about them.

• In Provo, moving half a mile away means not only a new ward, but also a new stake.  This has inspired me to, um, keep going to church?  Yes, that.

And those are some of the things I learned throughout the process this time.  And now I'm going to show some of my favorite amenities!  Like I said, The Wife already posted a great tour, so I won't post a lot of pictures, except of my favorite things about living here.

• THIS:

 

I heard someone say once that you should be careful what chores you pick up during the first few weeks of marriage, because then you'll basically be doing those chores for the rest of forevermore, and it seemed perfectly fair that I should handle dishwashing anyway, especially since Julie usually makes (delicious) dinner.  Nevertheless, after almost three years of washing dishes by hand, and discovering some weird and annoying dryness and sensitivity of my hands due to prolonged exposure to water or something, I was just getting kind of vexed with the process, so I was SO ready for this little baby.  I don't know how we ever functioned without it.  I love so much loading it up and turning it on and walking away.  May I never take it for granted.  My hands are already so much happier.

• THIS:

Our old place had coin-operated laundry, but that's annoying and can get expensive, so we mostly spent the last few years loading up our dirty clothing and taking them to Mom and Dad's house.  This was a pretty good arrangement for a while because 1) It gave us a good reason to visit Mom and Dad at least once a week, 2) It was free (less the travel expense, which balanced out, again because it doubled as a visit to the folks, but also because of...), 3) Mom and Dad usually made dinner for us, so we scored some foods out of the deal too.  Still, after a few years of this, planning for the commute and the subsequent wait started to wear on our schedule.  It seems like such a huge luxury to be able to just throw laundry in whenever and then go about your business right there at home.  And it's not in a hallway or bathroom, like so many of the other apartments we looked at!  It's in its own room, a fact with gives The Wife (and me) much glee.

• THIS:

Anyone who knows me well knows of my aversion to summer (or, more accurately, summer heat).  I just hate feeling sweaty and hot and unable to cool down.  Our old place had a very small and fairly ineffective wall unit in the living room.  It actually worked pretty well, as long as you were standing RIGHT in front of it.  Step away in the kitchen and it's basically a big oven, and don't even think about the bedroom or bathroom.  (We discovered during cleaning that a virtual wall of dust might have had something to do with its ineffectiveness, but...  oh well.  It might work better for the new kids who moved in there.)  A standing, rotating fan helped on summer nights, but mostly I felt nasty and sweaty every night.  Once I started working at home, I knew that something HAD to be done, I simply could not survive the long summer months sitting at that kitchen table all day.  This was one of the amenities that we turned down a lot of nice apartments for, and it was the right decision.  I love to hear that AC rumble as it turns on.  Luckily, it's also been a pretty mild summer (some days we don't even need to turn it on, it's been so nice), but still, there have been a few days that were pretty gross, and I don't have to deal with it!  XD  (Until I get in the car to go somewhere, then I still have plenty of opportunities to gripe, ha.)

• The second bedroom is also really nice.  At the moment it's the office, and it's great to be able to shut the door on work at the end of the workday and not be confronted by it and reminded by it at every turn, but in the future this room has the possibility of being multipurpose.

So there you go!  We love our new townhouse place (it has stairs!  We've never had stairs before!  That means no downstairs neighbors!).  We've already had a few visitors for a few nights, and it was great to have space to put them and not have to apologize for how hot they were going to get during the night.  So, friends and family, if you are coming to town and need a place to stay, hit us up!  We're glad to give you a tour and pull out the new air mattress.

Moving blows...

... but having moved is glorious.  Details to follow.  There's been just so much going on for the last couple of weeks that I haven't had a chance to document everything properly here on the blog, so for now, here's your teaser and first look at our new apartment.

We love our new place!

P.S.  Props to me and my Photoshop skills, exhibited above.  You didn't even notice, did you?  I guess that's the point.  But I wanted to make it known for my own purposes. :D

Exciting, Excellent News

I don't want to leave that rant at the top for very long at all, so I decided to follow it basically immediately with some awesome news that counteracts the unpleasantries of the previous one.

For quite some time now, over a year really, we've been in the market for a new apartment.  At the time we started looking around, we had lived here for a year, and our contract had run its course, so we were renting month-to-month.  We wanted to move somewhere a little bigger, but we also wanted to move somewhere we really liked, a place that had all the things we were looking for now that we're both working and feeling much more financially stable, somewhere we could live for a good few years and that would really feel more like home (preferably somewhere just a little farther from Student Town...  We've really liked this area and ward, but there's so much turnover due to the number of students and proximity to campus).  We looked and looked, and never really found anything, and then I was called to be the choir director and Julie was called to work in the nursery, and we did like our apartment a lot, and it was a good deal, and there wasn't nearly the sense of urgency that there was the last time we moved (from a place we couldn't even stand living for six months), so we thought we might as well just keep our eyes open and stay at our current place to save a little money until we found the exact right new place, which apparently I have mentioned here on the blog before.

Flash forward about a year.  I had by this time started actually working from home, commandeering the dining room table (while we have been relegated to eating dinner in the living room), so we thought it was time to start looking again for a place with another bedroom I could use as an office (and, in the future, as a place for a wee one to spend its nights, as it were).  We had done a little apartment hunting here and there throughout the year, taking a few months at a time off, but always checking the listings to see if Our Place ever appeared.  We looked at so many apartments that we started to recognize a handful of really common layouts and amenities, and we found quite a few places we were sure we would have been mostly satisfied with, but we never left a place saying YES.  We thought after a while we were being a little too picky, but then we thought, if we're going to make a move and make it last for several years (maybe our last place before finding a house?), and since our current contract allowed for it, we might as well wait until we can find the place we want!  Still, we adjusted some of our requirements and tried to be a little more flexible.

Then, just as it was starting to look more or less hopeless, and with the unpleasant prospect of another sweltering summer in this oven (especially with me baking in it all the livelong workday), Julie casually mentioned an ad she found on Craigslist.  I was hesitant when they didn't include any pictures (tip:  When you are trying to rent your apartment, POST PICTURES.  Seriously, they really make or break your ad so very much of the time), but I called and made an appointment to swing by anyway, just to take a look.  Through some unfortunate circumstances I actually missed meeting the tenants (because I was looking at another place) and couldn't find the right apartment (I had the number wrong), but I looked at the place from the outside, and was pretty much thinking that we had to see the inside as soon as humanly possible.  I wrote a few emails and made a few calls and after work we had a chance to swing by on our way up to Park City for the weekend.  We walked in, looked around, talked to the wife of the house and her adorable child, and walked out saying YES.  By the next day we had been contacted by the landlady and two days later we had signed a contract (we even scored a discount on rent for signing for two years).  Apparently we were the first to look at it, so they took the ad down right away.  This place has pretty much everything we were hoping for!  It's probably twice as big as where we live now, and IT HAS AC.  The amenities are delightful, but I'll save them for a later post.  For now, this is just breaking the great news.  I actually don't have a picture (like I said, they didn't post any...), but I yoinked this one from Google Maps.  It's the gray one, second one from the left:

I'm trying to convince myself that it's not actually smaller than the apartment surrounding it, it's just sort of sunken in so it looks a little smaller from this angle.

We're moving!  Next week!  XD  And now when family come to visit we will have a place for them to sleep and they won't die of sweating in the night!  And, of course, neither will we.  And I can have my work in a separate place and close the door on it after the workday is done!  We had hoped to move outside of Provo, but this place is just so right that it's worth the possibility that there are still a lot of students around (not that we dislike students, it's just that we both finished school years ago, and that kind of area seems so transitory and impermanent).  It's actually really close to where we live now, like half a mile, but it is a little further from the central radius of campus, and in a little more established neighborhood with seemingly less student-type apartments.  It seems like each time you cross one of these major Provo streets it makes a big difference.  We've basically go about a mile northwest each time we move.  I contacted our current landlord and let them know we're on our way out, as I know our contract requires notice of 30 days, and they told us we would be responsible for rent for May, unless we found someone to take over for that month.  I posted an ad online (with plenty of pictures!) and that very night we had a young engaged couple come look at it, and just a few days later THEY had applied and were approved.  This really has been a good place, and it's a great deal, so I felt bad telling the other interested parties that the place had been sold, but mostly I was just glad there was so much interest, it made my job a lot easier.  That weekend in Park City we could think and talk of little else but how excited we were.

Patience and persistence and perserverance and prayer.  Those are the four Ps that made this possible.  And I guess that's a fifth P.

So yes!  That's it!  Great news!  Details to follow!  Very shortly!

Changes

Time passes, and as it does things inevitably change.  Of course there are some things that remain ever unaltered, such as the undying devotion I feel toward my wife of now over eight months, but some things can and must change, and lately two very significant things have evolved for the better.

#1:  The living situation

I guess I never really addressed our big move.  After almost six months of unreasonable and vexing issues in our first apartment involving space and housing quality (read: disgusting creature infestation), crazy neighbors, questionable neighborhood, infuriating management and spotty maintenance (the details about which I won't bore you here), we decided it was time to try to sell our contract early and seek new accommodations.  We did some research, showed our place and within a matter of weeks we were out of there forever.  The poor fellow who finally bought our contract did so sight-unseen, but we decided that we felt good about giving our contract up to someone, especially a single guy because:  It's actually a pretty good sized space for a single man, even if he does, as we were led to believe, have a sometimes-child with him; most of the management issues would have been solved, since the property had recently been purchased by a different company (who have been giving us real problems as far as getting our deposit back is concerned, but that's for another blogpost...  Just beware of REMS, Inc. is all I can say); the bug situation was reportedly on the mend; the neighbor situation had been improved considerably; the contract only went until August, so if it was bad the new tenant could just put up with it for a few months (heck, we did) and then opt not to renew.  We had a lot of good memories at our old place, including our first winter and holidays, but it was time for a change.  And even though we only moved about a mile and a half away, the situation is decidedly improved, and considering other circumstances (see #2 below), we decided we could afford a few more dollars a month for such an upgrade.

#2:  The working situation

As I said, certain circumstances led us to feel that we could afford to move into a better situation.  Julie found work after several frustrating months of searching, and was quickly welcomed into her employers' good graces due to her high productivity, positive attitude and fun personality (not to mention that nice Masters degree...), and they have been encouraging her to apply for promotions and other such opportunities.

Hot on the heels of Julie's employment success, I experienced a little of my own.  Since last May I had been working as a graphic designer for a local company that creates and prints phonebooks for publication and distribution in Arizona, California, Wyoming, Arizona and Utah, and while I was grateful to have a job to pay for wedding and honeymoon necessities, and to live on while Julie looked for work, it was always a temporary situation until I found something a little more profitable and relateable to my education.  There were times I was so frustrated that I was ready to walk out immediately, but I knew I had to stick it out until something else came along, and I never stopped looking for new opportunities.  When the supervisor for the Hmong interpreters at General Conference indicated that his place of employment might be looking for a new/additional graphics man, I told him to definitely keep me informed.  Just two weeks ago I talked to him in length about the job, and he said they would definitely be looking for someone new.  I had been waiting for something else to come along, and along came something!  I submitted by resume, complete with link to my online portfolio, and by the next day I had been contacted and scheduled for a phone interview.  Within the week I was offered a job making much more than I currently was, working remotely (at home!) and doing work much closer to my field of study!  They wanted me to start immediately, but I insisted on giving the office some kind of notice, however minimal.  The company is Pearson, and their work is largely products, presentations, programs and websites for use in every level of the education system; the job is graphic designer/animator, and the atmosphere is fun and creative; most of the interaction is via web meetings and phone calls.  The only drawback is that the job was initially listed as temporary, but the company is very optimistic that it will turn permanent in the next few months.

By the end of the week they'll have me set up with a killer home office, including a new Mac and fancy tablet, and I'll be learning a lot and adjusting to new things, I'm sure.  I look forward to and welcome the challenge.  I've also worked out a deal with Dad to rent some of his unused office space so I can spread out and have a more roomy studio space until we have more room at home.

So that's what's been going on!  We love our new apartment, and I'm looking forward to some new work.  It's not my dream job of course, but until Disney calls me up, I'm glad to expand my skill set, build my resume and do some creative work on the way.

A Productive Day -- UPDATED

Things I have taken care of today:


So, I guess I'm back on my way to Provo again for sure. I really hope my mission friends are still planning on moving there with me, because it took some real searching to find a place with more than one opening for a decent price.

I also freed myself of a project that I am unable to deal with at the moment. I feel like I accomplished quite a lot today! Now and then I just feel driven. Could be by unnecessary panic.

Update: So the apartment I had turned out to be a bust. Luckily they didn't process my application so there was no need to deal with refunds or broken contracts. I found a house for me and a mission friend to move into. Good location, reasonable price (they have just gone up since I was in school!), and it looks like a nice place! The landlord even threw in a nice giftcard from Target for both of us! As if he needed to provide incentive... There were a lot of people interested in the spots. I'm glad to live in a house instead of an apartment for a change, should be fun.