Under the Wire

The most nail biting day of my life.

Our deadline to firm up our mortgage was 5:59pm. Our mortgage broker did not have an answer as of 4:19pm today. Or at least not a firm answer. At 4:20 we got the call - and that allowed us to sign waivers and officially buy a house!

This house is everything we wanted, other than four outside walls that are ours. It has a great kitchen including a fantastic breakfast bar. My father always says that you need 18 feet from the fridge, stove and sink. We definitely have that. The kitchen is laid out well but due to a dishwasher, we might not have as much cupboard space as we would like. The main concern is about canned goods and such that we currently keep in our back pantry room. This kitchen doesn't have that space so we are talking of making some minor adjustments.

In the front entry we have this arched in area with a pillar. The pillar really is a good feature to so many, but we aren't really huge fans. We would rather take one half of the arched area and put in shelves and cupboard doors so that we can hide our kitchen goodies away. The current owners use an ikea shelf in the living room to hide their food. That doesn't really seem like an option for us so we'll try to find other solutions. In the meantime, we are going to be storing our appliances that we don't use that often in the cold storage room. Yes folks - we have a cold storage room.

There are little facets of this house that we never even imagined we'd be able to have in our first house. Like the cold storage room. Like open concept without being really small. Like a finished rec room and one of my other favourites - a gas fireplace.

I've always wanted a fireplace, but knowing what my parents go through with their wood burning fireplace, I thought it might be too much work. Now that James has played with it and said that all it takes is a push of a button - I feel that I can finally handle it! There is nothing cozier than being around a fire - who cares if you don't get the smoke and the ash in the air while you do it? It's going to make those cold winter nights seem all that more special!

Another interesting feature of the house from the inspection is that we have not only the rough in already in the master, but we have a rough-in for another bathroom in the basement. Putting a bathroom downt here might be a good idea. We've talked of future renovations where we expand the laundry room, move the location of the door and building a two piece bathroom. The rec room really truly is huge - but I think another bathroom on that level would be worth a lot more. After all, we really do want to build equity and get a good return on our investment. They always say - people will pay for good bathrooms and kitchens! Why should we be any different?

Now that we have officially bought the house, my brain is racing with thoughts of what I'd like to do and how I'd like to decorate. Which furniture is going to go where and then to all the things that we still need! With extra rooms as we have, we really need to think about how we are going to fill them. A new dining room suite would be perfect - but then we also need outdoor furniture, a lawn mower, snow shovel, gardening tools and all the other fun things that come along with having a house of your own. It's going to be a really fun journey and I'm really glad we went through all the headaches to get such a wonderful place of our own!

Favourite People

After a great night last night talking to some of my favourite people, I got to thinking of all of my favourite people. I started to wonder what it was that I liked about all of them and what it was that made them "favourites" of mine.

I realized what it was and it made perfect sense.

I really like genuine people.

I strive to be as honest and open with people. I tend to like everyone until they give me a reason not to - and many of my favourite people are like that. They are honest, and open with me and really tend to look me in the eye when talking to me. I find that incredibly important and if you can't look me in the eye, it's hard to find the trust and honesty in you.

I must say, that in the spirit of this season, it was really great to talk to some of those genuine type people. It wasn't about gifts, it was about friendship and laughter. I had a great time and I was glad to have been given the opportunity. Now if I could just somehow see ALL of my favourite people this holiday season it would be wonderful.

Either way I send my love out to all of you, no matter where in the world you are, my favourite people.

Boys and their Toys

Sorry for the lack of blogs since Tuesday. I've barely been sleeping, except for Wednesday night where I fell asleep at 8pm and didn't wake up until after 7 the next morning. It's absolutely amazing the thoughts and worries and everything that comes along with the purchase of a house!

Our first step was to get the financing in place. We were preapproved, but our broker is working at getting us a better rate. Initially, she was going for 5.4% - which that day was a good rate. Now she's working on 4.99% - which is even better! I love that the rates have gone down!

My biggest complaint is the lack of communication from our mortgage broker! It's amazing how frustrating it is working with her. I know she's doing things for us, but I'm dying to find out what's going on. If she didn't have all our info - and we didn't have a deadline of Monday at 6:59, we would be dealing with someone else. I'm certain that when we get to renegotiating our mortgage we will not be dealing with her.

Agent M however is being fantastic! She found us a great Home Inspector - and the price was awesome and the book is outstanding. Through our finalizing of the agreement, the homeowners gave us a copy of their inspection from two years ago. The binder is so small compared to ours. And their inspector mentioned things that weren't even a real issue - according to our Inspector and our agent. (Ie. deck needing a railing, even though it's less than 24 inches - which means that legally you don't need it.)

Our home inspection went really well. There are some minor things, but they all seem like things we can do ourselves or very easily get fixed for minimal cost. James had the pleasure of being there start to finish. Unfortunately, I can't take much time off, so I just took an extra half hour at lunch and popped into town. I was incredibly happy to see that it was 24km round trip. I was there in no time it seemed and smiled the whole way!

Pulling up to the house I was so excited - but walking in is when you get the biggest impact. It's so spacious and roomy. James met me at the door, and we headed immediately into the basement. I kept looking around at everything and it was great to have our inspector point out things we didn't even know - like the fact that the basement has a rough in for a bathroom! That means the house could potentially have four bathrooms!

I love the gas fireplace in the basement too - and James likes it even more when he and the inspector got to play with the remote. James was smiling as he told me about how you can adjust the flame simply by touching a button. Of course that smile was nothing compared to the ear to ear grin as he told me about the basement being wired for surround sound. It's got him dreaming of speakers and how he's going to put everything together. He's also dreaming of a bigger tv thanks to Curtis' new purchase. Kristina and Curtis moved into their new house and the deal was that he'd get a new tv for the deal. James thinks it's a great idea, and thanks to the current home owners having a HUGE entertainment centre - James thinks we needs to have a bigger tv to go with the surround sound. Boys and their toys!

Before I went back to work I walked the house by myself. I tested the taps in all the facets, and loved the view from the kitchen over the dining and living room. Open concept living is going to be great for us, as we love to entertain. Also once we have kids it will be so much easier to watch the little kiddies so they don't get in trouble. I love how bright the house was too!

Upstairs the bedrooms seemed different, but not in a bad way. The main bedrooms seemed a little smaller - but still big - and the small bedroom seemed even bigger. I took a spin in the walk-in-closet to checked it out. In my head I was scheming where we'd put our clothes - and just which racks I let James have. (He's going to kill me for saying that!) I realized that we'd probably want to hide our clothes we don't wear that often behind the door.

My favourite room I think is the kitchen, even though it has some limitations. We'd like to put in a pantry beside the kitchen. I hadn't really thought of it before having not ever had one - but dishwashers remove one whole cupboard! This makes your cupboards just that tiny bit less. I still can't believe the house has a dishwasher too - as I can see standing at the sink, looking out and talking with guests, or talking to James - or even just looking out the window across the room at the backyard with it's deck and two gorgeous bushes. James really wants some stainless steel and he's working out a scheme with Norm and Penny for a trade - we get them a new white set, and they give us some stainless steel that they are getting from friends. I just laugh and shake my head - this is our first house - we don't need to have our dream appliances right off the bat do we?

The strangest thing about the whole house buying process was that we ended up falling in love and offering on a newer house, when we started out with older homes. It's no secret that we wanted some charm and personality in our first house. This house, being a row house, isn't that much of an individual when you first look at it. But when you walk inside it truly feels different and special. It will hopefully soon be our unique house - that is ours. It's all down to CMHC -and I'm trying to not get too attached in case they decide to completely dash our hopes and dreams.

This is why - if you say "Congratulations" I won't really be over the moon yet. Until the final papers are signed, I'm going to be sitting and worrying and fretting - and yes, not sleeping very well! But this house, really is a dream and I hope and pray that we can finalize everything on Monday and sign on the dotted line!

The good the bad and the ugly

I know many of you loyal readers are anxiously awaiting the gory details of today so let me fill you in on the lovely day we've had.

Everything happens in threes right - well it happened today.

First, our real estate agent heard nothing last night with regards to our offer. She was calling and paging the sellers agent all night and got no word. She had said for us to have some sleep and think happy thoughts. We did, and slept very well. Strange for me, as I'm normally a nervous sleeper and would be up a million times. But something kept me sleeping - so I'll take it!

Woke up and by 9:30 heard NOTHING and was starting to get a little worried. I emailed Agent M, she said that she had just gotten paged from the sellers agent and would get in touch via email. Guess they couldn't get ahold of the sellers last night, so they were meeting in the afternoon to go over the offer. Agent M asked if we could meet her at her office after work again so that we could go over their response.

I decided to talk to our mortgage chick and confirm everything and let her know what was going on. She came back and told me that we couldn't get the house for what we wanted. I freaked - hit the roof, blew a gasket and threatened to go to another lender if she wasn't able to help us. Within five minutes she was apologizing to me for reading the numbers incorrectly (James is paid in US funds and that effected the rates and stuff.) So anyhow, she said that we'd be good to go.

With that horrible thing out of the way, I get an email that James' car got hit in the driveway by my brother in law and that he just feels awful about it. Both James and I know that his car isn't the best of the best, so we were more concerned about my brother-in-law, who is a sensitive sort. My sister told me that they'd pay for the damages, and when we asked what they were, neither of us were that concerned. Some scratches on the door and the mirror. No big deal right? It didn't matter really, as it just seemed to be another thing that was bad today.

The next thing that happened to me was that my pen at work exploded all over my hands - and without noticing it, I went and put my fingers on the keyboard. I now have several letters that are all blue, and I had to go to the bathroom to clean my hands off before going to meet with Agent M.

James didn't fare much better as he has a really bad canker sore in his mouth that has irritated his world. All in all - things didn't look that great.

We meet with Agent M, and sure enough they didn't accept our lowball offer. We bantered back and forth before going and settling on an option. We knew our top - and we knew they didn't want to barter back and forth. We decided give them our best offer, which was still lower than their counter, agree to whatever terms they wanted and say "If they turn it down, then they turn it down and we walk away." They had until 11pm to give us an answer.

We didn't feel that positive about the situation when we left - even though we were now only $3000 apart. We went to eat as neither of us wanted to cook, and spent the $30 we had in our pockets. Dinner was pretty quiet and the only thing we really talked about was what we'd do if the deal fell through. Knowing how much house we could get if we went the townhouse route, we decided we'd probably keep looking at newer homes. We were hopeful, but not, especially after our bad day.

We came home and were met with wishful eyes of my parents and my Uncle Bob who were sitting down to dinner. They wanted to talk about the house and what was going on and so I pulled up the trusty computer to show the photos and the MLS listing. (I'd share with all of you, but until all is said and done, I don't want to get my hopes up too much.)

The computer died just as the slide show was done and we talked about all the possibilities with the house. My mother was very positive that this was the right house for us and James and Uncle Bob got in a very serious discussion about the appliances and the merits of putting a laundry room on the top floor.

Dad went out to plow and then the phone rings. Whoever it was started talking to my mom like it was me and she was all flustered when she realized it wasn't. Mom said "It's Heath, it's... it's her mother. Hold on." Sure enough it was Agent M.

"There's one condition and then you've bought yourself a house."
Tentatively I say "Okay - what is that?"
"They want to know if you'll change the move in date to March 13th instead of the 6th and they've accepted your price and everything else."

Of course!!!!!

So now we have to start on the financing and arrange the inspector and get everything moving at a very rapid fire pace. We have a very short window to get everything said and done. This is crazy and insane and I'm so incredibly happy and excited at the same time. But I know how much we have to go through and it's a lot - namely the mortgage. I think we'll be fine, but I want to be extra sure and until we have final CMHC approval, there's no point in getting my hopes up too much.

So stay tuned to all the fast and furious changes that are sure to come in the next week.

I must say, this truly is a great birthday present!

Reservations

So my hubby woke up with reservations. Well one reservation. "It's a townhouse. What's it like living in a townhouse? I thought we wanted to get a full house and I keep thinking we'll find the perfect house that is a stand alone house."

Like any computer nut, he put it on his facebook and his twitter and asked for opinions. People talked to him and helped him see that it isn't a bad thing at all. The only complaint is neighbours and after talking to the homeowner yesterday, I know that they really are nice people and very helpful.

So we ended up putting in an offer. Now we play the waiting game. Trying not to get my hopes up as the sellers agent hasn't been returning my agents calls.

Fingers crossed that all goes well, they counter, we counter back and get it all sorted by their self imposed deadline of tomorrow night. It'll be a long night possibly. Wish us luck!