The Bly's are moving up...

...up the hill! That's right, we're moving - into our new home! Oh yes, we bought a place!! Well, we've come to an agreed offer and it's been accepted and the first of the paperwork is done.

Here's our home buying story: we've been humming and hawing for months, and looking and watching for even more months lol. To comfortably buy a home we needed the house to be 300K or less which in this market and my wish list, that was seeming to be impossible. What was on my list? 4 bedrooms, finished basement, not any closer to the train tracks, not on a busy street, not in certain neighborhoods, a garage, 2 living spaces (a sitting room and a TV room), and a fenced yard. Anyways, my criteria was in homes in the 350K range and I was getting really discouraged. There were houses in our range but I had to compromise on some of the above criteria, which I was not willing to budge on.

So, this house we are going to get meets ALL the above criteria. In fact, the flaws are that there is no neighborhood park in the area, and the backyard is not a level yard (it's slanted cuz of the hill). It was listed at 299, and we have settled at 289 for the selling price. It's a duplex style home with a walk out basement and double attached garage, all three floors are about 2000 sq ft in total. We have to bring in our own washer/dryer, and we will eventually have to replace the appliances (you can totally tell they took out the stuff and replaced with old stuff). The colors are totally colors I love, so I won't have to do any cosmetics. The bedrooms are carpeted which I prefer - and the rest of the house is hardwood and/or laminate (I can't tell the diff between hardwood and laminate). I prefer carpet, but am sure i'll adapt to the non-carpet :) Gonna hafta buy a good quality mop! Oh, and the other detail is that the house has been made to potentially have a basement suite downstairs - so there's a second kitchen. Not that we plan to have people downstairs specifically, it's a neat feature.

We are beyond excited! Darin, our realtor came over last night to have us sign the final offer and now we have to do the legal stuff and inspection. Needless to say we will have possession on February 24th. It's going to be a whirlwind of a February because our Disneyland trip is the 16-22! That being said everything will have to be in place and settled before we leave, and i'll have to get alot packed before we leave because we are hoping to move out of here on Feb 25th (Saturday's are easier I find to move because you can get alot of extra help from people). That will also give me 4 days to clean out the old place.

AH! I pretty much didn't sleep last night (there were other reasons lol, Carter and health reasons that kept me awake, but add in new home-ownership and I reeeeally didn't sleep!). WIsh us luck through the rest of the process!! Bye bye savings...