Purchasing Our Abode...

The purchasing of our home went a little something like this:

I emailed an old friend who now works in real estate and told him we were ready to purchase. He came over to our apartment, talked us through the process and what to expect, we signed an agreement, told him what we wanted and a few days later he sent us a bunch of houses in our desired location and price range. I sifted through the initial batch and when I came across our house - it was love at first sight. Everything about it was perfect - the entrance, the kitchen, the skylights in the bedrooms! Without ever stepping foot in the house, I could see us living there and THAT, I was told, was what finding your perfect house was all about.

Of course, knowing what my boyfriend's reaction would be if I told him this right away ("don't get sold on the first house you see!"), I treated it as a "top pick" and placed it amongst the other "potential candidates". We looked at my "finalists" list together, managing to narrow it down to our top six, which of course included our house. When I emailed my friend a few days later, I made sure to stress to him how badly "we" wanted to see that house.

I was actually so excited about seeing our house that first night, I could barely concentrate on the first place we looked it. With a great location, but very little character, I just couldn't get excited about it. From there we headed to the house that would soon be ours, and after seeing it in person I loved it even more. My boyfriend admitted that he liked it, but had his concerns and wanted to make sure we saw a few more before we committed ourselves. I understood where he was coming from, and spent the next few days trying not to get my hopes up as we waited for our next evenings of walk-throughs.

When we headed out for that second night, I was pleased to learn that our agent had set up a second walk-through of our house. After checking out a couple of other houses that just didn't quite do it for us, we went for another spin with more of a critical eye. My boyfriend maintained that he had concerns about the basement, but after talking it over we agreed that this was the house we wanted to put an offer on. Without waiting a moment longer (as we didn't want our wonderful find to be snatched away from us), we drafted up an offer that night and our agent presented it the following morning.

After a bit of back and forth, we got the good news that the house was ours! We called everyone we could to share the good news and then celebrated, all the while I was silently freaking out that I had just made the single largest purchase of my life (along with my boyfriend of course)!!! After my minor freak-out subsided, all of the ideas, dreams and wishlists of what I wanted to do started to pile up. However, as a young couple, purchasing our first home, I knew that I would have to find a way to do it on a budget, and thus, my material for First Time Fancy began to develop without my evening knowing it.

A few minor hiccups along the road to home ownership, but we survived (barely) and on July 17th we picked up our keys from our lawyer and began the work that would turn our little house into the home we always wanted!