Rental Rendezvous

Welcome to day 2 of BEDA! As I said in a previous post, I wanted to post pictures of the new place. Today is the day! Now, forewarning, it's a jumble of boxes and things yet to be put away. We have two or three rooms that look somewhat habitable, but other than that, it's chaos and destruction. It's very interesting going from about 11-1200 square feet to 800, if Ryan and I don't kill each other by the end of this, it will be a miracle. Much organization is to be done, I'll tour you through space by space and let you know my grand vision for each! Buckle up friends, here we go:

Outside, Patio:

To Do:
- Bird feeders outside the widows for the kitties to watch the pretties
- Get a better outside table, sell white wrought iron set
- Globe lights for the awning

Outside, carport/shed:

To Do:

- Put a firepit/seating area out behind the fence panel 

- Organize the shed with moving boxes, tools and things we don't need on a regular basis

- Move Ryan's motorcycle from the old rental to the carport of the new rental

Living Room: 

To Do:

- Add some bookshelves for my 10,000 unread books

- Get some artwork to hang above the couch

- Replace the chest we are using as a coffee table 

- Get a lamp to light the dark side of the room

- Get a shelf for the reading nook (?) and get artwork above reading chair

Kitchen/Dining Room:

To Do:

- Organize, get rid of the boxes (obviously)

- Get some greenery to grow on the deep window sills 

- Stool cushions

Bedroom: 

To Do:

- Move second dresser into bedroom 

- Get larger picture to cover the electrical box

- Picture to balance out the window on the left side of the room

- Get Ryan a night light on his nightstand

- Move mirror into closet

Bedroom Closet:

To Do: 

- Get a shoe rack 

- Hooks to hang all my scarves on 

- Larger mirror above Ryan's dresser 

Bathroom: 

To Do: 

- Get nautical shower curtain like this one

- Artwork above the toilet

- Something to put my straightener in 

Office: 

To Do: 

- Go through and organize all box content

- Bookshelves like these (in white)

- Configure room, thinking floating table (in the middle of the room) with the chair facing the entry way

- Sell dresser that's up against the right hand side of the room

- Artwork to balance window on left side of the room

- Table lamp 

Counter Conclusions

Last I left off with the house situation, Ryan and I were about to do a second walk through of the wonderful 1800's Victorian, and were thinking of putting in an offer. Since, we actually have put in an offer and have verbally accepted a counter with plans to sign the paperwork on Monday! I'll go over what we've been through up to this point:

5/27/2013: Upon meeting our realtor at the house to do a second walk through with Ryan's dad, we found out the house in a short sale. At first, this turned my stomach. I didn't really know what this meant and from anything I had heard previously, it was going to be a bad deal. Thankfully with the help of our realtor (who is experienced in short sales), we were able to come to terms with this and move forward. The definition of a "short sale" is a property whose debts outweigh it's worth. Basically, our seller bought the house in 2006 for $237,000 and it's now worth a lot less and the seller cannot afford to repay the loan he has on the house. The bank has accepted the house back at $135,000 from the seller, and thus, we get the asking price of $139,900.

5/30/2013: After a few days of talking, Ryan and I decided we were ready to put in an offer. To limit the amount of money we would pay out of pocket, we decided to offer full price for the house with the bank paying closing costs (about $6500). Ryan and I both agreed that we didn't want to go into homeownership penny less, so the least we could pay up front, the better. It was a lonnnnnnng few days before we heard anything.

My view from signing day.

6/2/2013: Ryan and I were feeling good about our offer. To be honest, we kind of thought we would at least hear back from the seller by Friday, but there was no word. I'm not sure how most short sales work, but with ours, the seller and the bank had to approve our offer before we could move forward. We went into the weekend anxiously awaiting word, only to hear nothing until Sunday evening. We ran into our realtor at a going away party for a friend and she told us there might be another offer on the house- GASP!!! At this point in my head, I basically said "screw it" because there is no way Ryan and I could get into a bidding war for this house. The panic set in and we were both kind of a mess. We started assessing other options, I was hounding Craigslist for new apartments like it was my job, and we were both pretty unhappy at this point.

6/3/2013: We found out the offer we had been so worried about was a low ball offer, one that was almost laughable and that our offer was being sent to the bank for approval. At this point, the seller still hasn't approved our offer, I'll be interested to hear what his hold up is. We did put a clause in our offer that said he needed to get the HUGE old, rotting hot tube off the deck before we would move in, I'm curious to know if that's deterring him.

6/5/2013: The bank countered our offer, giving us 48 hours to respond. This is where Ryan gets really annoyed and resentful towards the offer/house. What the bank countered with is that they would "pay closing costs" with the sale price of the house being $6500 more than we offered. Now, I get kind of confused, maybe I'll have Ryan come do an update to try to explain what happened. So basically, they raised the price of the asking price so that our closing costs were wrapped up into our loan. So now instead of paying $139,900 and $1,000 out of pocket, we're going to pay $143,000 with $3,000 out of pocket. This set us back a little. We had to really think on this. I'm a penny pincher by nature and being like $2,000 from me+Ryan and the street scares the shit out of me. About $2,000 is what we would be left with in savings after doing this transaction. This is where again I started looking at Craigslist and inquiring about different places. The apartment that we've been wanting for the last couple of years now came back online and we had thrown around the idea of moving in there to save money and lower costs. At one point, both Ryan and I had agreed we weren't going to do the house deal because a) we were scared, b) we were pissed at the bank and c) we couldn't afford it.

But then something happened. We both went to bed Thursday night, 24 hours left to decide to counter, walk away or accept, and our whole outlook changed. When I came out of the shower yesterday morning, I was convinced getting the house was in our best interest, knowing that we could make it work, then I saw this quote:

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage" -Anais Nin

That solidified it for me. I told Ryan how I was feeling and he said he felt the same!! So last night, as of 5:00 PM, we have a verbal mutual acceptance of the counter!

What This Means Now:

Come Monday when we actually sign the acceptance papers, we have 10 business days to do an inspection on the house. We have been given a few names in the area and we are going to have a contractor friend come down to do the walk through with us as well. We want to know what we are looking at. After the inspection, we've reached the point of no return I think. Our realtor says we're at least 30-45 days from closing, so we'll be giving notice to our landlord that next month will be our last living in our little bungalow, and then we will be homeowners.... SCARY!!! I often ponder aloud, when the hell did I become an adult?? It's scary shit.

Ryan and I have been cooking up many plans in our heads as far as changes we're going to make, updates to be done and so many other things. In another post I want to break down the financial piece of the house, detailing how we can afford a house this large, what our monthly costs are going to look like and how I'm working to save us so money at the same time. This is an exciting time and I hope to share all of our experiences along the way, so stay tuned!!!

I Wanna Grow Something Wild and Unruly.

...Or at least something tame and delicious. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of an "outdoors wo-man", or green thumb, that's always been my mother. But when Ryan and I moved into our new bungalow though, we instantly noticed there were two raised bed planter boxes in front. We had the same first thought: Vegetable garden! After consulting with my mom, the garden maven, she confirmed that we get enough daily sun exposure to grow ourselves a little garden. Hoorah! Another first.

 Here's a picture of what we're working with:

Upon uploading, I realize the font should be bigger! Oops.

Planter box #2 is the ideal location for optimal sun-time, so we hauled all the soil from planter box #1 over to #2. Here is my ever-so-willing helper in his gardening best:

Take note of the tools of the trade.

Since it's pretty late in the season for planting many things, we decided it would be best to stick to two crops we know would do well, carrots and lettuce. Last week we took a trip to Brim's Home and Garden here in Astoria to pick up some seeds, and for a girl like me (who rarely likes to touch dirt) it was an exciting trip! Who knew there were so many plant options out there. I have a trip planned for the future to grab some tall grass to add to the foliage on our deck, but more on that later. My mom made the suggestion that we stick with Ed Hume seeds because apparently he's a local North-Westerner, so this is what we ended up with:

There were some "out-takes" of Peanut walking across the shot.
Kitty butt + veggies= Always a good time.

It was fun browsing through all the packets of seeds and I can assure you, next spring we will have a wide array of edibles at our disposal. After deciding that today was the day to plant, I realized I needed to actually know how to go about plating a garden, like I said, NOT outdoorsy. Thank god for Google and YouTube. I don't know what people did without those sources of knowledge. I happened upon this basic tutorial from VideoJug which showed me the spacing and proper technique for plating my veggie goodies. It was actually pretty self explanatory. I made sure I was working with a level surface and measured out my rows by using a plank of wood that had unexplainably found it's way into my planter. I didn't have a shovel on had, so I used my God-made-shovelers, my hands. Well, finger if we're getting technical. Then I just did as the website showed and sprinkled a good amount of seeds sporadically about my trench:

Note me awkwardly holding the package with my left hand
while trying to take a picture.

After I got three good rows of carrots, I planted three, semi-squished rows of lettuce and I crafted them all little row tags, as to not get confused:

More professionally made gear crafted out of Ryan's
toothpicks, scrap paper and packing tape!

I then watered and admired my handy work. It doesn't look like much now, but hopefully in 7-10 days of water and sun, these seed babies should be germinating (...or growing if you're a novice like me!). I'm hoping this endeavor goes well, there's something that seems so gratifying about being able to eat off your own land. I'll be sure to update (good or bad) on the happenings in my little garden! Until next time!