We had been renting for the previous 3 1/2 years. And although our landlord was amazing and the house was nice and bigger than our previous home, it just wasn't ours. I didn't think that would bother me, but near the end I wanted to take a sledge hammer to a wall, just because I could. But I couldn't. We had been looking at houses online for a year prior to our being able to buy. We had been watching every episode of House Hunters that HGTV produced. I had a million and one pinterest boards dedicated to what I wanted in my dream house.
Then we started the actual house hunt and I was ecstatic! I liked so many things about so many places. There was one particular house that was pretty nice, it was big, had 4 bedrooms and an office area, and had an amazing yard and pool and was in the boundaries for an amazing school. But, it was a little farther south than my target neighborhood, and it had this ghastly, ugly, patterned white tile. EVERYWHERE. Also it was $7000 over our max budget. It had only been on the market for a week, so we figured they wouldn't be ready to lower their price at all. So we moved on. The next day, our realtor, Hailee, called and said that their realtor had called to see how we like the place, and she mentioned that we hated all the tile, and that it was just a bit over our price range. He said that they were very willing to negotiate on the price because of the tile. So we decided to make an offer on a whim. We offered $7000 less, right at our max budget, and asked for them to provided a warranty, and pay half our closing costs. I laughed as I signed the offer. Who would agree to this?
Not 12 hours later, Hailee called me as Hubby and I were walking around Wal-Mart. They had accepted our offer and agreed to all our terms (who does that??!?) The house was ours.
RED FLAG #1- SELLERS ARE TRYING TO DITCH SAID HOUSE AND RUN FAR FAR AWAY.
We had an inspection, where they found a few random, small problems. They agreed to fix them, no problem. We closed on time, we paid less than we thought we'd have to, so I bought carpet and a new couch.
The day got keys we started painting. EVERYTHING. It was a brown color, like barfy brown. Plus all the walls in the rental were brown, and I never wanted to see the color again. You can see in this picture, we went with a soft grey. I seriously love it.
Hubby started ripping up tile in the Living Room and Family Room to make room for that brand new carpet that was coming in a few days. We had friends help us move and we were so stinking happy.
That night I turned on the kitchen sink to rinse my paintbrush and realized when I turned on the faucet, water was pouring out of the pipe below. Um, MAJOR PROBLEM. We called a guy in our new ward who is a plumber, he could be there in two hours. But then we thought, maybe it'd be best if we call our warranty company instead, they dispatched a plumber who couldn't come for 2 days, so we did dishes in the bathroom until that time. He got there at 8pm, after being 3 hours late, said it was too late for him to get authorization, took my $65 warranty charge, said he'd return in the morning and meanwhile he was going to dispatch a water restoration company cause the whole thing was soaked. 10pm at night,
I've got guys in my kitchen tearing out baseboards, drywall, and leaving fans and a de-humidifier. They suggested I call my insurance company, cause this was not going to be cheap. Turns out, when the previous people un-hooked their ice maker, they left a open pipe, when the water company turned the water on... It flooded. Everything.This is what I dealt with for 5 days. Meanwhile, I still didn't have a working sink. My plumber never returned, we had another guy break it worse, another guy say oh, no way will the warranty cover it, and finally called the member of our ward who is a plumber and he fixed it for $150. Live and learn.
So much more to come on this home...
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