Hello again, welcome back! I feel like I am never going to catch up with all the things I have to share with you guys, it's almost funny (and not the ha-ha kind of funny). I still have a few things from the old house that I am not sure if I am going to share or not, we will have to see what happens. It seems likes such a waste not to share, but then there is so much new going on that I don't know if I will have time. First world problems over here.
Today I am sharing the story of how we almost didn't move and actually moved four days later than expected. This will just be a quick, cautionary story for you guys about how you should never close two houses on the same day. We were told that this really wasn't THAT big of a deal prior to everything, but guys.... trust me. Don't do this.
(Our First House)
We were set to close our old house (first house) on July 7th and use that sale to buy our current house (new house) on July 7th as well. Prior to moving day Luis and I moved anything that wasn't being used on a daily basis into a storage unit, so that on moving day it would just be furniture and essentials. We had an extremely tight timeline, but thought we could do it. We rented a truck and had a ton of people help us move everything into it by lunch time.
We started to get antsy around 3pm when we hadn't heard anything from our lawyer and called him. This is where we were told that somehow the financing from our buyer was rejected and they would not be able to get the keys to our new house that day and that the sale was now in question. Guys, I have never been so scared and upset in my whole life.
We decided to leave everything where it was and stay with my parents for the weekend, leaving the animals in the empty house and going over a few time a day to let the dogs out and feed them all. Luis and I took the Monday off work, had our helpers meet us at the old house after lunch and waited. And waited. And waited. At 4:45 I drove over to the lawyers office and started to cry in the reception area while waiting to talk to our lawyer because we still didn't have word on if we would be getting the keys or not.
(Our New House)
We got the keys at 5:01pm on July 10th and had the entire truck and storage unit unloaded by 7:00pm that night. I can't even tell you how hard our friends worked that day for us. Oh, and did I mention that both of the kids and myself had fevers and a really (REALLY) bad cold? Yeah, it was a good time and I was pretty much useless for that part of the move.
Apparently the credit union that our buyer used is notorious for not checking paperwork and not getting things submitted on time. It ended up working out quickly for us, but this little hiccup ended up affecting 6 families total because the people we were buying from had to stall the purchase of their new house. And so, and so on, for 4 more families. Such a crazy and scary thing to happen, and as we were going through it everyone just kept saying "the chances of this happening are so small" and "it's always a possibility, but I've never actually had this happen". Not very helpful people.
So moral of the story? Don't close two house on the same day. Bridge your mortgages if you can, and if you can't see if you can crash somewhere until you get the keys to you new house. This was my public service announcement that will hopefully save someone from having a mental breakdown in front of all of their friends and family.
Kerby
Hello everyone! It's been almost two months and we are finally getting settled and are feeling like this is our house. We are about 99% done unpacking what we need to and the rest can stay in storage for now. It's been a crazy year so far, and I think this whole family is ready to slow down a touch. You know, before the crazy of school starting and the double birthday/Christmas season in December starting.
Today I have some pictures of our new kitchen to share with you guys, and it's about time. I have been trying to get everything perfect before showing anyone, including friends and family, and I decided a few weeks ago that I need to get over that feeling. Honestly, it's going to take years to make this house even close to perfect in my head, and I want to wait that long to show people.
This is the main hub of the kitchen, which was done within the last five years according to the listing.
What an improvement from our last house, am I right? It's definitely not the finishes I would have chosen, but everything is nice and new. The cabinets aren't painted plywood and the counter-top isn't spray painted so it's really a win in anyone's book. Trust me, I can live with this for a long time before needing to do anything major to update it or change the finishes.
Directly across from the sink is the fridge and more counter space and storage, which was a huge problem for us in our first house. Guys, I can actually have the microwave, coffee machine and my mixer out at the same time!
And in the bottom left of the above picture you can see our gorgeous pocket door, that I am in love with. I honestly didn't even know about it until after we bought the house and were doing our final walk through. But, I am so happy that it's there! We had a pocket door separating the kitchen from the entrance in the last house and I always loved it. And the fact that it has glass is even better, because it doesn't make the dark cabinets turn the kitchen into a cave when it's shut.
Above is another angle of the fridge side of the kitchen from the our table, which is an eat-in area in the kitchen. It shows all the storage we have, which again has been amazing. I still get lost when looking for things though, hopefully that will pass soon!
And you can see the entire kitchen from the den, which is great for entertaining! We had friends and family over a few weeks ago and it was so nice to be able to be in the kitchen making food and drinks and still be able to talk to everyone. I am standing in the den in the below picture, and it's so easy to pass things over the railing too.
Well, that's it! That's our new and improved kitchen guys, what do you think? We already have ideas for future renovations for the kitchen, including knocking the peninsula and upper cabinets over it out and expanding the kitchen into and eliminating the eat in area. But that is way down the list of things that we need to do. This is the most functional room in the house, as well as the most updated.
But it's always nice to think of ways you would change your house to really make it your own.
Kerby
Hi everyone, thanks for sticking with me while we take this crazy whirlwind of deciding to move and being in a new house within five months. It has been so crazy around here that all we are managing to do is unpack and clean. Shortly before we moved I started back at work part-time and Braxton started going to a summer camp as well, so that has just added to the crazy.
I wanted to take a few minutes to show you guys a small update that we made to the front of the house since we moved in. If you saw the announcing post here, then you saw that there was a crazy bush with a mind of it's own in the front. Well, after 3 months with the sellers not touching anything it was a jungle everywhere outside.
This is what we moved into, noticed the actual tree growing within inches of the foundation at the right of the house and the half dead bush in front of the entrance.
Seriously, seeing that was so overwhelming. It bummed us out to see how the sellers didn't do any maintenance at the house because we kept up with our house for our buyers. Here is a better view of the side of the house that leads to the front steps and entrance area, with the lovely half dead bush.
But there is nothing that can be done about it! So we had Luis' dad drop his trailer off and Luis got to work. After a few hours of hard labour in the summer heat, Luis managed to make our house appear. We cut down all of the trees and bushes that were on the right side of the house, as well as trimmed the large bush at the far left of the house.
Guys! It looks so much better! It's amazing the difference that can be made when you remove (or transplant, if possible) the wrong type of plant to help landscape your house to accent it's best features. The tree and bush that we removed were making the house seem much smaller than it was, as well as making the house too heavy compared to the garage. It didn't balance very well at all.
We are still a LONG way from being done, but the house already looks so much better and we love being able to actually look out the windows at the front. In the spring I have quite a bit of transplanting to do both in the front yard and the back yard, as well as buying some new plants to replace the ones we had to remove.
I can't wait to extend the gardens and add some texture to the front garden, and well as remove all the crazy rocks that are hidden everywhere. Can you believe all those rocks in the picture above were hidden by that giant dead-ish bush? It looks like Luis has some more back breaking work to do in the spring.
Like I said, it was a small makeover that made a huge impact. I can't wait to start designing and share some more progress with you guys!
Kerby
