I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we’ve fiiiinally found a house. And it’s a lot nicer than I was hoping for. The house has all the features we were looking for (and then some) – an older home, character, wood floors, decent kitchen, lots of natural light, outdoor living space… and with this house we’re getting a crazy sweet library, 3-season porch, 3 1/2 baths, finished basement, a water garden, 2 wood burning fire places, and a huge walk-in closet. Is this real life?

We had an offer accepted, and we’re scheduled to close on March 9 …only 4 1/2 weeks away! Last week during our inspection I went a little crazy taking pictures of all the fixtures and details, but remembered to take a few full room shots. Let me know what you think of the place!

Lately, I’ve started thinking Luke and I have been slacking off, since we haven’t found our house and just passed the five month mark of living at B&L’s. But when I think about it, and realize we’ve looked at over 50 houses and have been down in Kalamazoo looking at homes just about every free weekend since we arrived, I’m pretty sure we’re giving 110%. Maybe we need to low our standards? …nah. We are feeling a little more pressure now that the lake-effect snow has started falling, and Luke has been spending even more time commuting (10 hours/week is crazy enough already).

Since my last post about our house hunt, we put in an offer on another house listed as a short sale. When our initial offer wasn’t accepted we decided to let the deal go. The house was super-duper nice, but we didn’t want to get stuck waiting on all the complexities of a short sale, which can take months. The other update is that we’ve been assigned to a new realtor, Bev, because Frank left the group he’d been working with the go it alone. It’s a bummer because we liked working with Frank, and after spending several hours with him each week for the past several months we’d bonded. Bev leaves something to be desired. How old do you think she is?

The good news is there are two homes we’re currently considering, and depending on how convos with the listing agents go, we might be making another offer in the next week or two.

• #1 is the closest to our dream home, of all of the houses we’ve looked at. It’s got plenty of space, doesn’t need any work, and is a home we could grow into. Plus, the office has its own fireplace. Check it out.
• #2 would be a more conservative move in terms of size & price.  This is one I’ve posted pics of before. We’d have some projects to do on the place, and the kitchen is pretty small. The house has a lot of charm, but would need some updating.

I’ll let you know what happens, and in our case no news is probably not good news. Go Pats.

I haven’t posted an update recently about our house hunt because I wasn’t sure how things would shake out. I also didn’t want to cause undue excitement.

Long story short… about a month ago, we decided to make an offer on a house. We went back and forth with the seller a few times, and accepted a counter-offer before we found out that the seller hadn’t been making their payments for over a year and was in a bad financial state. The seller wouldn’t be able to sell at the agreed upon price without it being a short sale. We tried to work out a deal with the bank, but the seller wasn’t cooperating and didn’t pull info together for the bank in time. After that we decided to back out of the deal. It’s been a frustrating month, to say the least.

So, we’re back to the drawing board. We’ve expanded our search and are thinking about looking at homes in different neighborhoods. Renting is also still a possiblity. I’ll be travelling a bunch during December and with the holidays we won’t have a lot of time to look at houses, but we’ll keep you posted if our address changes anytime soon! At any rate, I’ll be asking Santa Jesus for a house this Christmas. Or a puppy.

This last weekend we revisited our top 6 or so homes, and with the help of B&L, narrowed down our list even more. We’re down to two or three homes (depending on the day and whether it’s raining or not) and have been letting everything marinate ever since going through the houses again on Sunday. We’ve also done some number crunching to find out what projects might cost us for the different houses and what we’d be able to tackle based on our budget. I’ve been pinning decorating ideas to my Pinterest boards. Check out my pins for home, living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

We’re between Tipperary and a new one I haven’t introduced yet to you all. Here are some pictures* for your viewing pleasure:

*Photos by B.Retterath.