We Own Our House!

The outside of our house with our wedding sign, the tree we got as a housewarming gift, and the tree we planted when we moved in :-)

 It's hard to believe that just over two years ago we were renters of a tiny bungalow in West Midtown. We had rented the house after we got engaged and Eric moved in right away while I waited until after the wedding. It was an old house and in terrible repair but we thought it was perfect for a young couple just starting out.

We went on our honeymoon about a month after the wedding and returned home in the midst of an ice storm to find that our rental had been put up for sale, no one had even bothered to tell us! It was a little unnerving to think that the place we called home could be taken away from us just like that and it was then that we started to think about buying a place (prior to this we had no interest in buying a house, it was the furthest thing from our minds).

Over Christmas we happened upon a house that had gone up for sale in my parents neighborhood, the same neighborhood I had grown up in. We went inside to check it out and were instantly in love with the high ceilings and massive windows. We made an offer and by February of 2011 we had closed on the house.

The house quickly became a home and as part of our financial plan we put as much extra money on our mortgage as we could. We already had a 15 year mortgage instead of the standard 30 and the house was pretty cheap to begin with so it wasn't long until owning the house free and clear became a very achievable goal. Well, last week we made the final payment and we finally own our house for real! This is such an amazing feeling, I'm still in shock over it.

The people we dealt with at the bank kept saying, "congratulations! When will you be moving to a bigger house?". Seriously? Is this what people do? We just paid off this house. A large part of building life long wealth is not buying junk you don't need. Not only do we not need a bigger house but we love the house we have. We've been a young married couple here and brought home our first baby to it's walls. We are pleased as punch to live here and even happier to be full, official owners (not to mention completely free of debt). Naturally we went out for Pizza to celebrate :-)

Celebratory pizza at Marietta Pizza company, our favorite pizza joint!

 Now that we won't be making house payments any more (woo hoo!) here are the next steps in our life long money saving plans.

1. Invest! This isn't really my forte but Eric does a lot of research on the topic and is excited to start investing. We are still young enough to be able to invest without too much worry and plan to start with moderate to low risk investments.

2. Save for retirement. We are both guilty of not contributing to our 401ks as of late. We plan to start putting at least a little away for retirement.

3. House projects. Our house being so cheap was great for us but it means there are still a lot of things to fix and improve around here. We plan to take some of the money we would used for house payments and use it for house improvements instead.

4. Start a travel fund. This one is certainly more important to me than to Eric but I really want to set aside a little bit for travel and vacations.  

5. Continue to live frugally and accumulate wealth. That one speaks for itself. Since we started making an effort to live frugal and save more money we have been more and more satisfied with our quality of live. We plan to continue to look for new ways to save money and to love the things we have instead of lusting after new stuff.

Closing

We closed on the house this morning! Wow! What a magical feeling! I still feel like a I have to pinch myself, we are so thrilled and happy that we own our own home now!

The closing went pretty smoothly and took about two and half hours. The only reason it took so long is because we wanted to read everything we were signing and let me tell you the closing attorney was not happy about this. I still think it's amazing that you are expected to sign all these papers without reading them but apparently that is the norm.  Anyway, I missed half a day of work and had to work late tonight to make up for it but it is s worth it because we own a house! We ended up going for the 15 year mortgage instead of the 30 year because the monthly payment is still very reasonable and we will save a ton of money in the long run by getting a 15 year one. So we are all done, papers all signed, keys in hand, whew!

So now I can't wait to get in there and start renovating! We drove over to the house tonight after work and just sat in the empty living room and marveled at the enormity of the fact we own a house. It was kind of an amazing feeling. Tomorrow night we will head out there after work again and we plan to camp out and spend our first night in our new home. On Saturday the real work will begin and I get to start painting, yay! Eric's parents are coming down for the weekend to help us out with some things and we are starting to move over some of the things we don't use regularly (including some of my old furniture that I left at my condo when I moved in with Eric after the wedding). I'm excited to finally start taking some after photos and hope to have some pretty new pictures to post by the end of the weekend.

The final thing I want to say about this whole process is just that our realtor Matt Hester was amazingly awesome. He made the process so much easier and was there for us every step of the way. When we closed today he even gave us our first housewarming present, a $50 gift card to Home Depot! Believe me, we will definitely be needing it in the months to come, thanks Matt!

More Interior Pictures

Just for kicks (and because I pretty much won't be able to think about anything but the house until we close next week) here are a few more pictures of the interior of the house. I took most of these the last time I was over there which was probably 3 or 4 weeks ago. Looking forward to calling this beauty home :-)

Kitchen front view. We need to get a refrigerator and a working stove before we can even think about moving in. The funny thing is that the stove that's there now is a gas stove and there isn't even a gas line in the kitchen. We plan to install a gas line however since we much prefer cooking with gas.

Another angle of the kitchen. The dishwasher seems to be working ok thank goodness. I'm glad we won't have to put one of these in since we are already replacing the stove and adding a new fridge. Even though I hate spending money I am super jazzed about having brand new kitchen appliances, and the fact that we got the house for so cheap makes me feel better about it. 

Yet another view of the kitchen, looking in from the dining room. We will have to decide what to do with that funny little window with the light above it.

Hall bathroom, I think this tub is actually kind of cool.

Hall bathroom again with one of the few light fixtures we won't be replacing right away.

Master bath, I personally find it odd that the master bath is not as nice as the guest bath. Doing something about this will be on our long list of things to do.

Master bath again, can't wait to paint this. I'm wondering what color will go best with those green tiles?

Funky window in the loft *love*

and the grand finale, the wall of windows again. I am truly in love with it. This wall makes all the other houses I've looked at pale in comparison to this house. I really think this is what sold me on it.

Low Carb Cooking

Well we are closing on the house in just one short week if all goes well! I am trying not to get too excited because everyone keeps sharing their home buying horror stories with me about how their deals fell through at the last minute or how their closing was delayed. We are turning in the rest of the documents needed for our loan tomorrow and I'm feeling nervous since we only have a week for this all to come together. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

So in the mean time, here is a post about one of my favorite things in the whole world, food! My husband Eric has been on a low carb diet for about six months now and has lost a whopping 50 pounds! I am so proud of him and am constantly amazed by his will power (there's no way I could do it). Cooking for Eric is something I really enjoy, I like to show my love for people by making them delicious food. In fact, I probably significantly contributed to his weight gain in the first place by cooking delicious, fatty things for him.  So now that he is watching what he eats I have really had to adjust my go to recipes for weeknight meals which used to mainly consist of pasta and sausage. Sometimes cooking low carb sucks, sometimes it's frustrating and uninspiring, but usually it is a fun and rewarding challenge. Plus it gets me to eat healthier too which is a great thing :-)

So here is my most recent low carb cooking experiment. I may make this a recurring weekly section on my blog since I am constantly collecting new recipes and ideas and I want to share them all.

Improvised steak salad

This recipe is what we had for dinner tonight and it was a totally invited collaboration between Eric and I. I have been craving a nice steak salad for a while now and we finally got around to making it. Eric was in charge of cooking the steak because in my house the men cook the steak :-) I came up with the other fixings and we both adjusted them to our liking. Basically all we did was pan sear some strips of top sirloin (delicious!) in some bourbon for a few minutes. We used a pre-bagged salad mix, the kind with radishes and grated carrots in it, I think it was called "American Blend". I added some toasted pine nuts and banana peppers to mine for some extra texture and a little kick. We topped the salad with some ranch dressing and our crumbly cheese of choice (I used blue cheese and Eric used feta). Finally we both added some freshly ground black pepper. We both agreed that this dish is a winner and we will totally make it again. The great thing about this kind of dish is that you can adjust it and basically throw in anything you have leftover and it all tastes great. The salad is a great counter to the steak since it is so crisp and fresh and when I eat steak by itself it sometimes feels too heavy. I encourage you to try this at home, it worked out beautifully for us!

House Update

We just got an email from our loan company and they informed us that the loan is out of the initial underwriting and the processor has it now and is working on it. Also the title report came back late Friday evening. I had no idea what this meant so I asked my mom and she sent me this helpful explanation of the loan process mortgage process flow

It looks like we are about to step 4 in this process, final loan approval. Everything has been slowed down a bit due to the snow but I was excited to get this email and know that we are one step closer to owning our own home! I spent my snow days working on a painting project that will one day hang over our fireplace and dreaming of what our house looks like in the snow. My parents took some pictures for me, doesn't it look lovely all covered in white?

New Year, New House

Our lovely future home in the snow on Christmas day.

I've never been much of a blogger. Every time I try to start one I realize I have nothing to say. However it is now a new year (hello 2011!) and I finally feel that I have something worth blogging about. My husband Eric and I have recently begun the adventure of buying our first home together. So far it has been relatively painless but we are still in the middle of the it, closing Feb 10th, so we'll see how I feel at the end :-)  When we saw this little (well, actually it's pretty big) fixer upper we just fell in love and had to make an offer on it. A whole lot of paperwork later we are in the midst of buying our dream home.

 Sure, we know it's going to be a lot of work to fix this house up to it's full potential, but we have a lot things in our favor. These include unbridled enthusiasm, family conveniently close by (my parents live three houses away) and the fact that we got this house as a foreclosure and it was a steal! It's going to be a long slow process and that is one of the reasons I wanted to blog about this, to keep track of all the improvements we make over the years. Hopefully I can look back on this blog years from now and feel really satisfied that with how far we've come.

Luckily for me, Eric and I have pretty similar tastes when it comes to houses so agreeing on a place was easy. We both like lots of exposed woodwork, high ceilings, and funky architectural details. We love this house because it feels like a mountain cabin or ski lodge and we are big fans of that feeling. We are not big fans however of antlers on the wall or overly "cabiny" decor. When I first started thinking about how we would decorate I looked at a lot of cabins for inspiration and found many of them to be too old fashioned or too "cabiny" So I started doing a lot of research on interior design and decorating blogs and I finally found the design term that fits my personal style. Yay! I didn't know my style had a term attached to it! I have found that if I search for "rustic modern" most of what comes up is right up my ally. So that's what I'm calling this blog. I'm super excited to document the changes in our house over time and how it will grow and develop. Interior pictures are coming soon as well as some pictures of my design inspiration.