First Project - Painting a bathroom

Since most of the work on our house needs to be done by our contractor we don't have a lot we will be doing on our own.  However, one of our projects is the main bathroom in the house which will be also primarily the girls bathroom.  The previous owners had used an interesting paint technique to decorate the walls (probably a sponge or rag technique with a couple different colors).  We initially thought it was wallpaper but during one of the inspections we took a closer look and realized it was paint.  We were happy to figure this out because we were dreading wallpaper removal.  The tiles in the bathroom are blue and a creamy gray.  

On Thursday I set out to Lowe's with the idea that I wanted to find a cream color to paint the walls.  While I was there I moved in a different direction and selected 3 shades of very pale blue to test out.  We tested them out and settled on Harbor Light.  Today we went over and while Greg worked on putting our picnic table and the girl's playhouse together out back I painted away.  I even had a couple helpers.  The girls were pretty good at painting!  I was able to cover the previous paint with two coats of paint and I am pretty proud of the results.  

House Closing

We closed on our house today!  The closing was pretty unexciting.  Since the sellers are in Florida we did not meet them but we met their agent and she gave us the key right away.  We were expecting some sort of fanfare similar to HGTV episodes.  Joy and the lawyer who performed the closing arrived a few minutes later.  We kicked off signing quite a few documents.  When it was all over we gave Joy a bottle of wine and a thank you note.  We are very grateful for all of her assistance through the past 2 months to get through this process.  We learned so much from her about the entire house buying process and would not have navigated it as well as we did without her.  Joy had a gift for us too!  She gave us a little renovation packet: hardhats, gloves, protective goggles and ear plugs.  

Afterwards we ran over to the house and looked around for the first time by ourselves.  Greg took the opportunity to pull back the carpet in the living room and we checked out the hardwoods and they look awesome!  We expected they would but it was great to actually see them. I meet with the contractors on Thursday to give them keys so they can begin work.   

We close on Monday!

Well, it's been a long couple of weeks since the appraisal.  Our file went in for final approval a week ago Friday.  We were hoping to get final approval by Monday so we could close by the end of the week.  The current owners are out of town so we knew once we go approval it would take a couple days to close after the approval was received.  It was another long weekend where we tried not to worry too much about the process.  

Monday came and at the end of the day we found out it hadn't been reviewed yet. At this point we had to sign a rate lock extension because our rate was set to expire on Thursday (rates have gone up about a percent since we locked in).  We started worrying about closing on Friday which was the date our contract expired.  Joy let us know that she spoke with the listing agent and she was going to file a one week extension for us because we were almost to the goal line.  Luckily it was the girls birthday so we went home ate some cake and celebrated with them at the pool. 

Tuesday we found out we were trumped by another couple of files that were beyond their contract date.  This was getting exhausting.  Another evening where we lucked out and found something to do after work.  There was a pool party and cookout at the apartment complex so we took the girls and spent a couple hours out.  

Wednesday came around and we waited both checking our email all day.  Finally around 2:00 Greg got an email asking us to initial papers we'd already initialed because the initials were illegible.  We'd initialed this same piece of paper at least 4-5 times already as we'd adjusted our bids with our contractors. There were a couple other pieces of info the mortgage broker needed to gather and we had to wait overnight again to find out if it had been final approved. 

Thursday came and we were beyond frustrated.  I told Greg this was never going to happen.  He is forever optimistic but even he was prepared to break.  At 8:00 I e-mailed to make sure everything from the day before had been submitted and it had.  We were told we were back on the list to be reviewed.  This was not very reassuring given the previous couple of days.  At around 1:00 I got an email asking for a recent utility bill or bank statement with my name and our current address on it.  I'm not sure how we'd not submitted something with this info on it earlier but within two minutes they had what they were looking for.  Greg emailed again at 3:30 to find out if there was an update.  He got an email back saying they were talking to title about meeting on Monday since we couldn't meet Friday since the owners were out of town.  He e-mailed back and asked if that meant we were approved and the answer was YES!!!  We got a text a little while later from our real estate agent asking what time we are available on Monday to close!  

We are beyond excited.  We went out to Hofbrahaus and celebrated that night!  Tomorrow we will be homeowners.  It is scary and exciting all at the same time.  Next step, getting things rolling with the contractors.....  

Pool time!

Since we are back in an apartment we have access to a pool again.  Greg has been talking about taking them down to the pool for a couple weeks.  Yesterday we were looking to keep busy so we got everyone in bathing suits and took them out.  They loved it!  So much so that Greg was a little nervous since we don't have any floaties for them.  When we got back we did a quick search of the Target website and found some floaties that we thought would work for their age.  Greg went out an picked them up and we took them out for a try today.  They loved them.  L was yelling "I'm swimming, I'm swimming" the whole time.  N was a little more hesitant but when she finally got in the water she was a fish herself.  

Some pics below:

Appraisal and the long days after......

About a week and a half ago we had our appraisal.  We've been pretty involved in the process every step of the way.  This step was a little strange because we did not actually visit the house with the appraiser.  I did not know this until it was scheduled.  I was a little relieved to not have to go I finally got a work from home day where I could actually stay in my jammies because I didn't need to run over to the house for an hour to meet someone.  I was a little nervous about the appraisal.  In order to continue with the process the house needed to have an after improvement value that is higher than the loan amount we are taking out.  The amount of work we are doing is a bit more than we thought it was going to be, so I was convinced it would not appraise high enough.  

WELL, IT DID!!!

We didn't expect to hear back from the appraiser until a couple days after he visited the house.  He actually submitted the report the next day and we were ready to roll forward.  The next step was to submit the appraisal to an appraisal underwriter for review. 

This is where things got a little sticky.  When we learned about the foundation issues with the house we brought out a structural engineer and a contractor.  The structural engineer told us that we have an issue and described the fix.  He also wrote a report that stated we needed to hire a structural engineer to create drawings for the the design of the basement fix.  When we brought out the contractor he said the fix was pretty standard and that we didn't need to get the drawings, they knew what to do and quoted the repair.  Since he said we didn't need the drawings we didn't think much more of it until the Friday before Memorial Day at 4:15.  Yes, the Friday before a three day weekend, when it was too late to contact anyone, we got an email from the mortgage broker saying that the appraiser wants a drawing since it was recommended in the report.  

We spent most of the weekend feeling very frustrated with the predicament we were in.  The contractor didn't need the drawings and now we were being forced to drop a little more cash to have someone draw up a design.  By Tuesday we knew we had to act fast.  Greg called an engineer first thing in the morning and set him up to come out the next day to look at the house, give us a second assessment (for peace of mind) and put together the drawings.  

Joy and I met the second engineer at the house and we liked him much more than the first guy we met.  He was an ND fan so we chatted up the latest developments with the ND football team and then he took at a look at the basement.  He agreed with the initial assessment and the repair and took measurements to do the drawings.  He said he would get them to us Thursday or Friday.  Well, late Friday afternoon rolled around and we still didn't have them.  Greg gave him a call and he said he would get them to us over the weekend.  We were disappointed with the delay but hoping it would not impact our closing date.  He got the drawing to us early Monday morning and we sent them over to the foundation contractor to review to make sure there were no adjustments in the price, thankfully not.  We heard back from the mortgage broker later in the afternoon and the appraisal was officially approved by the appraisal underwriter.  

At this point we are not sure if we are still on track to close next Thursday.  We e-mailed the broker today to ask if we are on track and we are waiting to hear back.  We are hoping we are still on track because we have other news in the hopper that can't be shared until we close!

We love the zoo!

Since we have a zoo membership we try to get out there about once every month or two.  Today the weather was a bit cooler than normal for late May so we thought it might not be packed.  We were wrong, it was pretty busy but we got there early enough that we got parking in the normal lot.  We took lots of pics of the animals as usual.  May is the celebration of Zoo babies so we saw all the animals born in the past year.  So cute!

Sunday Afternoon Picnic

The weather today was gorgeous so we decided to take the girls to Big Bone Lick State Park for a picnic and to see the Bison.  We packed up some picnic food and hit the road.  We decided to set up near a playground so the girls had a chance to run off some energy before we ate. 

After we ate we headed over to where the Bison are.  The trail was very muddy today and when we finally got to the place where the Bison are we were bummed to learn we could only see one and he was pretty far away.  Luckily the girls weren't disappointed and didn't seem to notice since they were so focused on the mud on the wheels of the stroller.  

HUD Inspection

Since we submitted our final bid from the contractors Monday we needed to set up a HUD inspection.  We scheduled that for today.  For the full 203k a HUD inspection is required in addition to a HUD appraisal.  The purpose of the inspection is to validate what is required to be fixed as a part of the 203k loan.  Since this loan is part of a government program they want to validate that part of the loan will be used to fix any safety issues with the house.  I was a little worried that something new would come up with this inspection.  I feel as if we know everything there is to know about this house but who knows if we'd missed something.  

Overall the inspection went well.  He only found three safety items that he is going to require in his report:

* GCFI plugs in the kitchen - included in our contractor bid

* Updating the electrical panel - included in our contractor bid

* Adding smoke detectors to each of the bedrooms - not included in our bid but easy enough to resolve

Once the inspector sends his full report to our mortgage person she will order the HUD appraisal and then everything goes through underwriting to finalize.  We are in the home stretch now and things should hopefully be quiet for the next couple of weeks before we close.