rivka | (no subject)

We closed on our new house yesterday afternoon! We are homeowners!

Up until the very last minute - even when we were driving to our real estate agent's office holding a comically large cashier's check - I kept expecting it to somehow fall through. They'd rerun the credit check and an unpaid parking ticket would surface, and then the bank would rescind our loan. (Or at least our lovely 4% interest rate.) Some crucial piece of paperwork would turn up missing. Something. But instead we sat at a table and signed a million pieces of paper, and then each of us got a bright, shiny key.

A key to our house.

We won't be moving for a few weeks, but we went out and spent the evening at the house with

lynsaurus and

acceberskoorb, who will be our neighbors now. The seller had left a box of cookies and a sweet little note on the counter. The family also left us some of the furniture (the seller's in assisted living now, and her children live out of town), so we have a wicker porch set and high bar chairs at the kitchen peninsula and a few other things like that.

I turned on all the lights and we spent a lot of time wandering through the big bright rooms that belong to us now. We watched a big brown rabbit hopping around the back yard. Then we sat out on the screened porch and ate sushi as night fell.

Here are ten small things I'm cherishing about our new house right now:

1. Central air conditioning.
2. Large, soaring kitchen with room for a crowd.
3. Won't have to carry Colin up two long flights of stairs at bedtime.
4. So many closets and cupboards.
5. Full-size freezer in the basement.
6. Warming lamps on the bathroom ceilings.
7. Gas-powered "wood stove" in the family room means that we'll have heat even when the power is out.
8. Flowering ground cover in the back yard.
9. Efficient to heat, so that we won't be paying astronomical power bills to shiver in drafts.
10. SCREENED-IN PORCH.

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Your new house sounds utterly lovely - and it's great that you have a few days to just wander around, plan how you want to use the space, and get used to the idea.

Those are not small things at all! Congratulations.

Up until the very last minute - even when we were driving to our real estate agent's office holding a comically large cashier's check - I kept expecting it to somehow fall through. They'd rerun the credit check and an unpaid parking ticket would surface, and then the bank would rescind our loan. (Or at least our lovely 4% interest rate.) Some crucial piece of paperwork would turn up missing. Something.

That's exactly how I felt about it. I had some weird and embarrassing problems with my money arrangements, and I was sure they'd hold up or prevent the deal once people found out about them. Then when I went to my real estate agent's office a few days ahead of the closing to sign the papers, he told me everything that had to happen on the closing date, and had me sign a few extra papers to prepare for all contingencies (like, this is what happens if the power goes off at the Land Title office and it doesn't go through til Monday).

And since I didn't need to pick up keys, having been in possession as a rental occupant, my lawyer didn't bother calling me on the Friday afternoon to confirm that it was done, and I spent the whole evening of my housewarming celebration saying to people "well, at least I assume it's mine..." until the next morning it occurred to me to look up my bank balances and see that giant mortage account.

That sounds like a wonderful house!

This is so good to read. I'm very happy for you.

Heh, your nightmare is how our closing went (paperwork glitches). Luckily, I had that special OHNOYOUDONT look that only a new mom (3 weeks post c-section) can have that immediately makes people cave and they gave us the keys anyway.

It all sounds lovely. I wish you many happy and wonderful years there.

*\o/*

Congratulations!!

Hooray!

Edited 2011-09-10 16:27 (UTC)

Congratulations.

And I am a big fan of heating that doesn't depend on the electricity being on.

So very good to hear. Congratulations to you all!

Congratulations! Sounds like a great place.

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It sounds wonderful!

Congrats!! And can I say I am insanely jealous of your interest rate?? Mine is around 7%

I am pleased for you all! That's just splendiferous. I am sure many happy times are on your doorstep, waiting for you to move in.

K.

Ooooh, lovely.

wooooooot! Looking forward to visiting and admiring!!!!

Oh, the efficient heating and the heat-lamps in the bathrooms items by themselves would have been "sold!" for me, and then you had to go mention closet/cupboard space.

Awesome.

Apart from the kitchen cupboards, which are things of great awesomeness (we have a pantry cupboard where the rack of shelves slides out! And a broom cupboard! And the peninsula is full of cupboards with slide-out shelves, plus it has a pegboard to hang things on!), we have:

Large closets in all three bedrooms.
A shelved linen closet outside the bedrooms.
A huge hall closet for coats and other winter gear.
A secret cupboard above the hall closet.
Big sliding-door cupboards all along one wall of the living room, under the built-in bookcases.
A big closet in the family room, lined with metal shelves.
A huuuge cedar-lined closet in the basement storage room.
And about eight tall metal shelving units in the two utility areas of the basement (storage room, furnace room).

It is possible that even I could be organized in this house.

Congratulations! What would you consider large things? those seem like pretty significant house-owning things to me.

I love more than one option for heat, light, cooking etc. It makes a big difference to me.

"Large things," I guess, would be things that would be important enough to actually motivate the house purchase - like (for this house) the neighborhood, the great floor plan, the price, the kitchen, the screened-in porch, hm. There's overlap.

But things like the freezer and the warming lamps really are trivial. You don't buy a house for the freezer! But it was awesome of the sellers to leave it so we didn't have to buy one ourselves.

I'd put LARGE as...
1. Central air conditioning.
2. Large, soaring kitchen with room for a crowd.
3. Won't have to carry Colin up two long flights of stairs at bedtime.
4. So many closets and cupboards.
9. Efficient to heat, so that we won't be paying astronomical power bills to shiver in drafts.
10. SCREENED-IN PORCH.

... and SMALL as...
7. Gas-powered "wood stove" in the family room means that we'll have heat even when the power is out.
5. Full-size freezer in the basement.
6. Warming lamps on the bathroom ceilings.
8. Flowering ground cover in the back yard.

Not having too many stairs, and being efficient to heat and cool, would be MASSIVE big deals for me. It's one reason we love mid-terrace living; in sub-zero midwinter temperatures we can leave the heating off for hours and hours during the day, as well as almost all night.

Congratulations! (And YAY for Colin being able to walk up two flights of stairs in the new house!) (What, there *are* no two flights of stairs? Does he use a ladder? No? He *FLIES*? Okay, enough semi-humorous intentional misunderstandings.)

May you find love, warmth, and joy in your new home.

Whoo hoo, congratulations!! :) That is awesome. And it sounds amazing!