Moving

Moving Day was exactly one week ago. I feel like I have been treading water for the last two weeks, trying to stay afloat in the craziness of it all.

We closed on our house last Thursday without too much hassle. 

Since Daniel has been working very long hours and was sick on Valentines weekend, I requested that we have a family date on closing day. Daniel took the day off from work and we started the day with breakfast the BlueGrass Grill in downtown Chattanooga. 

This is one of our favorite breakfast places and eating there in the middle of the week meant no wait. Jack liked it as well – he helped finish off Daniel's stack of strawberry pancakes.

After breakfast, Daniel dropped Jack and I at the Creative Discovery Museum for some playtime while he went to get stuff from one of our two storage sheds. He also had to get our check for closing that afternoon.

Jack had a blast playing. On this particular trip he was most focused on the art room. It's interesting to me that when he went to the museum with Daniel a few weeks ago, they mostly played with the water tables, working the dams and locks. 

This time it was all about drawing and clay – of his own choosing.

When Daniel picked us up, we hurried back up to Signal Mountain to drop Jack at our friend's house. Moving without some kind of support system would be a nightmare (especially with a toddler). We are so thankful for friends and family that have helped us out.

After dropping Jack off, Daniel and I went to the final walk through at our new house. Thankfully everything that we requested to be done had been completed.

While Daniel made sure things were in working order, I did a quick run through and made notes on where I thought furniture should go. Moving into a new house with a new layout takes a lot of mental gymnastics.

Once we were satisfied with the walk through, we headed across town to the actual closing. Closings are kind of weird. You sit face to face with strangers and talk about your finances. At least the seller seemed nice. In a strange twist, the couple we purchased the house from was moving next door to the cottage we have been staying at since the first of January.

As soon as closing was done and we had our keys, we thanked our realtor profusely for letting us drag her to so many houses and then we found a Starbucks. We were both exhausted and felt like celebrating with caffeine. I realized later that night that Daniel and I completely missed lunch.

With coffees in hand, we made a stop at Home Depot for paint... where we had the following experience:

Daniel and I split up. I headed straight for the paint samples while Daniel went to grab other paint related items. While looking at samples, a sales person approached me and asked, "Are YOU GUYS homeowners?" Since I was by myself I ignored the sales guy. He tried again, "What kind of projects are YOU GUYS doing?"

I looked up and realized there was a guy next to me, also looking at paint. Feeling sorry for the sales guy, I made eye contact and said something along the lines of, "Well, for starters, our projects are at different houses."

The sales guy was a bit embarrassed for assuming me and the other guy were together. But not to be deterred, he asked again if either of us were homeowners. The other guy copped out and said, "No." I said, "yes" and waited for the inevitable sales pitch... "You planning on doing a kitchen renovation any time soon?" I had a good answer to this question: "Actually, no. I just bought a house and it has an amazing kitchen!" The sales guy immediately told me, "Congratulations."

At this time Daniel walked up behind me and the sales guy proceeded to say, "Oh, I know about you, you just closed on your house 2 hours ago! Again, congratulations." And he walked off. His comment surprised me because I didn't share that level of detail. It turns out that the guy had already talked to Daniel.

Upon leaving Home Depot and heading back up to Signal Mountain to get Jack, we stopped to pick up pizza to share with our friends. 

Jack had had a wonderful afternoon playing and it was nice that we didn't have to worry about him while we took care of business. We are so thankful to have good friends that live close by that could share our special day with us.

When we finally got back to our rental cottage, Daniel put Jack to bed and I changed clothes and headed over to the new house where I started painting Jack's new room. I wanted to get the walls primed before the movers showed up with our stuff, so I painted until the wee hours of the night.

It has been a trying week as we work to get settled. There are so many boxes to unpack and work to be done, but we are incredibly grateful that we are starting to feel settled in our new-to-us home. I think I am going to mark #79 off my life list (own a cabin in the woods... I think this house basically fits that criteria, though definitely not a log cabin).

In the Details

We are one step closer to closing on our new house. Yesterday was our inspection and today the seller approved our requests for things to be done before closing.

Several people have requested to see more pictures since my initial post only had exterior shots. Since we do not own the house yet and I want to respect the seller's privacy, I am only including thumbnails of some of the details in the house.

This house has had some really great updates on the main floors. As I previously mentioned, we love the kitchen and many of the details and thought that was put into the updates. We also love the feeling of living in the woods, even though we are in town.

There are some things that need to be changed. Two of the three bedrooms upstairs are obviously for little girls. Since there are no little girls in our family, painting those rooms will be among the first projects we tackle. The master bathroom is partially redone and the entire basement needs work. Did I mention that there is a bathroom straight of the 1970s in the basement? Also, the garage needs Daniel's touch. I know he will be busy in the coming months getting things set up like he wants them. We are excited about tackling these projects down the road when we have time.

 
Probably the biggest charm of this property (for us anyways) is the terrain the house is built on. Also, as seen by the image in the bottom right corner of the grouping above, we seem to like really tall houses.

I will post more pics whenever we start making major changes to the house (a long time from now though!).

Chasing Unicorns

Our house hunting experience has been quite an arduous process. We looked at a ridiculous number of properties in person (not to mention the ones we drove by and crossed off of our list or the ones we perused on Trulia), and didn't feel like we had a good fit with anything.

It was starting to feel like we were chasing some magical unicorn that didn't exist. It didn't help that we were feeling antsy about needing to make a decision about where to live, while simultaneously being worried that we would miss out on the "perfect" house.

This week, we agreed that after our Tuesday house viewings, we would buckle down, make a list, check it twice, and choose a house to buy. If you know Daniel, this involved Excel spreadsheets and comparing numbers and assigning values to commute time, size of garage, property value, etc.

Late on Monday night (around midnight), I happened to check my email and saw a new listing from our realtor. Daniel was already asleep, so on a whim, I made the decision that we should view the new listing. I sent an email to our realtor and hoped she would be able to schedule the additional house for the next afternoon.

Fingers crossed, I went to bed around 1am.

After lunch, we met up with our realtor and took our upteenth tour of the Chattanooga housing market. Thankfully our realtor managed to schedule my last minute pick... it was the very last house we looked at.

That last house... the one I asked to add at midnight the night before? The brand new listing, that had just gone on the market? Well, it's our unicorn.

We walked in and I think we both knew. I was a little skeptical because it didn't have a usable yard (it's built into the side of a gorge with lots of rocks and trees). There are giant boulders and a deck and screened porch, but no real area for playing. On the flip side, it does have a playground and community park across the street.

It is an 1970s house that has been partially renovated. It has an amazing kitchen and fantastic trim work that we love. The basement still needs to be updated, but the garage offers a ton of storage, and we already have experience with renovating. The house feels like a cabin in the woods and just generally feels like us. It was the first house in the Chattanooga area that we really felt like we had a connection with.

It seems like it was worth waiting and dragging our realtor to close to 60 houses! As with most things that work out for the best in our lives, we are thankful for God's timing in this house hunt and that we waited for the right house to come along. If all goes well, we will be moving in the last week in February.