Closing the purchase...

We are closing the purchase of our home this weekend. We have started packing and organizing our current place. I wish I could fast forward this week so that I could own the house already! This past Saturday we took a huge load of stuff to the Salvation Army. We successfully got rid of plenty of books, 2 dressers, a huge bundle of clothing, and various odds and ends. We did not successfully pass on my husband's giant box of original nintendo games. (he was about to give them over to the the Sally Ann when he declared that he's just not ready to give them up yet). I not-so-secretly prefer old nintendo anyway. I digress...
I have emailed the contractor's to confirm our appointments on the day we take possession and the lawyers are expecting us. The money for completion costs is in the bank (yikes!). And despite being as prepared as I can possibly be, I still feel completely disorganized and unprepared. It feels a lot like the weeks before your wedding, where you can't do anymore except wait until the day comes and hope it all goes according to plan. What I am learning with life's big events is that the best that you can hope for is the guts to dive right in.

Our First House

So I very nearly own a house. The contracts are signed, the deposit is paid, the mortgage is approved. Now we just need to take possession. When this will be is still slightly up in the air, although we are hoping to get it sooner than later. (Mid-June is the soonest we can possibly get possession. Cross your fingers for us).

On the off-chance that someone who does not know me will stumble on to my humble blog, let me explain how we ended up with this dilapidated old house in the first place:

My husband and I decided that with the foundering economy and the dip in the Vancouver house market (the most expensive in the country) that this was our chance to own a home. So we found a realtor--who was fantastic--and set out on our very first house hunt. I admit, at first, things looked a bit grim. Even in the winter, even in this wavering economy and sinking market, our price ceiling was very limiting. We looked at houses that were definitely NOT for us. And then we saw our little house on Ferndale. There were no photos on the mls listing and from the outside it looked like another hopeless case. A chain link fence, a decrepit shed, and an odd lean on the outside corners. But when we stepped inside it was so clearly our future home. It was not well taken care of and the house desperately needs some serious work. After a low offer was accepted and an inspection had taken place my husband and I, nervous and weary, walked away from the deal. It was too much. We don't know anything about this stuff. We were scared. So we looked at more houses for more money and hated them all. Eventually we decided that we couldn't let go of the little house on Ferndale that was still on our minds. So we went back with a laughably, unrealistically low offer and my lovely, hard-working realtor got it accepted. And here we are. We have a house, a little money and a lot to do. The advantage to this house, having almost never been updated in its 96 years, is that many of the character features remain in tact. The disadvantage is that it has almost never been update in its 96 years. So I have decided to blog it all as we go along, to record the process, to relieve the stress and hopefully to connect to people who are in the same boat or who one day hope to be.


Coming up: A list of the improvements that need to be done, and the improvements we hope to do.