Getting a House

We have been house-shopping since August 2008. We looked and looked. Then we went to the bank, and got a loan amount and approval. Then we looked some more. Then we had to re-qualify because it took longer than 30 days. Then our agent suggested a new lender. We tried there, qualified, and found a house we loved. But... there was a slight problem with the house and the lender would not give us the loan. So...

a friend of a friend suggested yet another lender. We checked there and got a 3% loan! By that time, God had changed our hearts about the house we loved. We no longer loved it! The low interest on this loan gave us a bigger price range, so we shopped there. There were some nicer homes, but they were at the top of our range. And one of them (that I loved) only had a tiny eat-in kitchen with a super-small table shoved up in the corner. There was no way to remedy that.... not enough room to eat at the table! (By the way, we didn't want to spend that much money anyway, but if we had, the house would have had to be perfect... with enough room to sit around the table.)

So, we kept looking. Then we found a little house we both loved for almost half of the small-kitchen house. We checked it out thoroughly, then made an offer! For the price, we could gradually fix it up with super low payments. But... our lender, the USDA saw several things they wanted repaired by contractors and placed in our loan. Some things we were fine with, but they wanted several small things done too... like painting every room, and replacing door knobs. Not that we wouldn't want these things done, but we just didn't want to put them in our loan. But there was no way around it. And even with several thousand dollars-worth of repairs, it's still 20,000 cheaper than the perfect, small-kitchen house. So...

We closed Friday, February 12th!! And the three-day waiting period is now over and...

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!!

Jamin's boss made a bid for all the work, so Jamin will actually be doing the work (with me helping of course). ;) A contract has to be signed before we go in and work, so all the waiting has been driving me crazy! So... I've been working on projects to go in the house. :) Here are a few:

Jamin got this chair for free somewhere. It had potential. Before:

After: it's going on my side of the bed to hold a stack of books. :)

Before:
After: to go above the boys' beds in their new room. :)

There's no "before" for this one. I made two of these for the boys' beds.

We are so thankful, and so excited! It is always scary making a big change, "signing your life away," and all that goes with buying a house. But we feel we have prayed, and waited, and received the perfect house from God. It is 5 minutes away from our church! We currently drive 30 minutes. We really want to make sure we use it for God's glory... after all, He gave it to us!

There will be lots of pictures to come of the house. We are going there today! I need to measure windows for curtains. There's not really much we can do there today, but we just need to go to "our" house. :)