AND WE ARE SO EXCITED!

Well…we hate the moving process more than anything on the planet…but small price to pay at the end of the day.

I feel like we have been looking online and viewing houses forever at this point. In reality, it was only a couple of months that we were actively out and viewing homes, but it starts to take a toll on you after awhile.

Especially when you’re getting a denial or two because you were either too late or because someone else looked better on paper, you start to get discouraged and frustrated and, after awhile, it starts not being the best situation to be in when you’re trying to find a new home.

What didn’t help was that, we found out almost too late, that we were working with a realtor who was more interested in his own bottom line than our best interests, which is frustrating. Ironically, we realized it when we reached out to him about this house (as well as another house) and he said “yeah it’s actually not on the market anymore”, which seemed odd to me because it was on every website (including his), so I reached out to the realtor listed for confirmation on whether it was available or not.

Wouldn’t ya know, it was still available…and only just listed (and for the record the other house he also claimed was off-market, but it was also jut listed)…but it was some sort of internal listing (I can’t remember what she called it) so no outside realtors would get commission if they helped someone with it; so basically our realtor wouldn’t make a commission if we got the house.

And I get it; it’s a business, he’s in it to make money; I understand. But don’t lie to me about it; don’t say houses aren’t available to us because you won’t make the commission you want off of it. If I had believed him; we wouldn’t have this house and that’s super shitty to me. So, we, obviously, are done with him; but we did develop a great relationship with the realtor who listed our house; which I am grateful for because we’ll hold on to her for future home purchases.

All that aside…LET’S TALK ABOUT OUR NEW HOUSE!

I will say, we are renting again; we didn’t buy a single family home yet. We don’t feel 100% ready for that yet and with me switching jobs this year, it just doesn’t seem like a smart idea at this moment. With my switching, our income will go up; Devon is also being “promoted” to Biology Team Lead at his school next year, which has an extra financial boost to it and all of this in the long run will give us more solid footing on getting a house that we both love and can live in for the next 40 years than what we have at this moment.

In talking and thinking about all of this, we decided to rent a townhouse. We want a lot more space than we have, we want less neighbors, we want a yard and a basement, we want to not live in the area we do anymore and we are getting all of that and more in our new house.

We do have one hitch/hiccup in that our lease is up in our apartment on the 31st, but we can’t move into our new house until 8/15. So we have two weeks to figure stuff out…I’m trying to see if our current place will let us stay a little longer (our apartment has new tenants but they may be able to move them to another apartment if they are willing) and the realtor is seeing if we can move into the new house early. If neither of those things happen…we’re gonna have to get creative. If you’ve dealt with this before, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email (domesticeducator@gmail.com) with suggestions or what you did in this situation. We also have our cat to contend with in all of this, too, so we need to make sure she’s cared for.

EDIT: We are staying in our apartment until the 15th! The new tenants were happy to switch to another apartment! Yay!

The new townhouse is about twice the size of our current apartment (which is mesmerizing to me); it’s updated, it has a HUGE kitchen; HUGE basement, a backyard, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms (which kind of seems obnoxious to me, but whatever)….IT EVEN HAS BAY WINDOWS!

I never knew I could love a house…but I love this house.

Wanna see a few pictures?

Admittedly, these are the realtor photos, which is why you’ll see the watermark on them, we haven’t been able to get in there and take our own photos yet.

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF MY KITCHEN!

THERE’S A HANGING POT RACK! Our current pots/pans cabinet is the bane of my existence so knowing that I can just hang them up, makes my heart happy.

And an. actual pantry….

And an island that I can get stools for so we can eat there….

There are so many good things that can happen in this kitchen.

The living room is what you see past the kitchen, it also already has a mount for a flat screen, which makes Devon happy.

This is the other direction of the kitchen into the dining room, which is a good size because apparently we’re going to “have” to host Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, according to Devon. In all fairness, his family will likely give us hell if we have this size kitchen and don’t offer and everyone would fit just in this area without any issues.

Devon is calling this our Beetlejuice basement…for obvious reasons. He laughed so hard when he saw this floor and goes…”we’re gonna need rugs or else I’m going to say ‘Beetlejuice’ three times every time I walk downstairs”. He wants to do some sort of man cave situation in that back area there, so he can have fun with that.

Like I mentioned there are three bedrooms, one of which will be our office and one will be a guest bedroom (until we need a nursery). This is part of the master bedroom…and you know what that door goes to?

Yup, our walk-in closet! Devon might actually be able to keep his clothes in his own bedroom here. In our apartment they’re in the second bedroom because the closet here is so tiny we both don’t fit.

I will be honest, I hate the yellow, but we have DOUBLE SINKS in our master bathroom. This probably seems silly, but double sinks will be life-changing for us. We have one bathroom in our apartment and it has one sink, so us getting dressed in the morning is hard. Double sinks (and two full bathrooms on the second floor – the other full bathroom is in the basement and the half bath is on the first floor) will make us getting dressed in the morning so much easier; we won’t be bumping into each other or having to switch in and out of the bathroom or waiting to use it.

And we get a backyard! It’s not huge, it doesn’t need to be, we’re not the most outdoorsy, but we wanted an area that we could have a grill, maybe a bench (which is already there) and a place for a small table and we’re good.

I also like that we have a deck as well as an area under the deck if we want to be out of the sun.

I am so excited. I legit cried for like 30 minutes after the realtor called me and told me we got the house. But I can’t wait to move in. We have some things to figure out and a ton of packing to get done, but I can’t wait to be in my house.