We Bought a House! Introducing the #douglasdigs

Yep, you read that right… we bought a house! If you’re surprised, don’t worry, so were we! This whole house-buying adventure began a little over a month ago, and has been a whirlwind since. So, let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

Our plan for awhile has been to start looking at purchasing a home next spring/summer. So naturally, being the eager beavers that we are, we’ve been talking about it, budgeting for it, and spending maybe a little too much time on real estate websites (guilty!). So around mid-July we were feeling a bit bored and decided that hey! Maybe it would be a good idea to go to some open houses of all these houses I was seeing online just to get a feel for price range, neighborhood, quality of homes, etc. We were, after all, just looking. What’s the harm in that, right? HA! After being warned a few times that there’s no such thing as “just looking,” and reassuring these well-meaning people that there certainly was and that that sentiment didn’t apply to us, we stumbled upon this adorable black brick home, and there was no turning back. We were sold!

We weren’t gnawing at the bit to see this home, since the online photos weren’t exactly stellar, but it was on the way home from church so we decided to stop in. After spending the next 40 minutes walking through it multiple times and checking out all it had to offer, we got in the car and wondered aloud if it would be crazy to buy a house right now. After looking at more houses, talking, praying, and looking over the budget, we decided that maybe we would just get a realtor and see if we could get pre-approved. Well, a couple days later and wouldn’t you know it we not only had a realtor and pre-approval, but we had an offer worked out with the seller, and were proud new homeowners!

Here we are signing the initial offer, and then celebrating with Cold Stone once the final offer was accepted! The process was a little nerve-wracking but mostly just exciting. I don’t think it fully sank in for awhile… or maybe it still hasn’t. 🙂

I think this photo accurately sums up our excitement about this house.

So, a few details for those of you who are curious. This pretty little rambler has 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, an eat-in kitchen as well as a dining room, a covered patio and huge shed out back, and a 1/2 finished basement. It was built in the 60’s and everything appears to be original except the new basement carpet and kitchen/dining tile. So there’s pretty hardwood floors and not-so-pretty sparkly popcorn ceilings. 🙂 We love that this house still maintains a lot of it’s great character, has been kept-up amazingly well, and has lots of room for improvements and making it our own. Since everything is so well maintained, we’ll be able to work on it at our own pace (and as the budget allows), which is a huge win for us. We’re very excited to start this journey!

So we close in a month, and that’s when it’s really official, but I’ve been keeping the news in for a month and just couldn’t do it anymore! We’ll have a week overlap with our current place, which will be great to tackle those disco-riffic ceilings and maybe do some painting (I know, every designer says not to paint before move-in, but if I know I just want it white then does it really matter anyway??). 😉 I can’t wait to share photos of the inside with you as well as the whole moving/reno process. Ahhh to be able to paint and replace light fixtures and scrape ceilings and do whatever we want! It will be quite glorious. Oh, and did I mention that this house is literally 1 mile from Home Depot? I have a feeling they’ll know us by name in the next few months (we may have already taken a few trips there because, eager beavers).

Cheers to home-ownership! Now, let’s go buy a rake.