Escrow Closed

Today, we closed escrow! Finally!!!
 

This week, Andrew and I spent 3 days painting the rooms inside our house and getting it ready to move into. Last Saturday, a couple of neighbors came and helped us by painting Bobbie's room and our kitchen. They turned our AWESOME!! Thanks to Rebekah, Dusty, and Gabby!

Kitchen is painted a sunshine/tuscan yellow

Bobbie's Room is a soft pink

Andrew and I spent Saturday painting our bedroom.

Master bedroom is eggplant and silver

We had to come back on Tuesday and Wednesday to finish painting the living room and stair well walls. 

These two walls in the stair well are neutral taupe and tan colors. 

Its hard to see the true colors in these pictures, but we are very happy with how it all turned out. I can't wait to move in. We are starting to move a few things tomorrow, Friday, but the bulk of our move will be on Saturday. 

Praise the Lord for His perfect timing. We are humbled and blessed by this gift He has given to us and we are excited to move in and begin our lives by raising and growing our family in our new home.

Signing Escrow Papers

Tomorrow, Andrew and I are going down to the Habitat office to sign our purchase agreement and all of our loan documents!!

We are so excited and cannot wait for the next few weeks. Hopefully escrow will only be only 2 or 3 weeks long and before we all know it, we will be living in our beautiful, brand new home!

I can't wait!!! Although, we have a lot of signing to do tomorrow :)

Finally! Progress!

It's been exactly one month since we finished our sweat equity hours. Tonight, we finally were given our purchase price for our house and were told that the loan documents are going to be drawn up and we will be able to start signing papers, hopefully, this coming week.

As soon as we start signing papers, we should be able to move in within two weeks.

Looks like move in will be soon! I hope very soon!!

Tomorrow we are having a garage sale and we are hoping to make enough money to help buy new couches and a living room rug. We already sold our old couch, and now we have only one chair in our living room to sit on. We really need to close escrow soon so we can furnish our living room and have a place to sit. :)

Playing "The Waiting Game"

During the time we were putting in our sweat equity hours, we had hopes that once we finished our hours, escrow would start and we'd be able to move in. Ideally, this is what Habitat would have wanted too, but just like most things in life, the ideal situation did not happen.

We finished our sweat equity hours two weeks ago, with the expectation that escrow would open two days later....but they decided that they needed new appraisals on the house because the last appraisals were over a year old and Habitat wanted the most accurate numbers to determine our buy price. We were told they should have the numbers in by last friday, September 30th and then they would be able to determine our buy price and we would give our 30 days notice at our apartment. Friday came and the appraisals didn't come in, so we are still waiting, hoping the appraisals will come in on Monday.

Thankfully, our escrow may only be a couple of weeks. We don't have any bank loans and paperwork along those lines, which is usually what takes the longest in escrow. We just have the escrow papers that need to be signed by us, and the city and the escrow people....I don't really understand it all yet, but I understand that escrow should be short which is good news to me.

We're still hoping to move into our house this month. We pray that everything that needs to happen in the next few days to make that possible, does happen. Please pray with us!

Finished! 0 Hours To Go!!

Today we completed our 500 sweat equity hours!!

Yesterday, Andrew and I worked in the morning and filled all the Post-Tension holes in our foundation.
Our foundation is a Post-Tension slab with steel rods running through the concrete to make it stronger and less likely to crack. When the foundation was poured, the holes where the rods run through, were left open and we had to fill them with high pressure concrete.

When we arrived this morning, we only had 10 hours to complete. Andrew could only stay for the morning and I was going to stay the whole day. We started together by finishing our fence. There were 4 or 5 boards that were missing and needing to be installed to finish the fence so we nailed all those into place and I painted it in the afternoon.

Completed Fence....Looks Good!

After we finished the fence, we installed our mini blinds. We had to install two sets in the living room and one set in the dining room. 

My studdly man getting the window ready for blinds

Dining Room installed (bad lighting)

Living Room (large window)

Living Room (small window)

Andrew had to leave after these were done and I went to lunch and took a break. When I came back, I painted the fence and then got to work installing the final set of blinds in our stairwell. It was a little tricky doing it by myself and being up on a ladder in the stairwell, but I got it done.

Stairwell blinds

I spent the last 45 minutes or so, cleaning up. 

Over the last month and a half of working on our sweat equity, we had accumulated a lot of tools and things in that house and I wanted to put everything back and leave the house empty and clean for the inspectors tomorrow. The building inspection happens tomorrow and it is the final inspection. If the house passes, the house will earn the Certificate of Occupancy and we can give our 30 day notice and begin the escrow process. I hear we will have LOTS of paperwork to sign. 

We should find out tomorrow or Friday if the house passed and if we can give our 30 day notice. 

I pray everything goes smoothly and that we would even be able to begin to move in before our 30 days is up in this apartment!

Final Countdown

Seventeen more hours to go!!

Watch the countdown this week!!!

We should be opening Escrow at the end of this week too!!!!

Whoo Hoo!!!!!

Update

Yesterday we received word that we should be able to move into our house in the next 40 days or so. Our house should pass inspections and be given a Certificate of Occupancy next Friday, the 16th (Bobbie's 9 month birthday) and then we can give our 30 day notice here at our apartment and begin the escrow process. We are hoping that we can move into our house before our 30 days is up in the apartment, just so we can have time to move over a few days, or weeks, rather than all in one day or weekend.
If not, we will still be able to move into our house in the middle of October, which is GREAT news!! We're so excited, and so ready!!

Today, we met with an interior designer who helped us choose paint colors for the house. We are excited to paint our walls and get the house ready for move in!
Bobbie's room will have one wall painted a soft pink color.
Our bedroom will have one wall a plum color and the rest a light silver/grey.
The kitchen will be a golden tuscan yellow.
The living room will stay the vanilla color it is, but we're painting the wall that the stairs are on a dark greyish earth-toney brown.
I got some good advice about the laundry area and pantry too. Inside closet areas like that, you should paint the walls a dark color. It makes the walls recede and then you can see your food in the pantry or the clothes in the laundry area better. If you keep the walls white or whatever light color they are, especially if the area has a light in it, all the stuff (like your cans and food) get all lost and look like a big chaotic mess. So, I'm going to use whatever left over paint there is that is darker than the walls to paint inside my pantry and inside the laundry closet. I'll post pictures after the fact so you can see if you agree with the interior designer. :)