falling

Monday, March 15, 2010

Things just couldn't be better. I am really on cloud nine right now.

I have a new job!

I'm so excited about it! It's at a bank here in town where I'll be a Universal Banker. Which is a personal banker (open accounts, explain accounts, start loans, etc,) and then I'll be a back up for the tellers (during lunch, vacations, or just when we are busy). I had the interview the day after we signed for the house and then last Tuesday, I got the call that I got the job. It's funny, I actually interviewed for a teller position but after the interview the manager call me and asked if I would be interested in the Universal Banker position. Of course I said yes, but it took a whole week for the official offer to come. I'm glad they saw potential in me to put me in a higher position. I don't start until next week and I'm glad. It gives me time to get the house a bit more in order.

Things are just falling into place. I'm so thankful it only took a week to get a job, instead the 5 1/2  months it took when we moved to Hannibal. It makes me feel like we definitely made the right choice with Mike taking this job, moving 3 hours away, and buying this house.

it's official...

Monday, March 8, 2010

...we are homeowners! We've made it through!

We had a couple of hiccups on closing day, but in the end we closed, signed and went on our way. When we did our final walk through (3 hours before signing) we found that basically nothing was done on our list of things to fix after the inspection. UGH! We were quite upset with the owner, to say the least. As I said in a previous post, instead of giving us the $1,000 off the price for the problems, the owner said he would fix them. And then he didn't. The reason we were so upset was he could of negotiated the $1,000 down or just said no to it and we would of been okay with it. But no, he said he would fix them. And what made us even more nervous about the situation was the seller signed all his stuff the day before us (he couldn't get off work) and couldn't be contacted before we signed. Our realtor did the best he could in the situation, called the seller's realtor and she couldn't even get in contact with the seller. There was a lot of piddly stuff of the list to fix but the big thing was re-mortoring  part the the chimney, some of the bricks are pretty loose. I have no idea how much something like that costs and now we have to pay for it. Luckily, when we went to closing, the sellers realtor offered us $200 of her own money for the situation. I know it's not enough to fix the chimney, but it will definitely help. I felt bad that she had to do that, but my realtor explained that she would most likely be reimbursed by the seller.

I know buying a house isn't easy and those things happen, we were just hoping it wouldn't happen to us. The seller also left the house with a lot of trash and it was just in disgusting/dirty shape. So we spent a fair amount of time cleaning it out.

But on the other hand, we bought a house! And we did a lot of painting this week, thanks to my Dad. My parents decided to come help us get the house ready to move in and I'm glad they did. The living room was a bigger project than I anticipated. The walls are plaster and needed a good overhaul. There were cracks, divets (sp?), and waviness. I know I couldn't of done a job as good as he did on those walls, it was a full day of prep work before we got to the paint.

These are the before pictures again:




Here's some prep work:



Finished painting:


We definitely have more work to do in this room, but this was a big part. I LOVE this room now. I can't wait to get our furniture in it and decorate! We need to do some work on the mantel and built ins, so we didn't paint them yet, so that will be another task to be done.

We were able to get the first coat of paint on the dining room. With seeing all the work that had to go into the living room, we didn't expect to get anything done in the dining room. I'm really glad we did it though. I wanted a grey-blue, not too bright. We put the first coat of paint on and it's too bright for us, so we are going to take our other gallon of paint back and ask them to add some more grey.

Here is the before of the dining room:
 

Here's after the first coat:

 

Hopefully this week (it might be next week), we will get the second coat on of the grey-er color. The movers are here now packing us. Oh, how I love free movers! But I do kind of feel in the way and feel like I should be helping. 
I am hoping to have the computer/internet up and going soon in the new house, so it may be a week before I post again.
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