Good morning all, it’s 5:30 am here in Coweta, OK ( Hubby’s up at 5 for work) and I am up and rearing to go.  Although, I don’t think Buddy is, he kept whining to go back to the bedroom and has now fallen asleep on the couch pillow.  Ah, the life of a dog…wouldn’t it be nice to lounge around the house all day without a care in the world?! Today is going to be a busy one, we don’t yet have a washing machine or dryer in the house, so off to the laundry mat I go. It will be nice to have that extra $40 every two weeks back in my pocket, but until then the laundry mat is my best frienemy!  I also thought since I was up early, I would start with the first of many installments on A Housewife’s Home Buying Adventures.
 

Cory and I had been talking about buying a home for a while, but always put it on the back burner thinking it wasn’t the time for us. We relocated from Wichita, KS to Tulsa for Cory’s job and had a week to find a place to live. We found a small 750 sq ft , 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom apartment.. It was the perfect place on short notice, but we quickly out grew the apartment and after a year plus of living there, we needed more room. We began to look for rental homes but they are practically non-existent in Tulsa and if you do manage to find one, they usually wanted $1400-1600 a month for them.  Not in our budget at all. 

 

 So, we decided we were going to buy a house no matter what we had to do to get it.  We began looking at the beginning of April, and after seeing many houses, some nice, some bad, some short sales and foreclosures, we stumbled upon a house that wasn’t even on our list to view. Our Realtor asked if we wanted to see the house anyway, even if it was out of our price range. Well, of course we did, we always want what we can’t afford, right?  When we walked into the house, I knew at that moment it was ours. The house is a wood and stone ranch style home, with 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. It’s 1350 sq ft, almost twice the size of our apartment. I was in heaven!   As we looked around and noticed small things that would need to be repaired, I looked at the amazing floor to ceiling stone fire place that complimented the vaulted ceiling. As I walked away from the fire place, I saw that it was pulling away from the wall. A little scary when there is about a 6 inch gap from the wall to the actual mortar. Our Realtor spoke with the listing agent, who assured us that there was no need to worry, the homeowners had it checked out and it was fine. I didn’t believe it for a second. But I was in love with this house.

Cory and I prayed hard about it, and after seeing the house a few more times, we decided it was for us. We put in our offer and after countering a few times, we agreed on a price and got to work on all the fun stuff, not!  We had our inspections coming up and I knew I wanted to be there for it. As the day came, we were a nervous bunch of newbies. I asked questions and think I picked all the dead ends off of my hair (I have OCD hair picking) but I wanted to be informed. The inspectors told us the house was in great shape for being 30 plus years old. The garage door will need to be replaced soon, the hot water heater needs to operate with a double flue instead of a single. We will need to put in 2 gfci outlets, the exhaust fan in the master bathroom needs to be replaced and the garbage disposal doesn’t work. Great, small things we can handle on our own. Now, what about that fire place?  It was not built properly, there were no wall ties holding the stone to the studs in the wall. It was a major safety concern and needed to be torn down and built back up, or safely attached to the wall, which the wall would have to be torn down to the studs in order to do so. 

 

After some small fighting between the sellers and all parties, we agreed to take to stone down to the fire box, repair the wall behind it and call it a day. We were closing on Monday May 16th, and on the Friday before we closed we had the final walk through . We entered the house and my heart sank. We walked up to the “new” fire place.  Behind the stone they took down stood brick, rough mortar and tile.  The fire box stands with a 3 inch gap between it and the wall. It was a mess, but that’s what we agreed to and the sellers wouldn’t fix it anymore. We were out of time to negotiate it and we wanted to close on time.  So we took it and now we have to pay $500 to fix it.  Insert massive headache here!  We just added it our “fix it” list and we just have to live with the ugly for now. 

Stay tuned, there’s soooo much more to come!