Waiting Game

The process of buying a home is, well, a huge pain.

Here’s the short story: closing on the new house has been delayed again.

We found out yesterday around lunchtime and I’m not going to lie- I had a mini emotional breakdown. February 18th was the day we accepted the offer on our current home. That’s over two months ago. At that point the offer we had made on the new house had already been accepted contingent on us selling our current home. We had already went to the bank to start the loan process and such. When we accepted our offer we were told that we should be closing around March 10th. Our buyer ended up having a family emergency that called him away from the area, so we were delayed. We were completely understanding and rolled with it. When he finally got back, we were told he had decided to use 401(k) funds to purchase our house instead of going through a bank. This was supposed to dramatically speed the process up. Well, between a water test issue on the new house, a snowstorm in Minnesota delaying our buyers check, the bank taking longer to get the loan through underwriting and approval than we hoped, and what seems like fifty thousand and one other things, we are STILL waiting. It’s frustrating, to say the very least. I’m pregnant, living between two houses, and emotional to begin with- the added stress doesn’t help. Poor Corey has to live with my crazy! :)

Ultimately, I know it will all work out one way or the other. I know in the end it will all be worth it. Heck, maybe all this waiting will mean we have super nice weather finally when we move (it SNOWED yesterday! It’s almost May for goodness sake!). Yep, that’s me trying to look on the bright side! Yesterday that was NOT happening, hence me waiting for today to post! :) So I’m making progress… And hopefully our closings are too!

And just to give y’all a little ray of sunshine on this somewhat downer of a post- look at my cutie of a son:

Thomas HAD to be in the picture too! :)

How can I be upset? I’m so very blessed!

The Beginning

First off, for those who know me well, yes this is probably the fourth or so blog I’ve created. I’ve always had the best of intentions to follow through and continue posting in every single one of them, but, well, to be honest, life gets in the way! It’s a little overwhelming sometimes raising a crazy three year old, baking a little baby, keeping up with the adorable little boys I babysit for a living, and keep this whole selling our house/buying a new one/closing/moving thing straight! But as I’ve packed boxes and started the process of leaving our first little home to move to our forever home, one thing I’ve found myself regretting is how horrible I’ve been at documenting the projects we did and changes we’ve made over the past two and a half years. Sure, I have a bunch of photos on my phone, computer, old phone, and camera, but they are in absolutely no order nor do I entirely know where they all are (I’m a picture hoarder- for example, I have 1,562 pictures currently on my iPhone… Yes, it is a problem!). Then through the wonderful world of Pinterest I found the amazing 12 Oaks Blog and knew that Amanda had the perfect solution to my problem (not to mention a super cute house and tons of great ideas which, yes, will be my inspiration for many projects in the new house!)… As long as I follow through!

But enough about me slacking…

Until we close on the new house, which (knock on wood that it’s not delayed AGAIN) should be Wednesday, I don’t feel comfortable posting pictures and such of it. So that means y’all get to take a trip down memory lane with me and look at the photos I have readily available of our first little house that we will be saying a bittersweet goodbye to…

The outside before (above), and after (below).

The living room… It didn’t change a lot, but you should still be able to tell the before and after…

The downstairs bathroom… It was one of the rooms, if not the room, that changed the most. We changed the layout to be able to fit a bathtub (before we only had a shower in the house) and to add a closet to Tate’s room next door (which previously had a door accessing the bathroom). We also added a laundry chute while we were at it…which I will miss dreadfully!

Not the best picture, but you can get the idea of the before above. And the after pics below…

Which sorry for the janky looking uploads and different picture sizes… I’m on Corey’s iPad because I’m lazy and don’t want to go upstairs to the computer… But that means little to no editing options. What can I say? This pregnant lady’s behind is firmly planted to the couch!

Okay… Now for our pride and joy, the kitchen. A bit of backstory…my grandpa used to flip houses for a living. This house is the last one he did. He was getting a bit burnt out by the time we came into the pictures as newlyweds needing a cheap place to live. We got to put a lot of input in how to finish it up, and actually did a lot of the work ourselves. Originally, grandpa planned to put our kitchen where our dining room is. It’s a tiny room and could fit one strip of cabinets, which you couldn’t even completely access because of the oven. The dining room he had planned however was HUGE… So we asked if we could switch, and he agreed! Below, the first picture is the original kitchen, the second is the makeshift kitchen we made when we decided to switch using what we had, and the last few are the final product that I love and will miss dearly!

Again the spacing wasn’t cooperating… I promise better pictures in the future!

And now I’m just going to add the remaining after photos of Tate’s room that we didn’t really do anything to except add the closet, our dining room which was really just painted, and the upstairs that we also really didn’t do anything to!

So there you have it. The only thing missing is our half bath upstairs, but we literally did pretty much nothing to that and it isn’t exactly pretty now so I decided to skip it! And just to make it a third time as a charm, I apologize for the crappy picture quality/sizing/spacing. Stay tuned for the real fun- the new house!

P.S. My darling hubby rocks at DIY, but you may notice a few flaws in some of the photos. We knew this house wasn’t our forever house, and we also knew we had a certain price point we wouldn’t go over no matter how gorgeous the house was. Wrong or right, we did cut a few corners and pick cheaper finishings and items because of this. However, the new house, as our forever house, will be held to a higher standard! Hello more growing pains and family fun! :)

And now end hugely long first post! :)