2 day slam!

So thanks to some awesome friends, Jake, Julian and Calvin and to my mom for watching Naomi, we were able to have 2 full days of good hard work. SOOO much got done, roof was started, 3 of the 5 rooms down stairs got painted, more head way was made on our kitchen, thanks to my dad and our contractor Mike Samuelson, the garage got epoxied and the inside of the house was cleaned up a bit. We have gotten more done since and should get almost all of the roof done by the beginning of next week. AH-MAZE-ING!! Let the blessings fall as we have yet to get any rain and its almost Christmas. We truly have been seriously blessed with good weather, good help, good people/ companies were working with and so much more. It has been stressful more often than not and emotional and crazy and then add the holidays, I guess there's another blessing Naomi isn't really old enough to get Christmas and that we aren't really having one this year. As tensions run high for a number of reasons it is hard to remember how easy we have it but I know we try to remember as often as possible and thankfully because it is Christmas time a lot of commercials and just the spirit of the season has helped remind us, or at least me when I start in a self pity party for what ever reason. I found my self a couple of times humming "Count your many blessings, name them one by one, count your many blessings, see what God hath done." And truly it nearly brings me to tears  because of how blessed I am and how I don't acknowledge it nearly enough, especially when I allow myself to get caught up in the hurried pace at which we have been running since we got the keys.

I have barely packed and it sucks and I know it will bite me in the butt, however its not like I'm eating bon-bons. I am just goofing around online right now but my day is packed with running all over town and getting things lined up so when we are ready to start a new project we can at the drop of a hat, mostly because they start at night when everything is closed haha.

Here are a few new pictures of what has come of the past couple of days::

I only wish these carts were easier to steer, Naomi thinks they are the greatest!!!

Getting work done!! Left to right: Julian, Jake, Keith and my dad

Contractor Mike inspecting the disaster, that is suppose to be where my kitchen sink and dish washer are.

I wish I had a better picture of the blue but this wall looks beyond fantastic! The blue looks great against this weird rock and we are so happy with the color!

My tack strips I was pulling up and feeling important until our wonderful carpet guy Tony said I didn't need to pull them up... buzz kill. Oh well.

New roof! Day 2! Thank you Calvin, Jake and Keith!

Because I love this face <3

So excited to see daddy!

Chillin' on the drive over, it's hard to see but before we left she put the gold bead necklace on her and the purple on on her baby that Heather got her. so cute!

She is such a little mimic, I was sanding and she wanted to help so bad I gave her a kitchen sponge so she could help me "sand" down the cabinets.  

so much dust in the air

getting ready to paint

I wish this picture did justice, this is the epoxied garage floor, it smells gross but it looks FANTASTIC!! highly highly recommend doing this to help save your garage floors.  

99.9% finished living room, looks so much better, now we just need to paint the trim and door and get the base boards on and were done with at least this room!

Our house is slowly transforming and honestly it is looking so good, we are getting things done right and I can only wait for this time next month to have just about everything, if not everything on our bank list done. We can not express enough how much we appreciate everyone's help especially the night shift since its soooo soooo cold (ok you Utah-arians reading this and laughing, its freaking cold for us Californians) as I have been typing this up Keith and Calvin have been doing some painting in the kitchen and then came to the apartment pushed a car and some tires out of the way, loaded up my old washer and dryer to bring to Rusty to be taken away and replaced by a new, nice stack-able front loading set!! so exciting, how ever they can't get in their spot in the garage for a few days as the epoxy needs to harden but that's why I did 5 loads of laundry today :) It is so cold and Calvin keeps coming back for the night shift, he is the man. 

Since I probably wont have time to blog again before, 

Merry Christmas!! 

Here's an Idea of what were working with

Here are a few pictures of the disaster so far :)

Here it is, worth all the trouble, just barely haha!

Jake, Keith and Naomi having the traditional take out on the floor dinner!

Stairs before and during, the after will come at the very end when we get the carpet in.

Naomi un-decorating the tree :)

testing out color "oyster" were actually going to make the fireplace wall an accent color like a dark midnight blueish.

my awesome sectional from left to right recliner that when off the wall nearly lies you flat, a regular seat, the corner(best spot), hide-a bed and another awesome recliner. it will move but for now that's where its residing. I still cant believe we got it for only $500 the fabric is in really good condition!

hole under the kitchen sink

Keith finishing up the work my dad started in ripping up the kitchen floor

"Deck" torn up, love it, and the plywood is my kitchen sink area

I'll only scare you with one picture of the nasty carpet padding ripped up, or mostly. I am in the master doorway looking in to what will be Naomi's room, with the stairs and second bedroom on the left and guest full bath and closet on the right.

enough tools?

give me the keys!!

So last Monday I wired our big chunk of change of a down payment as we were to get the keys Friday! Thursday I had JUST put Naomi down for a nap around 12:30ish and I get an email from our loan officer... oh heeeeeey escrow over looked $477.17 and we cant continue anything with out it, I suggest you send $500 just in case and you'll get the extra back but you need to do it NOW to get the money to the east coast office so they can finish funding and then record Friday so you can get keys. Great well my baby comes first so the second she woke up we were in the car and booking it to BofA in Windsor. Got the wire out a little after 2pm California time. If it got there before 9am the next day we could still get the keys Friday. Well with the east coast time difference and our luck can you guess if we made it or not? Yeah.... fail. They didn't get the wire until late on Friday. Man. Ok well maybe they can fund and record Monday??? Well those lovely listing agents are located in SoCal(??) so they have to use a third party to record but that third party only records once a day at like 8am. Wanna guess if got funded by then? No. No we didn't. FINALLY Tuesday it was done! that evening Keith goes over and tries to find the keys that are supposedly taped with black electrical tape on the inside of the electrical box. he didn't see them. I go over there. Don't see them. Felicia calls the agent over and over who said the locksmith said he put them there. (ok stepping back after all this they don't even hand you or your agent the keys and this is standard procedure in their offices?? Nice. And the house is only 10 minutes from my agents office... real nice) Felicia comes over and we look and look and suddenly were all kinda half pissed half laughing and she goes whats this? and under the locksmiths business card are the keys taped to the bottom inside of the electrical box. Yes moral here: some times you need to step back, breathe and look big picture. So because of that escrow fail we lost Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday to get things done, that's like 4 days including a valuable weekend. Oh well we have keys!!!! Pop the bubbly, dance in the streets. Thursday my parents came by, my mom had not yet been in Rusty. Everyone is really excited but thinking about ALL the work that needs to be done especially since we decided to paint the down stairs before we move all our stuff in there is a tad daunting. At the moment the down stair consists of I believe 6 colors, a weird yet acceptable light green, an orange brown ish, a dark poop brown, peach, yellow, pea soup barf green and barn dark red. So I guess that's 7 but the red is only in the window sills oh and I think there is some white in there too. Needless to say painting in needed. Today is Friday, I bought a pint or quart or what ever size of a tan that I liked and painted rectangles on random walls how ever now I feel it might be too light for what I want. Sigh. Back to Kelly Moore to try another color. I also had to get PGE in my name and so I did it online because I hate going through 1000 menu guides. Well PGE is already on I just needed to get it in my name before they turned it off, well you cant tell the computer that so they said someone needed to be there. Uuuuuummmmm. So while Keith, Julian and Jason went down to Novato to pick up my AWESOME sectional (pictures soon I'm sure) I waited with Naomi and Ozzy from about 4:30-8 and then stayed until 9:30 to wait for the sectional. Well as I thought no one came... so I waited for nothing... but I did do the painting I mentioned and caught up with some friends and just spent time in my house :) Then I find out that this sectional that was listed at $850, I talked down to $600 Keith was able to talk down to $500 and they threw in a rug that we will not be keeping but still. So much to do and not nearly enough time as we want to move in, in one week. I also find out today that in order to finish the kitchen floor the kitchen has to be painted... I really need to choose my colors!

Here we go!

So back in March 2011 Keith was officially promoted as the maintenance manager out at his work which gave us the financial ability to start house hunting! About a month later we got set up with one of my high school girl friends sister, Felicia, who is in that business. Now if I went in detail the journey that has been the past 8 months now, we would be here forever so I will try to summarize the best I can and I'm sure even that will be longer than most will want to read. Either way, here we go. I will skip the first 4 1/2 months and hundreds of houses we saw we had only put offers on about 4 at this point but not really anything we were smitten by. Then the fateful day: Friday August 26th, new houses were submitted in to our profile and there it was: $234,900 3 bed 2 1/2 bath, 2 story, 1892 square feet. Fire place in the living room (NOT the kitchen like so many of the other homes we saw) a dinning room, a decent size kitchen, sunken living and family rooms, decent looking floors. Definitely needing some remodel but not bad. Google maps: good location for Keith's commute. Bulldog Sex Predators: no one with in a couple mile radius. I was STOKED to say the least. I text Keith at work saying we found the house! Little did we know what would follow... We went that afternoon to look at this house and another one that had come up as well. I just kept saying "I can't get excited about this house knowing that 'Rusty' is coming up" (we named the houses by the street they were on to keep track of them) Felicia had found out that the house had just fallen out of contingency after 6 days, I wonder why?? Well we soon found out. The siding was rotting away, straight up holes, how ever the frame was still strong and fine. The carpet had been torn up from the bottom of the stairs up and through all the second story how ever the tack strips and moldy carpet pads were left. The master bed had molding in the corner where the bad siding was (we determined from poor flashing and the gutter falling off) the bathrooms upstairs were moldy all the windows are single pane so they came with their special issues. yadda yadda long story we found out why the house had been on the market since April, had started at 280k and was still not sold. We put an offer in at 205 and decided to see what they would say, couldn't hurt right? After talking to Keith's dad we realized that this house was doable, the main structure of the house was fine and to keep pursuing the house, even be ok with upping our bid if and when need be. The listing agent got back to that evening saying that they will talk to the owner and get back to us next week but that they couldn't possibly take less than 220. Well, that was the Friday before labor day.... we figured it wouldn't be until Wednesday. They kept saying one more day, tomorrow, by the end of the week, by Monday all that week and then they stopped communicating with us. Felicia, bless her, called them every day for about 2 weeks with no avail. We figured that they were using our offer as a pon for other people who were on the fence about it. We also found out that the person who was in contingency with the house for 6 days was denied by the bank because of all the work the house needed. We stopped calling them hoping they might come to us, nope. So I got desperate, all the other homes we had seen since weren't comparing. I made up a fake name "Mindy Lewis" with an accompanying email and contacting the listing agent through his website inquiring about 'Rusty'. Within an hour he had written me back and later that day a different agent contacted me about viewing the house. They said nothing about another offer and that the house had JUST fallen out of escrow (first lie, it had been back on the market for a month. He also made it sound like they had been in escrow for an extended period of time and not 6 days) I forgot to ask that agent, Dave, to then bring the inspection report so I emailed Brian, the listing agent, about it and to this day have not heard from him again. During this time Felicia called them again and finally had to get her boss to call them and they said that the house was un available for financing. I met with Dave the next week he cleverly brought me through the house strategically so that I saw as much of the good before the bad. I also got out of him that I could low ball and that the last offer was 215 and could offer that no problem, even though they apparently couldn't take anything less than 220. Also I confirmed 3 times with him that financing was available and he even gave me the name and contact info to person who was dealing with the special loan that was needed with this fixer. I asked for the inspection report which he said they did not have. Felicia found one on file but it would have 2 weeks to get and they still "didn't have a copy" Needless to say I went straight to Felicia beaming ear to ear at my success which only got bigger as she told me that the loan officer was her friend that she had worked with in the past. What came next was a lot of back and forth and craziness but what came about was the only way to get this house was to go through this one type of loan which made us hire a contractor to do the work (ugh! money right there) and the contractors bill couldn't exceed 28k. Yadda yadda some one with all cash came in and put an offer on the home so obviously we were booted out and right when we were getting some where!!! In the next couple of days the inspection report came in and it was estimated at $44k to fix. Depression set in for a couple of days then another property came up, smaller house but other great features including an acre of land. It needed a septic system but it was priced to do so. Of course we saw it on a Friday and had the whole weekend and that Monday was Columbus day so banks were closed. We tried to find financing because banks don't finance houses with that kind of septic issue. Finally Tuesday morning we found a way and literally 2 second later we found out that an all cash offer with a second all cash back up offer was accepted. UGH! Lost another, it was almost getting comical, almost. Then with in that hour of loosing that house 'Rusty' fell out of contingency!!!!!!! That was Tuesday. Friday October 21st we had our contractor out at the house to write up a bid. When 'Rusty' came back up they attached a pest report, yes the same listing agents that didn't have one to give us, posted a different report than we had that was estimated at $11k to fix. Well, Wednesday the following week our bid was in (about 20k) with our new offer, asking price, which was now 219,900. Thursday late afternoon we were informed an all cash offer higher than asking was submitted. We literally laughed. We had to! Friday late afternoon almost exactly 24 hours later the loan lady called Felicia saying, don't inform your clients yet but the bank is sick of these all cash offers falling out and was still favoring us over the all cash! Monday morning it was confirmed and we were starting the process! Lots and lots of craziness with the loan and paper work. Our bid seemed to keep going up because the bank was making us pretty much get the house to be show room quality, I mean are base boards really necessary? So, so frustrating because the bid gets tacked on to our loan so we pay taxes and interest on it, also upping our monthly payment AND then we had to have a mortgage insurance of about $170 a month! Yes let me just die here. (thankfully after things settle down and the house is "fixed" we can refi and get rid of the mortgage insurance) Well we don't have the keys yet BUT papers are signed, money is wired and the sign is out of the yard. We should get the keys with in the week! So yes after 8 months, 336 houses, lies, a fake name and literally an emotional roller coaster we should be home owners. I will post pictures and updates through out the process here and those entries should not be nearly as long as this one! haha thanks for reading!