Melissa's Blog: Homeowners!

We're all done! It feels very nice to be finished with the house hunting process. We thought everything would take a little longer than it actually did, so it feels weird that we've done all of this in just under two months. I wish we could have been featured on HGTV's House Hunters, but maybe we'll save that for house number #2!

Here's a play by play (with photos!) of our day. I apologize for the very long post!

We started off the day waking up at 7, and meeting Grant at the house for a final walk-through at 8. Everything looked good (except for a huge scratch in the hardwoods, but we have the laminate finishing to fix it). GE was coming out to the house to replace the fridge doors. They were a little dinged up, and apparently everything was still under warranty so the seller was having it fixed today. That was a nice surprise.

Oh, another note, it poured all day. That made things a litte unpleasant!

Anyways, at this point we STILL had not heard from Countrywide on the final amount we owed at closing. So we headed to Chickfila around 8:45 for breakfast. I broke my resolution not to eat fried foods. =0 We though we'd hang out at Chickfila for awhile hoping that the mortgage guy would call with the amount. That would have been great since the bank was right next to Chickfila. We sat there for about 30 minutes, but no such luck.

yum...chicken minis and hashbrowns!

So we headed home and waited...and waited. Eric waited patiently and I did not. I kept thinking it wasn't going to happen today! Finally at 10 we got the call and headed over to Bank of America for the big 'ole check.

"wow-we, I have never had this much money ever!...can we go to the mall?"

Then we drive to Grant's office (also shares the space with the attorney) for the closing. We got to meet with the seller, which was really nice. He told us all about some quirks of the house and what it originally looked like. He said it was a bittersweet day because he did all the remodels with the intention of living there, but as a real estate agent this economy has changed his plans. Apparently he may move to Costa Rica now. Overall, the closing took about 45 minutes and was very painless. I think I'm finally used to signing Streitenberger now!!!

When we left the closing it was absolutely pouring. We made a slow drive with the help of the GPS through the rain to downtown Decatur to get our water account set up. We fed the meter and walked in the sheeting rain, getting the legs of our pants soaked the entire way. Apparently we needed a certification for our low flow toliets and sinks, and we were missing that. We can fax it in later. DeKalb requires the low flow now, and our house is in compliance...but we were missing the plumber certification.

"rain, rain go away..."

We then lunched at Panera and drove by the house. GE was still there reparing the fridge, so we headed home for a break. I took a little nap in my Snuggie. =)

Showing off the new keys

Then we finally went to see our new home alone for the first time! It was strange to be there without Grant or an inspector. We made a list of everything we wanted to buy and were about to head to Lowe's. Grant then stopped by to put a "sold" sign in the yard, so naturally this was a great photo op.

Lowe's was a little nuts. I did score some Tagalongs and Samoa's from some Girl Scouts, so that was awesome! Eric of course was irritated that I wanted to "waste" our money on expensive cookies. I'm sure he'll change his mind when he eats them tonight!

Two carts later, we'd spent a ton of money, so then we loaded up and headed back to the house. Oh yeah, it's still raining and we're still soaked... We needed to buy more stuff, but we couldn't fit anything else in my car. I'm sure we'll be headed back there a lot over the next month!