Further Adventures in Housing

So, first, on the Mueller thing, a lady from the mortgage company called yesterday and left a message (I was still sleeping and Tim was in Stella's room with the door closed and didn't hear the phone), and said that they'd already pulled a credit report and she'd "like to chat with him". She "didn't understand what he meant about the prices being raised." Right. Anyway, we decided life is too busy to call and try and harass them, since I'm sure they'll say they already spent the money on pulling a credit report. Bastards.

But we also don't really care as much because we found a house! Well, it's not a house right now, but we signed a contract to have a house built. Yes, we're crazy, we know. Especially since we swore we'd never go through the building a house thing again and because we kind of started this whole house-searching thing thinking we were doing it for fun with no intention of actually buying a house. But then we just kept looking. Every weekend we'd pull some houses off the MLS and go drive around. And not finding anything we liked in our price range. Admittedly, we increased our price range after we did some number crunching for Mueller, but still nothing. But anyway, our new house is adorable. It's built in a Craftsman Bungalow style, which we LOVE. Our second favorite after modern. Check it out here. It's the Danbury plan. We originally were interested in the Southampton, but they were sold out of those in the Phase 1 section, and somebody backed out of a Danbury, so it was cheaper to buy the Danbury (which is bigger). Not to mention we could get into it faster. But the drawings really don't do it justice. We drove out to Parmer and Dessau to see them (they haven't built models yet down here) and they are so cute in person and have so many adorable details. We get a front porch, and one of those beautiful Craftsman doors, which will be ORANGE! Along with ORANGE shutters and an ORANGE accent at the top of the house. How cool is that?! The neighborhood is less than 5 mins north of where we are now, but Stella will be able to walk to school (elementary, middle and High). We also will be much closer to Central Market and Amy's, and could actually conceivably take a long walk to eat ice cream. Work off the calories! We also can walk to get snow cones or to 7-11. And there's a United Methodist Church within walking distance. Not that we'd want to leave our church, but the thought of walking to church on Sunday vs. driving half an hour each way is awfully tempting. There is a pond and the neighborhood is directly across the street from Garrison park, so a free pool and playground. And our lot backs up to a farm, so no sitting in the backyard and staring at your neighbors' house, at least until the farmers get fed up and sell. The house also has lots of nice things already included, like ceramic tile in the entry, kitchen/breakfast, and bathrooms, and those nice panel doors, and rounded sheetrock corners. And the walls are beige rather than white, so if we can't paint right away we aren't stuck with stark white walls (which I cannot stand).

Of course, the flip side of all this is that we have to get our house ready to sell. Tim already put new decking on this weekend (well, I helped move stuff and put decking on for a while when Stella napped). Most of the work involves painting. Lots of painting. And cleaning. Should be an interesting challenge to keep the house spotless while corralling a toddler. Hopefully it will sell really fast like Ashley and Travis' house did and so I won't have to keep on an endless cleaning loop.

We're going to take my parents to see the models Thursday when they are in town, so hopefully I can get some good pictures of what they really look like and post them!