virtual tour

It's time for some pictures! These were all taken by Jeff during our home inspection.

first view when you walk in the front door

view from the other corner, looking at the front door. that wall to the left will be coming down, kitchen is on the other side

nothing here is staying. the wall with the fridge is coming down

gone, gone and gone

up the stairs

bedroom #1

bedroom #2 

basement

back of the house

backyard

shed

I've already got some after pictures to post soon too. Also, thanks everyone for actually reading this and all the positive comments!

THE list.

Or at least the start of one.  Everyone knows that as soon as you cross one thing off a to do list, two more seem to sneak on there. Well here is ours (so far) divided into things that need to get done and fun things I just want to do.

the must dos

• tear out weeds in whole backyard and plant grass seed. hopefully grow grass.
• trim/cut down all branches/weeds and everything else that is overgrown throughout the yard
• scrape and paint around windows and doors
• hang mailbox
• install carbon monoxide testers
• tear down terrible rotting shed and replace with new shed
• tear down terrible ugly metal awning on back of house (how do we do this??)
• take out terrible broken chain link fence and replace with pretty wooden fence so we can't see into neighbor's yard
• redo upstairs bathroom (that's pretty general and i'm sure will be a pretty easy one to check off...)
• kitchen and hardwood floors on main level are being redone by professionals

the want to dos

• paint exposed brick wall inside white
• tear out grass in between concrete strips of driveway and replace with gravel
• tear out grass strip to the left of driveway and replace with gravel/stepping stones
• somehow make it so car doesn't scrape on driveway every time you back out
• make cute white flower boxes for windows
• paint back door white
• make upstairs second bedroom closet into an office nook
• replace bedroom closet doors with...something better than what's there

I know there are probably many more for each category, but I think that's enough to keep us busy for awhile :)

closing day!

Today, at about 1:30 PM, our cute little house was officially ours! We went to the settlement table, signed about a million papers, and are now officially locked in until 2042. That doesn't even sound like a real number. But it was all very exciting. We received a very nice housewarming plant, a couple keychains and then went to lunch in Georgetown to celebrate. The rest of the day, however, did not go exactly as planned. We went back to the apartment, packed our bags and drove over to our new house, all ready to camp out there for the night. Except, when we got in we noticed that the power still wasn't working. Part of the seller's agreement was to fix the main power line that comes into the house. When we showed up for the final walkthrough the night before there was a trash bag taped over the new box, the new wires hanging out not connected to anything, and something else being held up by some tape and a tree branch. Basically, it clearly didn't look right, even to newbie homeowners like ourselves. We spoke to the electric company and basically somebody needs to come out and finish the job, we just don't know when that will be yet. Needless to say, there would be no first night sleepover.

After that somewhat disappointing realization we headed over to Home Depot to meet with the kitchen guy for the last time and finalize our countertop and cabinet order. Well, when we got there at 4 we were told the guy had gone home an hour ago and we would have to wait until 6 for the next appointment. Luckily we had lots of items on our to buy list and somehow managed to wander around home depot for 2 hours. We didn't get back to the house until about 7 and in order to get out some aggression...we got to work:

Jeff knocked some holes in the kitchen wall just for fun. (Don't worry it will eventually be knocked down.) He also took out a bunch of branches from the side yard and it instantly made the driveway/entry feel more bright and open. I successfully (I hope) installed new locks on our front door to keep any weirdos out and then we also took down the storm door which was just annoying and made it hard to get in the front door.

So it wasn't exactly the day we anticipated, but it ended up being fun and got us excited for all the upcoming work we have to do!

And just for fun, some dorky "we just bought a house!" home depot pictures:

We bought a house!

We bought a house! A brick duplex in Arlington, VA that just needs a little love and care to make it our perfect first house. I want to use this blog as a place to share with family and friends all the projects, progress and possible disasters.

There she is! 


So the house is not officially ours yet. We are currently less than 2 weeks away from our closing date (May 17)and are still negotiating with the seller about repairs. After the home inspection we found some electrical and plumbing issues that we wanted taken care of before we moved in. At first they agreed to everything and didn't want to deal with it so they were going to give us credit. We got all excited and lined up a couple general contractors to come out and give us estimates. Before we even got those estimates back, she changed her mind and decided that she is just going to fix everything herself before settlement. And by "everything" I actually mean only the electrical and plumbing plus a $200 credit toward a new washing machine. So we will do a final walkthrough the day before closing and confirm that those things were done satisfactorily. 


That's where we are now! In my second ever blog post I will talk about all the projects that need to be done and the ones we would like to be done. It might be called, "DIY vs. justhiresomeonebecausewedon'tknowhowtodothis"