We bought a house!!!!

Backing up tinge… Matt and I have been living in an awesomely posh neighborhood is St Paul for about 3 years now.  We got married a little over a year ago and back in January decided to seriously start looking into buying a house.  I’ve always wanted to own a home (the design possibilities are endless! No one will get pissy with you if you decide to paint cabinets or rip out ugly tile!  Ok… maybe your husband will, but he won’t take away your security deposit!).  Matt…. not quite as enthused, but with interests rates still being low and our landlord becoming mildly annoying (did you just “fix” our sink by breaking a different part of it?  Yes… yes you did) he was on board with house hunting.

We were looking in a select few neighbors of St Paul and some of the first ring suburbs. I’d like a house, Matt wouldn’t. Matt would like a house, I wouldn’t. We’d see listings we’d both love only to have them accept offers before we could even get in a showing. The last house we looked at we almost missed out on. It’s right on a busy-ish street and we weren’t sure that was what we wanted, but we decided to check it out anyway.

And then we fell in love. At least I did… Matt doesn’t have quite the same crazed reaction to spaces that I do, but he really liked it all the same. It also ticked every box on both our Must Have and Like to Have lists, except for central air… but that was never a must have (this is Minnesota, we can pretty easily get snow from October through May). It was also a short sale. For those unfamiliar with short sales, short does not apply to the time frame. In fact, they can take fracking forever. We decided to go for it anyway.

We actually lucked out on the short sale front.  We put in an offer in March, got approval from the seller’s bank in May, and closed today which in my understanding is a pretty quick turn around for a short sale.

At 115 years old the house is need of a little lovin’, but our home inspector said is was actually in pretty good shape compared to other homes of its age.  The downside is that the previous owners made pretty much zero upgrades while they were living there, so we still have a lot to pick away at.  The upside is that pretty much everything is fair game to redo!  Because I’m kind of design nut and like taking on DIYs, Matt suggested I start a blog so at the very least I can track my renovation progress (because who doesn’t love a good Before and After, right?).  So here I am.  Blogging, or as I call it, Making Shit Up as I Go.