Still No News

The house still hasn't closed. They keep asking for more info so we'll see. It's amazing that its already been 2 1/2 weeks since the house was approved and it still hasn't closed.

Our washer and dryer are being delivered tomorrow! ... To my parents house because we still don't officially have the house.

...Still Waiting

The house hasn't closed yet. The bank keeps moving out the closing date so we'll see when it happens.

In the meantime, we're choosing cabinet stains and granite. Below are some of our choices.

Can't wait to see everything come together!!

Black Friday

I'm not a big fan of Black Friday... the crowds overwhelm me. But yesterday, we purchased our first ever washer and dryer for the house!! The discount was hard to ignore. :)

They are white and beautiful. Below is a photo of the dryer, I couldn't find a photo of it in white online.

HOUSE UPDATE: Still no update on the house, they asked for more info yesterday so I'm assuming that means they're still going through the paperwork.

Wedding Photos!!!

We finally received our photos and they are amazing! It's hard to choose favorites but we will definitely want to print and frame some of their for our home. Below is the link so you can look through all of them:

http://shawnee78.zenfolio.com/emilywedding

I love this one of us right after our ceremony!

And this one during our First Look:

And this one during the ceremony:

We just love all of them!!! We'll continue to post more of our favorites. :)

Sneak Peak of Wedding Photos

We got to see our first wedding photo from Shawnee today!!! We are madly in love with the photo!

She said the rest should be ready by tomorrow. WE CAN'T WAIT!!!!

HOUSE UPDATE: There is no update for today. The bank just asked us for more information so we're taking that as a sign that it's not closing just yet. Still more processing for them to do.

Still Waiting...

No news on the house yet. We checked with our mortgage broker yesterday and he said the paperwork is still with the underwriter. We'll keep you posted.

In other news, we decided not to buy the bed that we love so much. Turns out that the one with baskets is sold out so we would need to find baskets that fit in the holes. Also, the bed doesn't come with the headboard so it's not as well priced as we thought it was. :( We're super bummed but we're still looking so I'm sure we'll find another winner!

Closing Date??

We still don't know the closing date for the house yet. It all depends on how long the loan docs will take to get prepared/processed. According to our mortgage broker, it might be as early as tomorrow or Wednesday. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, we're researching furniture for the house and have found a few promising additions. :)

Granite & Furniture

We went to the Granite Expo today to choose granite. There are sooo many choices and it's really hard to know what it will actually look like with the cabinets in the kitchen. I guess we'll have to cross our fingers that it will look good!

After that, we stopped by a few furniture stores to get ideas for the house. We fell in love with the bedframe below. We love how it has storage under the bed!

We are suuuper excited to start decorating the house!!!!

Kitchen Remodel Plans

So, we met with our kitchen cabinet guy and contractor Wednesday night and reviewed the sketches for the new kitchen. We CAN'T WAIT to get started. Here's how the kitchen looks right now:

The layout closes off the kitchen so we're going to extend the countertop on the left wall, put in a center island, and relocate all the appliances. We're still trying to figure out what wall color and countertop color we want but we're thinking it will end up looking similar to this (obviously on a smaller scale and with stainless steel appliances):

Below are the sketches for the kitchen... SOOOO EXCITED!!!

We Bought a House!

It's about to be official!! We are soon-to-be homeowners! It was a loooong wait so let me tell you all about our experience.

We started looking for houses in April/May of this year and quickly learned what all the news was about regarding the housing market. It is nearly impossible to find a house! First of all, there weren't many houses on the market (about 1/2 what's normal for the area). Second of all, when we finally found a house in our price range that we liked, it would get approximately 10 offers. Unfortunately, we were always in the disadvantage because we are first-time homebuyers and weren't able to put as much money down as our competitors. We spent every weekend from May - September looking at houses.

The first place we put an offer on was a condo in San Ramon. It was a flip so everything in the house was fairly new. We were super excited about the house and immediately put an offer on the house. Unfortunately, the realtor wasn't very on top of receiving the offers and closing the "pool". It got up to 12 offers and we eventually found out that we lost the race.

The second place we put an offer on was a house in Dublin. This one was maintained so well and was soo adorable. I toured the house when CJ was on a business trip but knew he would fall in love with it if he saw it. The owner was getting relocated so the fate of the house was in the hands of the relocation company. We put on offer on the house but were beat out by someone who had $200,000 in cash to pay up front. Who has that kind of money laying around??!? We were really bummed when we didn't get that house.

You know what they say, the third times a charm! And that's what ended up happening for us. We got the real estate notification that this house came on the market in late August but decided not to take a look at it. To this day, we can't remember why that was. Luckily though, my parents found the house on Trulia and suggested we take a look at it. Lloyd (our realtor) called us around the same time and told us he had a house that he thought we should take a look at. We decided to go for it and take a look. We toured the house and thought it was pretty nice. It's about 1400 square feet, so a bit bigger than other houses we toured and it was much more fit for entertaining. The kitchen is old and outdated but that's fixable. So we thought, why not! Let's just make a offer and see where it goes. After a few days, we found out that our offer was accepted!! This house was an estate sale so the process was going to go differently than a traditional sale.

So, we got the appraisal done, bug inspection, and started to wait for the probate court approval. And we waited....and waited.... until finally finding out that the court date was October 1. We were counting down the days and it finally came! The seller traveled up from Southern CA for the court date, got to the court in Berkeley, and was told that the judge had been reassigned. Because of that, they lost their court date (doesn't make much sense) and had to reschedule. The soonest date they could pencil them in was November 14. So we went back to the waiting game...

Meanwhile, we had our mind on other minor things. You know, a wedding. No big deal. ;)

After coming back from the honeymoon, getting back into the swing of work, and waiting very patiently, the court date was finally here! We took the morning off from work to drive over to Berkeley as the seller requested that we come this time. We arrived a 1/2 hour early and were anxious to find out if the offer was approved. Our realtor Lloyd, the seller's realtor Kevin, and the sellers finally arrived. They were three adorable ladies - the homeowner's mother and two sisters. The homeowner passed away in May of this year so they were helping execute his will. They were so sweet and we're so glad we got to meet them. After waiting an hour, the judge called our case. She reviewed the documents, asked a few questions, and APPROVED THE OFFER!!! Woo hoo!!

So now we just need the loan docs to be prepared and it will close! We're planning on ripping out the kitchen and completely redoing it with custom cabinets and brand new appliances. Making the cabinets should take three weeks, remodeling the kitchen and refinishing the floors should take another three weeks, and then we can move in! After all the remodeling is done, it will be absolutely perfect for us! We can't wait to buy furniture and to decorate the house as our own.