The HOUSE :)

Many things to catch up on.

First let me say that our lawyer was awesome (what? Did I just say that?) Yeah.  His office found some document that said we got a $3,000 credit yet it wasn't in the contract.  We were like "huh? It's a short sale.  There was never any mention of a credit."  Selling agent said "Oh, yeah I put that in every short sale but the bank that needs to approve the short sale almost never ever approves it.  I hadn't noticed that they had."  So in order to get that three grand we had to scramble the day before closing to get things signed in order for it to go through.  We found out at 12:30 and I worked starting at 2:00 - but you can bet your sweet ass I hauled my butt off to our mortgage company in order to sign it (and fake Jeff's signature haha) to get the $3k.
Oh, and our closing had already been delayed a week because the stupid bank & VA forgot to calculate the entire year of taxes that we'd get as a credit.  They only calculated six months.

So suddenly it was closing day on Jan 15th and we didn't have to fork over $7,500 of what we'd been told way back in December when we had gotten the 401K loan for the down payment.  So since a 401K loan you can't give them a lump sum unless it's the total owed we had to keep that extra (darn) so that meant that we COULD afford the hardwood floors and having the entire house painted!!  And I literally mean the whole house - closets, ceilings, trim work - everything!  AND they did all the patch work and let me tell you, there was some areas where the people had knocked away the drywall bad enough it was down to the metal frame thing that goes on corners.  It was crazy.

And we really wanted high quality hard wood.  Something we may have skimped on before when we had a smaller budget but add an additional $7,500 and we got exactly what I would have wanted if we had an unlimited budget.  So now that house looks almost brand new!  Well, except for that kitchen...that's the dead giveaway on our house being older.  And OMG Ew!  The previous owners were disgusting!  It took me five hours to clean the kitchen (an additional two to clean the refrigerator we got from Jeff's Aunt...).  And another two hours to clean the master bathroom.  And five times vacuuming the upstairs carpets to feel I had got up enough pet hair to build my own dog and cat - this was before I felt it was clean enough to have Stanley Steemer come and professionally clean it.  I'm sensing a theme - am I a clean freak?  Ugh - and if this wasn't enough then I got to go spend several hours cleaning our townhouse in hopes of getting some of our security deposit back.  We'll find out next week how much we get.

And tonight we just had our first date night as home owners - we went to dinner and to Lowe's. $500 later and we headed home.  Oh and another $260 today at Target.com for furniture for the family room (Entertainment center and two end tables) and I'm starting to feel increadibly poor.  But hell that Target purchase check this shit out.  10% off for home items (check), 15% off of order of $75 or more (check) 10% employee discount, 5% red card discount and free shipping.  I saved over $200!

Next post I will show you before and after pics as I'm growing tired of typing.  But seriously - this place looks like a brand new house so yes, lots of money spent in the last three weeks but oh so worth it!