Dry-Wall Back in the Kitchen

Brennan has put the dry-wall back up in the kitchen. He did a great job and it was all by himself. I helped a little by holding up the dry-wall for the ceiling while he pounded in the nails. To me, dry-wall seems very tedious. You have to make sure your measurements are exact and the pieces are cut just right. If you don't, the dry-wall will not fit, and pounding it in with your fists will not work, trust me, I tried and it hurt. Dry-wall is very heavy as well.

You want to make sure you mark where the beams are when doing dry-wall. The dry-wall should be secure, because, duh, its your wall. Also, you screws instead of nails, that way the dry-wall cannot wiggle out of its spot.

 Now we have to put up dry-wall tape on the seams, between the dry-wall pieces, then mud them. Its important to mud the wall close to perfect, to make the wall look seamless. After that, you texture the walls, if you wish, then on to the paint!

Dry-wall Mud

While Brennan was doing the electrical work and the insulation. I was shown how to do the dry-wall mud on the ceilling in the living room that we scraped. I was a little nervous, starting out, as I didn't want to leave marks and scrapes. I wanted a smooth, sleek ceiling.

But as I got the hang of it, I realized you cannot dry-wall mud without some slight scrapes here and there, and anyways you sand after you dry-wall mud. So I was off the hook of being a perfectionist on my living room ceilling. Whew! The process actually became kind of relaxing, except the part that my arms were constantly over my head. By the end of the day, my arms were aching, but it was a good feeling because I mudded the ceilling myself. :)

Insulation

Brennan has re-routed the electrical wires and replaced the 220's for the stove and the dryer in the basement. He attached the loose wires to the 2 x 4's in the structure of the house, that the builders should have done way back in 1974. We pulled out the old insulation and put fresh insulation back in, and filled every tiny hole with a spray foam insulation. The spray foam is cool, it expands in the hole you spray it in until it can't expand anymore. So the kitchen should be nice and cozy now and resist the cold, Colorado wind this winter.

Demolition

After scraping the ceiling, Brennan took out the kitchen cabinets. As he did that, I tore up the carpet, pad, and the tack along the perimeter of the room. I then pulled up all the staples out of the sub-floor. I think there were original staples in the floor from 1974. They were were very old and rusty. Brennan next took out the soffit from the ceiling of the kitchen. If you don't know what a soffit is its the dry wall that sticks out from the ceiling and is at the top of your kitchen cabinets. It doesn't serve a purpose except to take up space above your kitchen cabinets.


The picture above is an example of a soffit. When we took ours down there were wires in it just hanging across the room. So now Brennan gets to rewire and reconfigure some of them. Yay. :p I'm beginning to learn that the more you take down or out of your house, the more you find and the bigger the project becomes. :)

We have ordered our wood floors from Lumber Liquidators and our new solid wood kitchen cabinets from, Cabinets-To-Go. In the mean time we need to fix some wiring, scrape the other ceilings, put in new insulation and put drywall back in. The fun never ends. But hey this is what we wanted, to make the house our own.

The picture below shows the layout of the new kitchen cabinets. The blank space in the corner is a 33" lazy susan cabinet that could not be generated from their software. The cabinets are in a chocolate brown color. I can't wait. :)

The Demolition Begins

We started the demo on Sunday. I spent Friday and Saturday bleaching and scrubbing both bathrooms. This home was vacant for almost a year, so there is quite a lot of dust and dirt that has been built up.

  

The first job to tackle was scraping the "cottage cheese" ceilings. We did this by wetting the ceiling with a clean empty garden sprayer bought at Harbor Freight for $7. You want to make sure you cover the area with plastic from the walls down to the floor, including the windows. Don't do what we did and not cover the windows, then all the "cottage cheese" gets stuck in the window sills, not fun to get out. Also make sure you are wearing eye protection and mask, just in case there is asbestos in the ceiling. Also clothing you don't care too much about, as the ceiling will be raining on you, as you wet it. Then take a scraper on a pole and scrape the ceilings. It will be difficult, so take breaks and rest your arms and neck. I know I had too.

After your done with the ceiling you want to scoop it all into the plastic and throw it away in a dumpster. We bought a Bagster from Lowes, and you will it up, call Waste Management, and they come and haul it off your driveway with a crane. Its a lot cheaper then getting a $400 dumpster. You will need to get into the corners of your ceiling with a small scraper. After the ceiling should look like the picture below.

Homeowners at Last

As of September 16, 2011, Brennan and I have become homeowners. Yippee Skippy! The transaction from hell, that has been going on since June has finally closed. It felt surreal and didn't truly hit us until Friday evening, when we went to the store to buy a new front door lock. We now had our own set of keys for our own home. Wow!

The home you see above is a four bedroom, two bath, tri-level with a basement.

Now the physical work begins, (it actually began Sunday but that is another post). To give you an idea, we have to scrape eight "cottage cheese" ceilings, take up all the old carpet and wood floors in the kitchen, paint the exterior and interior, fix some plumbing and electrical issues, remodel the kitchen and bathrooms and landscape the yard front and back. We have a lot of work to do and will tackle one project at a time. Wish us luck. :)

One Foot in Front of the Other

Before I get on with the house stuff. I tried a new recipe I found on another blog for Chicken Corn Chowder. The picture is below. It was really good and enjoyingly different from Clam Chowder.

Just to give you an idea of how long the process takes to buy a bank owned property, it is now September and crossing my fingers we will be closing the transaction tomorrow. Buying a house, especially a foreclosure, short-sale, or bank owned property, is not a piece of cake. Yummmmmm cake! Oh, and it takes even longer if your Realtor has to converse with India, as ours did. The emails took twice as long, there was a language barrier in some areas, and they just didn't really care that we were new buyers trying to get in a home.
So we waited, and signed documents as soon as they came in and returned them. Thinking that would speed of the process. WRONG. Altisource (the outsourcing to India), took their sweet time on everything.
We had to order a House Inspection, which we did on time. He found a lot of things that needed fixing, hence the "beater on the block". For example the roof slopes and has 4 layers of roof tiles on it, as well as the new windows not being square into the window holes. The list goes on and on. But the good thing about the house is that it doesn't leak, the furnace does work, and its going to be ours. :) To give you a better idea here are some pictures.

So its not pretty, but it will work and we get to make it our own. If all goes well, we get to take possesion today! Stay tuned to find out what happens. :)

Searching for a Home

After I graduated college (finally!) in May, and after the big graduation party, I headed out to Colorado to stay with Brennan. My goal coming out to Colorado at the beginning of June was to "divide and conquer" and find a house to put an offer on. Brennan was doing the best he could while still working six days a week on finding a house. But I needed to put my head down, take on the task myself and focus solely on finding the right house in a good area, and that's exactly what I did.

I began by getting a sense of the area from Brennan. He had talked with his co-workers and they said the more north you go from the dealership he works at, the better  the area gets. So I got on Redfin.com and started searching in the areas a little north of where Brennan works. Redfin has a cool site and you can see the history of the property, what other homes are selling for in the area, and if your lucky, pictures of the outside and inside of the home. They also provide an aerial view of where the home is located, so you can see if it backs up to a freeway, park, apartment complex or business. You can also find out where the closest schools are, lot size and square footage. They pretty much have it down.
I searched Redfin and wrote down over 30 properties to send to our Realtor, (we found her on Redfin too), to go and see. She narrowed it down to properties that were available and not sale pending. There are a few things you want to keep in mind if you are moving to Colorado. The first one is the heating bill, you will have one. Our Realtor told us you do not want to have electric heating, because after one winter it will break the bank. Good thing to know.

Another thing I didn't know and realized through this process, was that there are different types of layout styles of homes. In the area I was looking there were: Bi-levels, Tri-levels, Ranch-style with a basement, Tri-level with a basement, and Traditional Two-story, with or without a basement. Just after a few of the homes I looked at, I immediately decided I did not care for a Bi-Level home. To give you an idea of what a Bi-level is like, you walk in the front door, slam into a wall or a staircase and you can only go up or down. Not a very inviting entrance way into a home, in my opinion. So I axed out Bi-level homes all together. We had a certain price range to keep to as well, under $155,000. I'm sure my fellow Californians are gasping at that price, but that is one of the huge reasons we decided to move out of California.

So to put it simply we were looking for a house $155,000 or under, a fixer-upper (beater on the block), two or more bedrooms and baths, in a nice neighborhood on a cul-de-sac or a circle, with as little neighbors on all sides as possible. I think I looked at over 25 houses. Some were winners, so we put an offer in, but to find out five other people already beat us to it. Some of the homes were not taken care of inside and out and very creepy to be walking around in. The condition of home our price range had to offer was usually vacant, bank owned or foreclosed, possibly smelly and definitely dirty. But that was the reality of the first time home buyers from California.

So after looking at over 25 homes, getting my hopes up with two offers and declines, crying and feeling defeated,  I came down to the last couple houses. The second to last was a fixer for sure, but had a porch out front, with a big shady tree in the front yard and a huge back yard that desperately needed landscaping. However when we called to see if they were accepting offers, they told us it was being taken off the market and put back through foreclosure court. Another one bites the dust.
Then on to the last house on the list. My Realtor warned me that I'll probably like it, but that the Sellers contact is a program called Altisource and its outsourced to India. So I toured the home and took some notes: nice size backyard, backed up to a green belt, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, mature trees on property, Tri-level with a basement, 2 car garage, and of course a fixer. I looked at the Realtor when we were walking out and told her, I think this is the one. She rolled her eyes and said, "I knew it." So we called to see if there were offers on it. It was bank owned, and had only one previous cash offer. I took Brennan to go see the house after he got off work, and he agreed he liked it too. We asked the Realtor to put an offer in of $140,699.00, and they accepted, (after some counter offers).
We had officially started the house buying process. It was June and I reached my first goal of searching for a house we both liked, making an offer, and having it accepted. Now the journey really begins!

Next step

So now it was my responsibility to focus on getting good grades and finishing school, while Brennan focused on getting to know his new job and making money and saving it. I prepared myself not to see him for a month, until he came out for my birthday. It was hard but we got through it and appreciated the time we did have with each other even more. During this time, Brennan began looking on the Internet for homes in the Thornton, CO area by using redfin.com. He used information from his co-workers and from driving around to pinpoint certain areas that were desirable to live in. He chose a Realtor from redfin.com and began looking at homes in his price range. He also began shopping for a loan and a killer interest rate.

Going into buying our first home, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. I worked in escrow in California for about six years, and understood the process. However, I had no idea what buyers had to go through to find a home, get a loan and actually close the whole deal.

We both thought Brennan would have no problem getting approved for a home loan. He had great credit, hardly any debt, and he has been in the same industry of work for over 10 years. But we were WRONG. Due to the economy and the downfall of many of the biggest home loan lenders, lenders now make it very difficult in getting a home loan.

First Brennan applied at Wells Fargo, he had gotten a pre-approval letter about 6 months earlier, so he figured it was the safest choice. Oh let me just say that just because you have a pre-approval letter from a lender, it does not guarantee a home loan approval from them. It basically just says, "hey you look good, we might lend to you if we feel like it." So we got a few other pre-approval letters from various lenders just to be safe, but as we found out later on, it didn't matter.

What it came down to was that Brennan didn't have enough time at his current and new job for the lenders liking. So after a couple of weeks of gathering information after information from him, they would turn him down.

He eventually found a Mortgage Broker that was local and referred to him from a co-worker that reassured him she could get him approved and a home loan. But not after submitting every kind of information known to man. I'm surprised they didn't ask for his blood type or who his pediatrician was when he was younger. Lets just say the lenders finally realized that they shouldn't lend to every Tom, Dick or Harry that they ran across. So now they are very strict and check and re-check all information submitted to them.

So what I learned in this process is if you want to buy a house and get a home loan, make sure you have a steady job and that you have been working there for more than 6 months. Also, if you are planning on moving to a new state, don't expect buying a house is going to be any easier than it it is in your current state of residence. What I have began to say because of this process is "expect the unexpected" because you will when buying a house.

The Very Beginning...

Well where should I start?..... My boyfiend and I have decided to take the risk and move away from family and friends and everything we've known in our lives to Colorado. Why Colorado, people ask. I tell them because its more affordable, and if you live in California you know that is a really good reason. I have been living with my boyfriend, Brennan, at his parents home in their "little house" for the past 3 and 1/2 years. The "little house", if your confused, its like a mother-in-law quarters in the garage area. It had everything except a kitchen. That never bothered me, because I enjoy cooking for the entire family and its good practice for cooking for a family of my own in the future. Anyway, Brennan and I wanted to get out from under the parentals roof and buy a home of our own and have a stable platform for our lives together. When I say home, I do not mean a Condo in an HOA, where you live on top of other people and can hear their every coming and going through the thin walls. Homes in somewhat decent areas were way to inflated for our budget. So I came up with the idea of looking into moving to Colorado, (I lived there in 7th grade), but thats another story.

During this time I was in my last semester of college at CSUF and Brennan was struggling, (as many people are), in his position of sales at a Honda Motocycle dealership. So in a sense the only things keeping us in California was my school until May and our family and friends. I encouraged Brennan to search online in Colorado for dealerships looking for a fantastic, motorcycle salesman. He ended up finding a couple of dealerships in the Denver area that were looking for a self-motivated salesperson and they asked when he could interview. I was exstatic! I couldn't believe my suggestion of moving to Colorado, was possibly turning into a reality. He made the appointments, booked his flight, packed his small bag, and flew out to Colorado. He nailed the first interview and really liked how big the dealership was and told me, "I can definitely see myself working there and making a good living." I told him I was onboard and supported him with whatever he decided. He took the job at the first place he interviewed, and told them he could start in two weeks. He called to tell me he accepted the job offer while I was in my Geology class. I stepped outside when I saw his call, and screamed with delight when he said he took the position. From that moment, we decided to embark on a new adventure, that would hopefully bring us closer to what we wanted in our lives together.

So he gave his notice to his current employee, they were sorry to hear he was leaving, as he was a positive addition to their dealership. We packed up all his stuff in a U-Haul, strapped it to his Toyota truck and started out on what would be a 22 hour drive to Colorado.

We left on a Sunday evening and said we were going to stop and stay somewhere in Utah. However, my crazy guy decided he was going to drive through the night, through a blizzard in Utah, to get to Colorado in one stretch of driving. Just to give you an idea, I woke up at 4am, and I was looking at a white-out outside and Brennan going 5 mph. It was either drive slowly and get through it or stop and get stuck. I guess I was more happy with the choice he had made then getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a snowstorm, in Utah. It was a long and grueling trip but we made it to the apartment complex Brennan made an agreement with at about noon. We then had the terrible task of taking everything out of the U-Haul ourselves and up to the second level of the apartment complex, where his rental was. We spent a week together in Colorado exploring, beer tasting, and going to the many great original restaurants that Denver has to offer. Then it was time for me to go back to California to continue on with my college education and for Brennan to start his new job in Colorado. It was bittersweet leaving him at the airport, but I had to put the negative thoughts out of my head and think of the life we will be able to have because of this big decision. The rest is history...and I will tell you in another blog post. :)