Under Contract!

After months(!) of searching we are finally under contract on our New England home. We looked and looked in New Hampshire. Everywhere we looked in New Hampshire we felt that we had to compromise something on our list. Every weekend we would look and feel disappointed. So in an attempt to get past the house hunting blues we went a little north into Maine. That is where we found our new digs! Onto another state (I am so sick of the DMV at this point). But we found a house the covered, what we felt, were the most important things on our list. 

I shared the below picture about a week ago on Instagram (@tyoast). The view is what really sold us on the house. It's hard to say no to an ocean view. 

The house was built in 1970 and is a split level style house. We were looking for a ranch style and we feel that we mostly got that here. We can live on one level for the most part and the lower level is a bonus. We have about 1400 sq feet finished on the upper level and 140 sq ft finished on the lower level with 800 square feet unfinished. We have 2 unfinished rooms and an unfinished laundry/mud room on the lower level. 

Let's get to the good stuff...pictures!

Brick and wood shingles on the outside. I love love

the look of the weathered shingles. Gives it a beachy vibe. 

One car garage. This was a compromise for Brian. He does woodworking so this will be tight with a car and his projects, but we will make do.

When you walk in the house it is a split staircase. When you go upstairs there is the kitchen straight ahead and a living space to the right. Also, WOOD FLOORS :)

The NEVER used fireplace. It has been around since the 70's and never even touched. This was another reason we loved this house, extremely clean and well kept. I don't actually know that we will keep the fireplace but for now we love it. 

The kitchen leaves a lot to be desired. We plan to gut the kitchen eventually. In the meantime we will jazz it up with some paint, hardware, and add a dishwasher until we can do a total overhaul. Like I said, extremely clean and feels hardly lived in. 

The kitchen has a large eat in area. Large enough for a table, maybe not our monster farmhouse table but big enough. We hope to have a deck off the kitchen and change those nice large windows to some french doors...eventually. The door that Amelia is looking through leads to the bonus room.  

Brick wall in the kitchen...don't mind if I do. Love love love brick accents on the inside. Also you know I can't wait to get my white paint on all the wood trim. 

The staircase up to the bonus room. This room was added in the late 80's. This room is also what has the excellent view of the ocean. 

Unfortunately it was a rainy foggy day so the view is non existent in these photos and the lighting is bad but this is a nice big space that will be perfect for all family things. I imagine a TV, play, exercise room. With all those windows I want to spend all my time in here :)

Back to the other side of the kitchen. We have a hallway that leads to 2 bedrooms, an office, and a full bath. The wood floors are in all the rooms and office as well. 

How fantastically tacky is this bath. Well I actually love the black and white tile. The rest has to go...eventually. That is my new word, eventually. It may be dated and, well blue, but it is nice and clean and we can live with it for now. You may like this one even more when you see the other bathroom. 

Onto the downstairs. But first lets zoom in on that awesome outlet cover. 

Ahhhhh yeah! And you better believe that these are on almost every outlet cover...in the entire house. 

Unfinished laundry/mud room. It does have a sink and folding table area. Plus it is already framed and insulated so it wont be difficult to finish.

This is one of the rooms downstairs. It actually has a huge attached storage space (potential closet) and an attached finished bath so we will most likely turn this into the master suite. You know after we change the floors, tackle the wood paneling, and finish the closet. Oh and just wait for the "master" bath. 

Time warp to elementary school girls bathroom, right! I sorta love this sink (sorta). But the pink needs to go. 

Here is a little shot of the different floors we are dealing with downstairs. Pretty fantastic. I will not miss them when they go. 

You can imagine how long our to do list is. We are breaking our list down into phases. Since we can live in the house without needing immediate work we will start with small aesthetic changes (lots of paint...lots) to give it some of our personality. Phase two will be finishing up those unfinished areas and floors. Phase three will be gutting (bathrooms and kitchen), adding a deck, and possibly knocking down a wall or two. We have a long timeline but can't wait to start tackling these projects. Now where did I put that bucket of white paint and my angle brush. 

House Hunting: New Hampshire Edition

When we moved to Georgia we moved into our first home 6 weeks after we got there. The house we bought was the only house I saw and Brian looked at maybe 10 houses total. It was fast, easy, and extremely affordable. We had hundreds of options in our price range which made house hunting in Georgia easy.  Well we have not had the same experience in the Hamp. I feel like there are 100 things to consider. Do we want to live near the beach or the mountains? Do we want an older (1900's) home or a newer home? A fixer or turn key? Do we want land? Do we want to live in New Hampshire and pay high property tax or live in Maine and pay income tax? I am indecisive and this has become impossible in my mind. Houses are very different here and even the homes in our price range vary greatly. Just check out pictures from one day of houses hunting to see.  

Since we don't have the options like we did in Georgia and we have more variables to consider, we have started our wants and needs list. My list in probably different than Brian's list so we'll go with mine. 

Needs:

-3 Bedrooms (2 with potential for 3 is fine)

-1300-2000sqft (We prefer small houses)

-Good neighborhood for walking

-0.5 acre + (most houses have 2+ acres)

-Decent schools

-Storage space

-In a rural area

Wants:

-Within 2-3 miles to the beach

-Basement

-Large backyard

-2 Bathrooms (most old homes only have 1 bath)

-Ranch style

-1st floor laundry

-Needs TLC

-Low property taxes

-Close to work

So you can see that we have started to assess what we need and it is helping narrow down our search. We are still not close to pulling the trigger and houses seem to go fast. We have called on a number of houses and within a week they are all under contract. Basically when we are ready to pull the trigger we have to do it without hesitation. Our rental is up middle of May so I think February is going to be our month of house hunting frenzy. Not to mention after plenty of research it looks like house prices dip during the month of March. Let's hope that trend continues for us. 

I feel like we are first time home buyers because this experience is so different than the first time. I wish I could just call the Property Brothers and they could handle this for us :)

What are your wants and needs? Any tips for us rookies? 

Finding Inspiration

As you know we are currently renting a little beach cottage. We don't have any house projects to work on so I have been trying to do "crafts". I am not very crafty, more DIY friendly. I need things to work on so I have taken up crafting. No better time to be crafty than the holidays. I have been putting my crafting into overdrive because my surroundings are incredibly inspiring. I love decorating a home to reflect where you live. In Cali we had a lot of surf inspired decor and in Georgia we started to lean toward the farmhouse rustic style. Now that we are in New England we may start becoming a little more colorful. Here are some inspiring photos from our little weekend drive up the Kancamagus Highway. 

Can you believe those colors???? There is a lot of hype around a New England fall and boy does it deliver. With this new inspiration has come my attempts at crafting. 

My first go at a banner (please ignore the ugly desk, not ours) 

You know I love chalkboard EVERYTHING. Painted a fake pumpkin with chalkboard paint and now we have the cutest little monogrammed pumpkin :)

After our weekend of colors, I made Brian stop at Michaels so I could do my first fall wreath. Love how it turned out. I am keeping all this inspiration bottled up to use when we do buy our New Hampshire home!

Happy Monday!

Selling Our Home: What We Learned

 This blog has been neglected...very very neglected. Our summer was madness and I really only had 24 hours in the day, and those were used up. We have since had a lengthy vacation, packed up our home, moved to New Hampshire, and sold the house! 

our much needed vacay

My last post was right after we went under contract for the first time with our house. We were so excited to be under contract within a week of listing and everything was going very smooth, and then we had an inspection. Now remember we had just purchased this home (and had the inspection done) in October of 2012. We were not really worried about the inspection and were just excited to be moving forward. Well, a couple of days after the inspection came the craziest thing we have ever seen. The buyers agent sent over a list of 73 (WHAT!!!) items that needed fixing. We were shocked, and to be entirely honest, pissed. Reading through the list was crazy. Let me just give you a handful of gems from the list: broken tub stopper in the master bath (not broken actually we used it everyday), missing key for the fireplace (hm, actually it's in a drawer since we have a baby), stain on the driveway, chipping paint under the deck, no light in garage door opener (or just a burnt out light bulb), missing door stopper in master bedroom, and the list went on and on and on. When we got the list we didn't even know where to start. 

After talking to our realtor she suggested offering money and a warranty. We did just that. We offered more closing, a warranty, and a gift card to home depot. The buyers then came back agreeing to the extra money and gift card (of course) but still wanted some stuff fixed. We ended up coming to an agreement and we were on our way. 

The next morning, after negotiations, we got a call from the realtor saying the buyers were backing out...NOOOOOOOOOO! The realtor called to let us know at 10am and said, "don't worry though we have more showings at 2pm". We had already started packing up our entire house, and the place was a disaster. I started crying, like full on sobs. I was so bummed. Not only is the house a disaster but we were also leaving for a vacation in 3 days! I was seriously beyond stressed. After a frantic call to my mom (am I the only one that does that?) I put on my big girl pants and got to work. Lucky for me Amelia took an extra long nap so I was able to get it all done for the showings that were coming. Oh did I forget to mention that we had sold Brian's truck so I didn't even have a car. Super stress. 

We ended up leaving for vacation with our house back on the market. We were fortunate to have family that stayed at our place and kept things in place for all the showings while we were gone. Our realtor worked really hard and got in touch with some of our original offers. Lucky for us, one of them was still interested! They came in with a great offer (not as good as the first) but still great. This time everything truly went very smooth. The inspection came back with normal items and we were happy to complete everything on the list. We closed September 20th, only 10 months from when we bought the house and we even came out a little ahead. Lucky!

What did we learn? I guess the better question is, what will we do different the next time? Overall it was a very good experience and we got very lucky with the market on the buying and selling end. We still might have done a couple things a little different

1. We would continue to show the home even if we were under contract. Our realtor did not see the purpose of continuing to show but looking back I wish we had. 

2. We would rent a pod and pack in most of our stuff ahead of time. A house shows better with no clutter and our basement was full of boxes during the showings. If we had a place to put stuff as we packed it that would've been nice. Also it would have been much easier when we were ready to move. 

3. EAT out! While we were showing I was constantly stressed about the house being clean. It was just better when we ate out. Maybe not for the waistline, but stress isn't good for that either. 

4. Do not go on a 2 week vacation in the middle of crazy town. Now this is hard because the vacation was planned way before we even knew we were moving. The timing wasn't great but in this situation it could not be helped. Those 2 weeks would have been very helpful for us. We ended up basically packing our entire house in 2 days and that is not good for a marriage ;) Basically we just wanted to punch each other all day. We should have timed it a little better or hired movers, and we will next time. 

What we did right:

1. Ready to show at the drop of a hat. I told the realtor I needed 2 hours notice, but if she gave me 15 minutes I would still show the house. We packed in a lot of last minute showings.  

2. Kept the house super clean and cool temps. Selling a home in Georgia in the middle of summer, yikes. Lucky for us it wasn't a hot summer but we still kept temps low for comfort. I was also a crazy person with the cleaning. I would hate for some dust or dog hair to deter someone from buying the home. 

3. Do not get offended. People pick the house apart and it kind of feels personal. But tastes are different and its not for everyone. A buyer will come along :)

4. Having a realtor. This was a tremendous help because of our schedules. She worked so hard and took care of everything once we moved. Huge huge help!

We were sad to say goodbye to our first charming southern home. We loved living in Georgia and loved being home owners. How does that quote go, what i love most about my home is who I share it with...Georgia was wonderful because we had each other. We can put our spirit and vibe into any place and we will love it too. 

On to the next.

New Hampshire is incredible and I can't wait to share more about our new digs in the Hamp. We are living on the beach in a rental and plan on starting our home search very soon. We are feeling New Hampshire for the long haul (it's that amazing!). For now our stuff is packed in storage and we are living the life at the beach. I am still pretending like it is not about to snow in a couple months. 

It is going to feel like Christmas when we get all that stuff our of storage. 

"our" beach 

I am still debating on a name change for the blog. Just a heads up this blog will still be on a little hiatus until the home search or projects pick up. If you want to check out our New Hampshire happenings check out our home blog! 

Happy October!