We bought a house! (Part Two)

Josh and I had a rule when we started looking at houses: each of us had veto power. If we were going to enter into this much debt and commit to this large of a purchase, we had to be 100% committed. If either one of us couldn't agree to the house, then we had to let it go as a couple. Let me tell you, I let a lot of houses pass by because Josh pulled the veto card. I was pretty anxious coming home after touring the house that Saturday because I knew I loved it and I knew Josh didn't.

We spent a couple of hours talking over the strong and weak aspects of the house. Josh had quite a few good points that he brought up. I kept stressing that we weren't entering into a commitment necessarily by asking our realtor to make an offer. We could back out after the home inspection. Eventually, that's what persuaded Josh to take the next step--we agreed that if the inspector came up with something majorly wrong with the house, we'd just walk away. Man oh man, I can't tell you how nervous I was about meeting with the home inspector. I knew he had the power to take my house away from me and I literally could not imagine losing it.

While we let our realtor work through some of the initial paperwork and set up the inspection, Josh tried to interest me in other houses. Josh was uncomfortable with the age of the home and tried to show me bigger, newer houses, in similar neighborhoods at comparable prices. Looking at them made me so sad. I even cried at one point while looking at the floor plan of a house built in the 1970s. It just lacked any character. It was one of those dime-a-dozen cookie cutter models that didn't age half so well as it could have. I was heartbroken at the thought of living in a place that could so easily be mistaken for a dozen other houses. At that point, Josh knew we were entering into a commitment that could only be broken by the home inspector.

We had to bring our kids for the inspection, which made it a good deal more complicated, but we made do. On a hot July evening, we met up at the house and went over a checklist of items with the inspector. I was so nervous, I was babbling for the first twenty minutes. It took me about forty minutes to start to relax when I began to realize that there was nothing deal-breaker-ish about what the inspector was discussing. Everything was old and there were a few update issues that needed to be addressed. But the big stuff--the water heater, the furnace, the roof--all of it was sound. The electricity was good. The attic was fine. The crawl space was haunted. (Okay, he didn't actually tell us that, but what crawl space isn't haunted? I've made a vow to never go down there and I intend to keep that promise.)

We left the inspector in a bit of daze, because there was a lot to consider. With his positive report, we were now at the stage of committing to this house or backing out forever. Josh was again uncertain and even I had to evaluate how I really felt and whether this was a wonderful opportunity or a huge mistake. We took a few days and eventually settled on continuing with the forward motion we had started. From there, it was all a waiting game. The bank, the realtor, the home appraisal, the loan, the locked-in interest rate (which, thanks to Brexit, was unusually low!). We got reports from our realtor and we met with our bank and we signed a lot of documents. It was a bit exhilarating and it all seemed to move really, really, slowly when in reality we bought the house in less than a month. Unreal.

By the end of July, we had signed the last documents and received our keys. I was suddenly very, very nervous. Josh and I decided we'd better stay in our apartment for August so we could do some much-needed repairs and renovations before moving all of our stuff in. I asked my sister Sarah, freshly home for the summer from college, to come live with us for the month so she could watch the kids in the evenings while Josh and I went to work on the house. And thus began a very, very busy August for us.

The first thing that needed to be done was refinishing the floors. The floors had all been sanded down so that the orange-ish varnish had been stripped. Josh and I had considered staining the floors but we eventually decided we preferred the natural coloring, so we bought a LOT of polyurethane (after researching how to finish a wood floor) and other tools and got to work. With a water-based polyurethane, you have to let each coat of varnish dry for 24 hours before adding another coat, and you have to put on at least three coats. We started in the nursery, then moved to the master bedroom, the hallway, and the enormous front room (well, it seems a lot bigger when you're mopping it every night). We'd eat dinner at the apartment, kiss our kids goodbye, and leave them with Sarah so we could make our nightly sojourn to the house and work on the floors.

The next step was to hire an electrician and a plumber. The electrician and his team moved one of the light switches from the hallway into the bathroom, added canned lighting in the kitchen, moved the central light to where the dining table would sit, added some outlets, added a light switch to the living room, and a few other odds and ends. The plumber ran a gas line into the kitchen so we could switch our electric stove to a gas stove. He also ran a few water lines so we could have an ice maker in our fridge and a garbage disposal and dishwasher (kitchen came with one electric stove/oven and no refrigerator, dishwasher, garbage disposal, or microwave. That was a sore spot for Josh but I knew I wouldn't want to use someone else's appliances anyway, so I wasn't fazed by that sort of thing). He installed our oven, our dishwasher, our garbage disposal, and he's currently working on running a pipe from the water heater to the attic so the combustion air can be properly ventilated.

Josh and I decided (mostly me, but with Josh's consent) to tear out the old, gross kitchen and put in a new, pretty one. We figured we could get it all done in the month of August and have a working kitchen by September 1st. We really were new at this. So the second Saturday after buying the house, with the hardwood floors still halfway varnished, we had Josh's parents come over and help us tear out the kitchen cabinets and sink and stove and countertops. It was really, really fun. I took a ton of pictures. My dad took a vacation day and came up to help us install a new back door (the old one was apparently an inside door repurposed from a church building) and change out all of the locks for new ones, and add a deadbolt to the side door, and install a new ceiling fan for the living room, and a myriad of other things. Seriously. There was no end to the little things that needed to be done on the house.

Sometimes Josh and I would bring the kids over with a bag of toys and let them run around and play while we worked (not with the polyurethane, but with other things, that was okay). James is very much a homebody and he gets anxious even visiting my parents in Las Vegas. But at the house, he was ecstatic. He loved running around the empty rooms. Scarlet and James both loved climbing into the linen closet and closing the door. They still love finding tiny hiding places in the house, and thanks to all the closets, there's no end to hiding places for them.

Josh and I got to do a lot of really fun things, like select a countertop material and pattern, and select cabinet colors and styles and heights. I was obsessed with research and spent hours and hours looking at examples and measuring things and pricing out options. Josh has a preference for cherry wood, but I was able to steer him toward white cabinets. He wasn't overly keen on my choice of farm sink, but he let me have it. He chose a faucet for the kitchen and I was able to persuade him to lean toward the one I liked. Basically, I showed him what I wanted and then I begged until he let me have it. He barely looked at the appliances I selected before agreeing. It was kind of awesome to have so much autonomy with the kitchen, but I got spoiled. By the time it came to backsplash, I had a perfect sage green glass subway tile all selected and then Josh discovered that he prefers a brighter, more vibrant green. I couldn't process the fact that he had an opinion at first, because he'd been so incredibly lenient with me on every other aspect of the house up to this point. I'd picked out the shelving for the pantry and the little shelves for the laundry room. I'd picked out the curtains and the blinds and the childproof baby gate, and the carpets, and the layout for all of the furniture. I mean, I'd gone wild with power at this point. So it was weird and jarring and a little bit frightening for Josh to adamantly disagree with my choice for backsplash. The problem was I couldn't agree with his choice because it was all wrong. I'd specifically chosen the type of knobs and pulls for the cabinetry and the countertop color and the cabinet color with that particular backsplash in mind and it wouldn't work as well with a different choice. Josh and I still haven't decided on a backsplash, but we're not so concerned. We just barely got running water in the kitchen.

That's right: in the midst of all this demolition in the kitchen and touching up in the other rooms of the house, we had to turn off water and gas in the kitchen and leave it off while we ordered our cabinets and countertops and appliances. I figured it'd take about a week or so for those things to come in. That was true for the appliances and the countertops but the cabinets were a problem. Apparently the company I'd chosen had a great product at a great price, but they had a terrible, terrible supply system. Josh found a lot of negative reviews about their service and disorganization. It started with some damaged items arriving and some of our order being wrong. Then we reordered and got some more incorrect items. This process continued for six weeks or so. We ended up with three or four extra cabinets and more crown molding than we could ever use. We also ended up with the wrong sink base twice and had to wait for the right one for two weeks and it ended up being the wrong one again. At this point, two months had passed by and Josh and I were living off of meals sent to us by Josh's angel of a mother, as well as paper plates and bowls and plastic silverware and a lot of fresh ready-to-eat foods and microwave meals. We couldn't use dishes because we had no running water in the kitchen, and I couldn't bring myself to wash dishes in the bathtub, so we just didn't use our dishes.

After we got the wrong sink base again, Josh put his foot down. He was tired of waiting on the cabinet company to send us the right product, so he and his dad cut into the cabinet and made the hole bigger for the apron sink, and then our plumber made a supporting stand underneath the sink to help bear the weight of the impossibly heavy fireclay sink. Did you know that a farm sink filled with water can weigh up to 300 pounds? Your average cabinet can't support that weight, especially if you have a heavy countertop material like granite or quartz as well. To counteract that weight, our plumber configured this amazing wood and steel table that held the sink up while leaving room for storage under the sink. Incredible. I was still sad to lose the sink cabinet we actually ordered (which is $150 more expensive than a regular sink cabinet), but I understood Josh's frustration. We were sick to death of not having a kitchen. It was time to let go of the perfect kitchen and settle for a functioning one instead.

Shortly after we installed the sink, the countertop people came and measured and installed our gorgeous quartz countertop. Then our plumber installed our faucet, garbage disposal, and dishwasher. That was the last thing we needed to make our kitchen operational. Now we have a fully functioning kitchen and we are so happy to be able to cook again. Josh and I spent a week and a half running the dishwasher and hand washing all our stored dishes and pots and pans and finding places to store all of these things in our cabinets. Now there are only a few boxes left in our bedroom for us to unpack. The rest of the house is set up and lived in and wonderful. Aside from the backsplash and some curtains for the back door, our kitchen is ready to go.

I tell people all the time that I still walk through this house with stars in my eyes. Although the house is small for a house, it is more than double the size of our last apartment, and that means I feel like I live in a mansion. Our neighbors are wonderfully friendly people (in fact, when our power died yesterday due to a loose power line down the street, I spent an hour chatting with my next-door neighbor about it while Scarlet played across the street at her new friend Charlotte's house) (Also, how cute is Charlotte and Scarlet? Her mother and I are determined to make those girls eternal childhood friends.). Our backyard is spacious and beautiful and the kids love those rickety old swings. The tree back there is enormous and provides such beautiful shade in the summer time (Josh spent plenty of time trimming it back this summer and I spent plenty of time dragging the branches to the trash). Our children have their own rooms and they have a great big front room to play in. They love it here and I love it here. There is a neighborhood park across the street (the neighbors call it Hidden Park--how cute is that?) and people walk their dogs at night and everyone is so nice and it feels like the 1950s when I go outside and know my neighbors' names and see their children and pets running around. I love hearing the football games played at Murray High School on Friday nights. It brings me nostalgic feelings from when I was in high school. I read an article that said Murray High is going to bring back their marching band after a 25-year hiatus, and I am anticipating waking up at 6 a.m. to sounds of early morning marching band practice. Just the thought makes me weep with memories and happiness. I love my beautiful, imperfect, so-many-more-projects-to-come house. It's been an amazing journey so far.

Josh helping with the floors.

The kitchen before the demolition. Look at that backsplash. Blah.

Demo day!

New back door.

That was our old back door, Isn't it horrid?

Before we varnished the floors, we had to sweep every night.

Our kitchen

Sweeping up the mortar that fell off when we busted out the old backsplash, which was utterly horrid. They had laid floor tiles and called it backsplash. Thinking about it offends me.

Josh breaking down our old cabinets. So much trash. We had to make a few trips to the dump.

One side of the house didn't have any sort of gate, so we built one. Josh didn't feel safe having the kids in the backyard until it was blocked off from the front.

My dad teaching how to put in a new back door.

James is just behind Scarlet. They loved playing in the house while it was empty.

The first cabinets installed in the kitchen.

Josh's dad assembling the cabinets to put in the kitchen.

One of the broken packages. This is our toe kick wood, totally bent from the shipping.

We bought a house! (Part One)

How have I not blogged about this already? We have been living in our house since September and here it is December already. Unforgivable. Well, now I'll get to recap all the fun details of buying the house. It feels like all this just happened so it's still pretty fresh in my mind.

For about a year (well, longer now), Josh and I had been looking at houses casually. Josh wanted us to be in a pretty good financial position before we purchased a house, which I agreed with in theory but struggled with in practice. Having a work-from-home job means that I was stuck in my apartment all day long with two small children. I didn't venture outside much after work hours, so our tiny apartment's walls seemed to close in on me more and more tightly the longer I lived there. At one point we had my sister come live with us too, for about nine months in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. While I loved having her there, it was certainly an experiment in bathroom courtesy. There aren't many places to hide in such a small space.

When we first looked at the second-bedroom apartment across from our one-bedroom apartment, I thought we were moving to a much bigger space. Our one-bedroom was just shy of 500 square feet, and it had all the space we needed when we were first married and when Scarlet was a tiny baby. We moved to the two-bedroom apartment after about three years, when Scarlet was roughly three months old, and it was definitely an upgrade. The landlords didn't list the square footage but by comparing it to our first apartment, I estimated it was about 700 square feet. It even had a tiny hallway, which felt like such luxury compared to our first place. We spent three happy years in the second apartment, saving up for a house.

Josh doesn't much care for change and while he wanted to move to a house with more space, he wasn't keen enough to look up houses obsessively, call realtors, and set up appointments to houses. Lucky for me I was utterly obsessed with doing those things, so I did them for the both of us. We'd spend a few Saturdays looking at potential homes but the real thing always ended up looking worse in real life than in carefully framed pictures. I learned that my original list of must-haves got shorter and shorter and also that things I at first imagined were non-starters turned into negotiables. Through trial and error, Josh and I whittled down our list of desirables to a tidy summary. We learned that there were only a handful of qualities that we cared about: at least two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a big backyard (or a large property in general), and NO homeowners association. Our realtor couldn't understand the HOA thing--it's a matter of principle. If Josh and I wanted to paint our house neon orange, we wanted the freedom to do that. It made us uneasy that certain HOA statues allowed the organization to fine you or ultimately take away your house in certain situations. My parents have experienced or witnessed horror stories with their HOA and Josh and I were just uncomfortable with the whole thing.

You guys--have you SEEN how many HOAs are in Utah? It's to the point that the only places worth living have HOAs. All the non-HOA houses were creepy and slapped together piecemeal. The neighborhoods were rundown or sketchy or literally right next to the freeway. And the HOA neighborhoods had terrible reviews online filled with unending horror stories. It seemed like we couldn't find a happy middle ground on that, so we eventually threw our hands up and stopped booking house showings with our realtor. For a few months I just looked at houses casually and occasionally showed Josh a potential one.

We also came to realize that our favorite place to live in was Murray. We looked at houses in Bountiful and Lehi and everything in between, but we couldn't find something that felt as comfortable to us as our own neighborhood. The problem was that everyone else in the world loves Murray too--it's conveniently close to downtown Salt Lake City and it has great shops and schools conveniently close. That means that all the houses are worth a billion dollars and well out of our budget. I'm not gonna lie, friends--I was thoroughly discouraged on more than one occasion.

Then we came across a little gem nestled in a very quiet, established neighborhood behind Murray High School. It was five minutes from our apartment, so I convinced Josh to drive us all out to take a peek at it. I wanted to see the neighborhood and decide if it was even worth calling the realtor to let us look inside.

Well, we drove out and I saw the front yard, complete with thirsty tree and dying grass and a really weird desert oasis landscape in the center. There was a bizarre sliding glass door installed where a picture window would normally be installed. It looked completely abandoned and sad. I felt a spark of excitement in my heart and knew that this house was special. The neighborhood was quiet but not creepy. You know how you can walk down a completely empty street and still feel creeped out? Well, this neighborhood wasn't like that at all. It felt homey. There were people drinking soda cans and sitting on lawn chairs on the front yard of one house, and a couple of kids across the street stared at me through their front window. It felt like a family-friendly place and I loved it.

Josh was really uneasy about the place, because we'd been burned by so many houses before. There was always *something* that made the house unlivable. He thought the roof looked iffy and the house listing revealed that the house was pretty shockingly tiny. I persuaded him to at least look at the place.

A week later, we were touring it with our realtor. He opened the front door and I just sighed in contentment. I literally was home. I have that same contented feeling when I walk through that same front door today. I saw the fireplace and the green accent wall and the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous original hardwood floors and I fell unalterably in love. The house was *just* big enough for us to even consider it. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Tiny kitchen, tiny bedrooms, tiny pantry/laundry room, no garage (originally a garage was on our must-haves but it eventually fell off after looking at our one billionth house). We just had to walk outside and view the perfect backyard and I was ready to sign papers right then and there.

I have this problem when I look at houses and it's entirely the fault of Netflix binge shows like Fixer-Upper and Property Brothers. When I see a room, I sort of dismiss the issues with the room and see in my head how I'm going to change the room. For example, the living room has a sliding glass door where a picture window used to exist. It makes no sense. My neighbors explained to me that the former owner was a little crazy in her old age and she had it installed for no good reason in her senility. I couldn't really see the sliding glass door, though, because in my mind's eye I saw the picture window I'd eventually replace it with. Josh, however, saw the sliding-glass door. And the sagging roof. And the uneven ceiling in the kitchen. And the cracked patio out back. He sees everything and it all went onto a mental list that made him more and more reluctant to consider this house.

The sliding glass door in question

I, however, saw those flaws and then immediately dismissed them for the much more appealing image in my head of what the house would look like when I was done with it. For example, I didn't really see the backyard for what it was: a place with no sprinkler system, holes and rot in most of the fencing around the entire yard, a spindly and rusty swing set, a lawn with tarp that needed to be dug up, gopher holes, and weeds, a dying tree, and a patio cover that might collapse on top of us. I saw a new, repaved patio, a sturdy patio cover, a gorgeous green lawn with a garden and a pergola and an automatic sprinkler system, a beautiful new privacy fence, and a brand-new swings set and maybe a play house. It was a beautiful image and I still see that image in my head because in a few years that's what it will look like. In fact, every room of the house looked like that to me, and it still does. I know there are flaws with this house because it's terribly old, but it has good bones and so, so much potential. I kept pointing out to Josh that the things we can't change about a house are the best qualities of this house: the location, and the size of the property.

Even without doing much to the backyard. I still think it's pretty spectacular.

We left our realtor and headed home, me bursting with excitement and Josh full of trepidation. The real negotiations between us had yet to begin...

In Which Scarlet Has Her First Real Easter Egg Hunt

For easter this year, Josh and I let Scarlet help us dye some hardboiled eggs. They turned out beautifully and it was actually quite entertaining to pull the occasional pink egg out of the egg carton to make lunch.

James didn't seem to know what was going on while we dyed the eggs, so I just kept giving him things to eat while we worked.

It was a fun activity.

Then, later that day, we took the kids over to their grandparents' house. We had asked Josh's parents earlier in the month if we could use their fantastic backyard to set up a little easter egg hunt for Scarlet and her cousin Hazel. They were enthusiastic about the scheme. It was so much fun to see Scarlet and her cousin Hazel hunt down the eggs. We seriously overestimated the carrying capacity of their buckets because the eggs were overflowing out of their buckets by the end. We ended up carrying a bunch of eggs back to the house in our hands after the kids were done hunting.

Scarlet and Hazel took turns finding eggs and occasionally they shared an egg with each other. They didn't seem to realize the significance of the eggs until we brought them back to the house so we could show that there were little toys and candies inside.

Grandma Bohman put animal crackers in a lot of her eggs so that James could enjoy opening them. I thought that was a genius idea, so I'll probably steal it next year. Josh and I had purchased some dollar store party favors and stuffed a bunch of eggs with the little toys to cut down on the amount of candy we gave Scarlet. That, plus the animal crackers meant there was very little candy this year. As my kids get older, I think I'll give them more candy, but since they're so little, they'll make do with cheap plastic toys and the occasional jelly bean.

James did not care in the least about the hunt (he was ten months at the time), so I just carried around outside so he could see the eggs being gathered. The adults involved in the easter egg hunt possibly had the most fun of all. Afterwards, we all had pizza together. It was a really fun day.

Then, since the next day was Easter Sunday, I got to dress the kiddos up in their easter clothes. Comments received from family members included the observation that James looked like an easter egg. To date, that was the best compliment I've ever heard about my son.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Scarlet's Third Birthday

I seriously cannot believe I haven't blogged since March. That was nine miserable months ago! I have decided that I'm going to blog about the things that I meant to blog about these past nine months and just pretend that these posts happened throughout the year instead of en masse at the end of it. This first post will be dedicated to the family vacation Josh and I planned for Miss Scarlet's third birthday. Do you know you have to pay for children to enter Disneyland after they turn three years old? Did you know that if you take your child to Disneyland the week before she turns three, her entrance is free and you can still call it her third-birthday present? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Scarlet's third birthday:

This was her face the entire time.

We actually started our trip out at SeaWorld, where we took in all the shows and explored all the aquariums and rode a bunch of silly rides and ate all the jello. It was a fun day. James slept through the entire Shamu show, which showed poor taste on his part.

Scarlet at the Shamu show

Shamu show!

SeaWorld in February is a very sunny affair

James at the Shamu show

Lunch at SeaWorld

James during lunch at SeaWorld

Then we spent three days in Disneyland (well, one at California Adventure). Scarlet had so much fun at Disneyland! She loved the splash pad area, though cleaning her up was a bit of a task. She had to wear my jacket as a dress for a few hours while her clothes dried. She had so much fun though. I'd let her soak herself all over again if she wanted.

Josh gets a bit dizzy on certain rides, so he stayed back with James while we rode bumper cars. Mostly, Josh and I took turns to ride with Scarlet on things James wasn't big enough to ride on. And speaking of James, I wouldn't recommend taking a nursing baby to Disneyland if you can help it. It's fairly stressful and there's only one nursing station that fills up pretty quickly. Knowing me, I'll probably end up going back to Disneyland at some point with another nursing baby because that's just how it'll play out, but it was not my favorite part of the trip.

Tiki Room. She was CAPTIVATED

For Josh's sake, we wrapped up our vacation with the La Brea Tar Pits. They had an entire wall of dire wolf skulls (that's the actual name of the type of wolf--how cool is that?!). They're extinct now but a ton of them fell into the tar pits so there are like a bjillion skulls in that museum. Josh was fascinated. Long after the kids and I were waiting impatiently at the exit doors, Josh was lingering over the display cases and reading really boring descriptions.

Dire Wolves!

Then we went home and it was a wonderful week of wonderfulness. We seriously had a fantastic time. It was our first-ever nuclear family vacation with the four of us. A lot of exhausting days, a LOT of walking around, and some really wonderful experiences. I left utterly spent (and spent-out), but I'd go back in a heartbeat, which is some kind of Disney voodoo.