Laundry Room to Bathroom

We have been in the process of remodeling our house since we bought it. Or should I call it fixing it up? Anyways, one of the areas we are working on is turning the laundry room into a second bathroom with a washer and dryer. It is actually going to get finished next week. We need to get sheet rock, paint, a fan, a heater, and finish adding the fixtures to the bathtub and sink. Once that is complete it will be done! So glad to get this done before baby comes. Construction around here always sucks as it seems to interfere with the plumbing and/or water. While they are working on this they will have to turn the water heater off/on some of the days as well as disconnect the washer and dryer. I can't wait to have the plumbing/laundry area/water heater not messed with for a long time. We have gone through having to repipe the whole house, having contractors here when there were no doors on the only bathroom, having tile put in bathrooms - thus removing toilets. All the while I am at home and pregnant. Luckily I didn't have a newborn with more laundry during this. Here is the progress so far:

This is what it looked like when we moved in:

Water Heater side

Washer and Dryer side

This is during the re-pipe of the whole house and to add plumbing to this room:

Water heater side

Facing the washer/dryer side. One door goes out the back and one goes to the house.

This is what the room currently looks like:

Water heater side - now includes new stackable w/d and a working toilet!! :)

Now there is a shower and a sink on the other side of the room!

You can see from the photos that we still need the insulation/walls, but you can also see the tile is done and it is coming along.

We have a contractor starting Monday to finish the room out so hopefully I can show a finished room at the end of next week! :) I'll also try to show other parts of the house and how we have transformed them.

House Inspection

We had the inspection on our house on Saturday. For the most part it went well or according to how we thought it would go. There was one issue we hadn't anticipated, but there are a few pipes that will probably need to be re-piped. It's not a whole lot of money, but it's definitely unexpected and will need to be budgeted. Luckily there was nothing major, like a foundation issue.

At this point if it wasn't a short sale we could have potentially asked for certain things to be fixed. With a short sale, if it was something major we could have asked them to reduce the price by the amount of the fix. Nothing was too big, so we have accepted the inspection as is.

Next on the list is the appraisal. Our lender will get our inspection papers Monday and will order that. No one has to be present for the appraisal. As long as the appraisal says are house is worth at least the amount we are buying it at, then our lenders will finance the house. I'm not too worried. I believe the house will appraise just fine. After that, we just have to supply all required financial documents and wait to close.

Did we get approved?

The second extension deadline on our house was Wednesday September 3rd at 1pm. What did the bank end up doing?! We got a text from Jeanne at 1pm that day that the bank APPROVED the short sale of the house! After 4 months of waiting, we can finally move along in the process. 

We are working with our financing now, as they had to sit still until the approval. We have our inspection on Saturday at noon. Once that's over, our lenders will schedule the appraisal. We are crossing our fingers both of those go well, or at least good enough! :)

We have heard the scheduled closing date is October 21st. Jeanne will try to get it closed sooner once financing is completely ready. If not, we will just be ready and waiting for the date to come.

What are our plans when we get the house? We will immediately get the popcorn ceiling off, paint the walls, tear up carpet and install laminate hardwood floors, and hopefully install a 2nd bathroom. Maybe we can even throw in new appliances, if not, we will try for Black Friday. This will all be done before we move in, or that's the plan. Wish us luck!!

No Approval Yet

We are still waiting on our short sale house. We signed a 2 week extension 2 weeks ago. We will now have to sign one last extension since they couldn't get it approved in time. Our real estate agent, Jeanne aka "mother-in-law" ha, will ask how much time the bank needs, and we will do the extension for exactly that long, no more. Last thing we heard is there was one more task to complete on Monday and today we had to send another document in that they were missing. We also heard they accepted our offer price - so that is good news! Hoping this gets approved soon as we are all frustrated with this transaction, from us to Jeanne to the seller's agent.

I will surely update the blog once we have an official answer, but until then, we are all just sitting around waiting to find out.

Will Our House Get Lender Approval?

We have been patiently waiting for the house we put an offer on in May to get approved by the seller's lender. Last week we were told all the documents had been turned in and we just have to wait for an answer. One of the last items we had to sign was a 60 day close once we got the lender's approval. Which is putting our closing date towards the beginning of October. 

Our original closing date is August 5th which is still an important day for us. If we don't get lender's approval by this day, we have two options. 

1. We decide to keep waiting for this house. Everyone is required to file an extension and our close goes from 5 months, to possibly 8 months? Not really sure how long of an extension we would file, so I can't be sure.
2. We decide that if the bank hasn't approved it by now, we are done waiting. We have enough money for a down payment on a non-short sale house and we could find something else with a 30 day close. Do we really want to close on a house when we are approaching the holiday season. Also, do we really want to be moving when I am 6 - 9 months pregnant. When we sign an extension we really don't know how long it could drag on for, and that extension may run out and then we would be back to these 2 choices again.

So we have 6 more days to wait to see if the bank finally gives us an answer or if we have to make a decision. I hope we get an approval by Tuesday as I would really love to get this house and we have already waited 3 months. We have already spent a lot of time imagining what we will do with it, so I am crossing my fingers and praying we get the approval.

Mutual Acceptance

Today was the day that we got the paperwork back from the sellers/broker. The papers are all signed and we are in mutual acceptance! The broker also uploaded it to a program that sends it to the lender. Now we just wait for the lender to approve the sale. This is very exciting. Our first step to owning our first house together is complete.

This Saturday we are planning to go to Home Depot's Seattle Garden Party in Issaquah. It sounds like a fun event, and we can also spend time in Home Depot getting ideas for our new house. After that we might be able to go to the house to take measurements. :) We also want to squeeze in time to go to a flooring store! At the end of the night I work my event job from 9pm-1am. On Sunday I work 12:30-6:00pm. Working everyday isn't really fun, but knowing we are buying a house and we can use any extra money to fix it up sounds awesome.

Next week will be great because it's a short week because we are going to Las Vegas!! Yay!! We will be there for 4 nights, 3 1/2 days. We arrive Thursday around 4pm and then leave Monday at 7am. I imagine it will be very busy there since it's Memorial Day weekend - one of the few 3 day weekends for working folk. Friday we have a Grand Canyon Tour and Saturday we have a Hoover Dam Tour. My grandparents down there own a comedy tour to those 2 places and this trip is my graduation present. I am finally using it 2 1/2 years later. I wish we could stay a little longer, but we are already having to take 2 days off from work. I will be posting pictures of our trip so stay tuned! :) We leave in 8 days! :)

Offer Accepted (Verbally)!!!!

Holy guacamole!!!! We found out today that they verbally accepted our offer. We hadn't heard from them at all since Tuesday and now it's Friday. The other broker went out of town on Thursday and Jeanne found out today around noon that our offer had been accepted. We are so excited!! It still has to get approved by the bank. We are confidential it will get approved because we are paying more than they had approved on a previous offer. When the broker gets back on town she is meeting with the sellers and getting us the written acceptance - paperwork and getting it to the seller's lender for approval.

The house is a 3 bedroom 1 bath (for now - wanting to make it a 1.75 bath) It's got a 2 car garage detached and it's about 1300 sq ft! :) The kitchen is a great size. It's a fixer upper definitely, but we are excited to make to work on it and make it nice. 

I will update later when there is more information.

Another Offer In - Waiting

We started the weekend off on Saturday going on another house tour. We actually found quite a bit of houses that met our requirements. We put an offer on the first house we looked at on Monday. It is a short sale, and according to the broker, the bank has approved the listing price (previous offers - financing fell through & decided not to move) and we were told the bank is very cooperative. It would be a 90 day close if our offer is accepted and everything works out.

On Tuesday we found out there was another offer on the house. Jeanne said the broker would give everyone until 5pm on Wednesday to submit their best offer, and the highest one gets picked. We revised our offer and submitted a higher one, and we are waiting to hear back on if ours was selected or not. If someone was higher, then we will just keep looking. I am not too worried because the market is giving us a better selection with the warmer weather. Although, we would be very happy not to have to keep putting offers on houses and doing bidding wars. It's an awesome house for a starter home, and we are just crossing our fingers. We will find out tomorrow what happened with our offer and then we can move forward one way or another. I'll post an update once we get an answer. 

Pre-Approved

That word, "pre-approved," is such a beautiful word. It just sounds so nice. 

Today.... we got pre-approved! We are so excited! We can now really be serious about buying a house since we have the go ahead by the lender!! I seriously can't sit still now that we got that wonderful e-mail. Tonight I know I will be on Pinterest pinning ideas for our future new house!

That is all for today. Just big and wonderful news! :)

More House Hunting

We did more house hunting. It really is exhausting, but we had a good time.

The previous owner of this house bought it for a rental and did not make a mortgage payment. Also had mold, house add-on's without a permit, and sewer problems in the yard (gas spewing through).

We went to this house and did not enter. We don't want it, but would love to know it's story!

Our niece Madison had lots of fun going with us to houses!

This house was our favorite! Hoping to put an offer on it!

We also had a wonderful time at Demara's 3 year old pajama breakfast birthday party!

Such a happy Demara!

We are still waiting to hear back on the pre-approval. It's already been three weeks, so we are hoping this process is almost done. 

Housing Market

I was hoping to write some good news in the next few days, but there is none as of now. Tomorrow we hear back on the pre-approval so we are crossing our fingers for that. We also looked at a house on Thursday because it just came on the market. It was the only house in the area we qualify for and meet our 3-4 requirements. Our offer (full price + seller pay closing) was rejected because they accepted an offer that was significantly higher than asking price. That was frustrating for us. Why are people offering higher than the asking price as their first offer?! Now there is nothing for us on the market. :(

House Hunting

Jesse and I have been saving up for a house basically since our wedding. We are looking at houses all over South King County and Tacoma. We are really trying to follow some of Dave Ramsey's financial advice and he suggests doing a 15 year mortgage to save money. 

We look for houses basically everyday. Our plan is to wait a year, unless we find something we really like and then we will try to go for it. In about 7-10 years our plan is to buy a bigger place and rent out of our first house. We would love to have a rental property to bring in extra income. 

So the only thing we can really do right now is to keep looking and saving money.