Homeowners

We’re homeowners.

(again)

Derek and I closed on our new house on Tuesday. It was a bittersweet day filled with mixed emotions of both happiness and sorrow. We had planned to invite friends and family over to celebrate afterwards, but the idea of celebrating was too much for me. We’ll have a get together at our place a little bit further down the road.

Our closing was actually a bit of a nail biter. There were a lot of last minute documents that still needed to be processed and we didn’t get the call to sign our final papers until very late in the afternoon. After a month of preparation, it felt like they waited until the last minute to move the closing forward. I guess that’s how it always is, right? We spent approximately 30 minutes signing papers (my hand still hurts) and that was it. We bought a house.

Maddie, for one, is thrilled.

The closing on our other place earlier in the day was much less involved and took less than 10 minutes. Yep, that’s right, we sold our condo/attached home/three-years-later-I’m-still-not-sure-what-to-call-it and closed the same day we closed on our new place. Talk about amazing timing, right?

The truth is we got lucky. Really, really lucky. Do you want to know the secret to selling a home? Before you put it on the market, tell a neighbor that you’re planning to sell in the next few months. Let that neighbor tell another neighbor, who tells another neighbor, who tells another neighbor, until the right neighbor receives the news.

The right neighbor called us while we were shopping in Target and somehow we sold our house while simultaneously picking out a new cooler for an upcoming vacation. #TrueStory I’m still not quite sure I can believe.

Since we were selling to our neighbor, we were able to be pretty flexible with closing dates. And since she was paying cash, the process was about 100x easier than closing on our new place. We were even able work a deal where we could stay in our current place for another two weeks after closing, since we’re not able to move until next weekend.

So we closed on the first house around noon and turned right around to apply that money to the next house. For a couple of hours we were 100% debt free. We celebrated with Starbucks and daydreams of what we could do with that new freedom if we weren’t buying a house…like skipping town and heading to Hawaii or becoming drifters.

Alas, we didn’t skip town. We wired our cash to the title company and sold our souls to the mortgage company. I’m pretty sure I signed something about the mortgage company owning my butt for the next 30 years.

So there you have. We sold our current place,  bought a new place, and right now my living room looks like this:

Boxes. Everywhere.

Unfortunately timing sucks. All I want to do is lay on the couch and instead I’m forced  to pack up my entire life and move it in the next week. Trust me, I’m excited, just a little burnt out. Where’s the pause button? My life manual is missing that one.

I’ll post more photos of the new place as I take them. We have a few DIY projects we need to take care of (remove the popcorn ceiling, new floors in the living room, etc.) that I’m sure I’ll blog about.

Oh, and who wants to come for swim?

As much as we fought having one, I’m little excited we have a pool now (though, I’m sure that will fade the first time it turns green and we can’t figure out why ).