the "before" shots (and LOTS of them)!

We saw our house on the first day it was on the market. We'd already put in two offers on two other homes, two houses that were more "move-in ready" than this one was. The negotiation processes lead to both those offers falling through for various reasons, so we had started to expand our search to slightly further away from the neighborhood that we really wanted and to houses that were slightly more expensive.

At the end of what had turned into a really detailed showing (you know, the kind where we're already planning where our furniture goes in each room), Bryan and I walked around a little by ourselves while our realtor was on a phone call, and he said something that has stuck with me for the last several weeks while we've been waiting to actually close.

He said, "I don't want to flip a house, but I'd feel good about flipping this house."

He was right. To steal lingo from House Hunters, the house has really good bones. The layout works, the amount of space is amazing, the neighborhood is absolutely perfect, and there are no major issues with the construction of the house--no electrical, plumbing, or structural problems.

But there are lots of cosmetic things that we want to change to make it fit our styles better. That's what Bryan meant about flipping. We don't need to completely renovate any room, but in painting, changing the floors, and even merely changing outlet and light switch covers, we will make it an absolutely wonderful Katie-and-Bryan house!

So, without any further adieu, here are the "before" pictures.

Front Exterior

There's not too much that we don't like about the outside. Sure, there's little things like some weeds in the driveway and some overgrowing plants, but nothing that can't be fixed quickly.

Plus, I am so excited to try gardening!

The front door will probably get replaced or at least a new coat of paint soon. This is before my first purchase for the new house; now we have a striped doormat on our front porch! (Such grownups.)

Living Room & Dining Room

Here's that same lovely photo from yesterday. This is what you see right when you walk in the door and turn slightly to the left. (Well, except I'm not always making that pose.) You can see the magenta all around you. The walls are currently a peach color.

This is the same space, but this time taken from the dining area. The low-hanging lighting fixture is meant to go above the dining room table. The door opening on the left leads to the kitchen. This photo also offers a lovely view of the magenta trim, outlet covers, and front door.

This gives a better sense of how the area flows. To my right, in that little alcove, is a coat closet that's under the stairs. The breakfast area and kitchen are through those openings.

Kitchen

I love this photo of me and my mother-in-law looking out the window toward the backyard. The door leads to the deck and the backyard. Most importantly, I have always wanted a pot rack! (Even though I'm pretty sure I'll always think of Paranormal Activity 2 when I see it.)

Bryan basically took this photo from the space where I was standing before. The vinyl flooring is in pretty good shape, and though the exterior of the cabinets is pretty grimy and not my favorite color, the insides are so pretty. Plus, I would never dream of complaining about all this space in the kitchen!

Half-Bath

If you keep walking to the left of that last photograph, you come into a tiny little hallway that leads to the half-bathroom. Though this room probably currently has the best painting job of the whole house, we're still hoping to eventually paint it a pale purple, lavender-y color.

Laundry Room & Pantry

Turning left out of the bathroom is the laundry room and walk-in pantry area. We have these lovely shelves that we can use for pantry space or entryway storage space (the garage is to the left of the shelves).

 Here's the laundry side (that's the water heater) and the door to the garage.

Back Exterior

The lawn already looks better now that we've had it mowed, but you'll still get the basic idea. This is the side yard to the left of the house. The shed will eventually hold our lawn tools--or just get scrapped. The original owners used it for some shade for their dogs.

Here's the view from the deck that's right outside that door from the kitchen. I love our trees! They're live oak trees, and the curves in their trunks are so cool. 

From the deck looking to the other side.

This photo just cracks me up because of how faux-artsy it is. Unintentionally, I promise.

To the left through that gate is a smaller area that's fenced in, which the previous owners used to keep the dogs in a smaller area.

Garage

Thrilling, I know.

Love these cabinets. And how nice of them--they left us the magenta paint!

Stairs

Pretty unremarkable. I just can't believe we have a house that has a staircase!

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom sits over the garage, and out the window is a beautiful view of the neighborhoods on the hills.

The two doors on the right wall both lead into the master bath.

Master Bathroom

I'd never really seen master bathrooms set up like this before our house hunt. When you walk in the left door, you get the tub and shower on the left, then two walk-in closets, and one vanity on the right. There's another vanity directly on the other side of the mirror.

The two closets.

And here's what it looks like walking in through the other door. The toilet is behind a wall on the right, and the other door in the far right corner is the linen closet.

And that's how the two vanities are set up.

Guest Bathroom

This is the other full bathroom on the second floor.

Man Cave/Media Room

Hard to imagine this room with a big TV and lots of video games, right?

This is the other window that looks out the front of the house.

Too funny. But behind this door lies a huge closet that Bryan's really excited to turn into some sweet DVD and video game storage eventually.

Katie's Office

This room is going to be used as an office for me (I'm one of the few people in the world left who prefer working on desktops!), and the closet will be perfect to hold teaching supplies and classroom books.

Guest Bedroom

This is all set up for my father-in-law to install a ceiling fan on our first night. (Now it has a beautiful ceiling fan to keep our lovely visitors cool!)

Our first projects are to paint the laundry room (check!) and the living room and dining room areas. Our washer and dryer are going to be delivered tomorrow, so we wanted everything painted before we moved that stuff in. And we're replacing the flooring in the living room, dining room, staircase, and upstairs landing before we move in as well, so we want to get the painting done while we don't need to worry about being super careful with the drop cloths! 

Since the laundry room painting is done, and I'll head to the house to start priming the living room and dining room this afternoon, I think we're in pretty good shape to have our big projects done before we move our stuff in later on this month.

It's a long list of things that we hope to accomplish in this house eventually, but it's all so exciting--and I can't wait to see how the house looks different in a week, a month, a year, even five years!

OUR FIRST HOUSE!

Well, we did it! We bought our first house!

Friday afternoon, we signed our names hundreds of times and walked out the door with a manila envelope full of keys. I was practically giddy!

(Things I learned from closing on a house: even though you have the keys, you're not actually allowed to go into the house until you've heard from your lender that they've received the money. Sort of anticlimactic, right? So we waited awkwardly in the parking lot of the title company, then headed out to dinner with Bryan's parents, constantly checking our phones for word that it was finally completely ours. Our closing ended after 5 pm on a Friday, so my mind was racing with the thought that maybe we wouldn't hear until Monday...but we got a call about an hour later!)

The four of us headed over to the house, where Bryan's dad had offered to do a project for us. We gladly took him up on it, and he installed a ceiling fan in what will become our guest room (we want to make the room ready for guests this summer!).

We also took a ton of "before" pictures, including this gem of me enjoying what feels like a massive amount of space.

We've spent the last three days painting our laundry room and doing a much-needed deep clean of the kitchen, and I'm fairly certain my car automatically steers itself to Home Depot. There are so many little errands to do, so we are slowly chipping away at the list of things to do before we officially move in.

There's a lot to do, but we are absolutely loving the process of slowly making it our home!

house!

We are currently without Internet at our apartment, so I haven't been able to write an update! (Hopefully that will be remedied by Friday, as I miss watching "The Voice" and my phone battery is extremely unhappy with me! I'm at the library now, getting my Internet fix.)

The biggest news is that we had our home inspection on the house we're hoping to buy. It was very exciting for me, a first-time homebuyer, to see some of the things that are important to the structure of a house. There were no major crises--foundation, electrical, and plumbing were all fine. There was a small hole in the roof and some other more minor issues, like grates that would need to be put up on the front of the exterior to stop birds from nesting, a door frame and door in the back that was starting to rot, and a very small leak from the hot water faucet in the half bath on the first floor.

While enjoying some al fresco Blizzards at Dairy Queen last night, we got the email from our realtor that the seller agreed to all nine items on the list of things that we asked her to repair. (We had already mutually taken the door/door frame off the list, as it was the one that was most visible, we were probably going to replace the door eventually just based on its style, and we wanted the ability to choose the aesthetic look of the door). That means that the active option period is over, and now we're into the financing. We're already locked into a mortgage rate and have our down payment ready to go, so we're waiting on a survey of the property and an appraisal, both of which will be scheduled by our agent and our mortgage company. So, pending any major crises, it seems like we have bought a house!

This photo is crooked because I was very afraid of looking like a stalker. The land is not actually that sloped!

We are set to close in about two and a half weeks, but our current lease at our month-to-month lease won't end till the end of June. So we're planning on using those weeks in between to do some updating to the house.

Though we are certainly no Young House Love (though I've been reading them much more closely now!), there are things that we are hoping to do. Like I said above, it's in really good shape structurally, but cosmetically, there are a lot of things we're hoping to update, immediately and eventually. For example, the carpet is pretty dirty throughout the whole house, and on top of painting rooms the colors we want, some of the painting is just not done well. (The trim throughout the entire downstairs is magenta. No joke. MAGENTA.) Even down to the fact that the outlet covers are poorly painted, mismatched, and, yes, frequently magenta. So given that we'll own the house a few weeks before we move our stuff in, that will be a perfect time to paint and to replace the flooring!

Before our DQ stop yesterday, we went to Home Depot and looked at paint colors. Needless to say, we are thrilled! Next up: researching paint brands and hiring painters! I can't wait to get our colors in there and get the magenta out.

In case you can't tell, we really like cool colors.

We've also had some fun adventures, from simple ones like seeing movies at various new-to-us theaters (Star Trek, Disconnect, Mud, and Side Effects were all fantastic!) to our continuing quest for the best Thai food in San Antonio to attending a taco truck competition!

Though the house is our main excitement right now, we have some very busy nights and weekends between now and our scheduled closing--my brother's college graduation, time with Bryan's grandmother on the coast about three hours away, a Taylor Swift concert, an all-day rock festival...and most likely me going to see Star Trek again. Time is definitely flying!

celebrating, Texas style.

There are weeks of events to catch up on (a weekend with Bryan's aunt and cousins! a college best friend's wedding in Dallas! the ongoing battle between unpacking and living without stuff!), but last night, we celebrated in awesome Texas fashion. A strawberry margarita for me, about four helpings of chips with salsa and fantastic queso, and sizzlin' fajitas for two.

Why celebrate? Because we've had an offer accepted on a house!

The house is in our ideal neighborhood, has room for everything that we wanted (especially for a first house!), has a kitchen with space to actually keep our goodies accessible, has a fence in the backyard for a future puppy, and lots of fun projects to undertake to make the house our own. It's perfect for us!

We're working on finding the best mortgage rates and scheduling our inspections right now, so I'm still being cautiously excited (maybe even too cautious, in fact), but after two offers that didn't pan out, I have a great feeling about this one.

We're almost homeowners--fingers crossed!

We're here!

I've been here for over a week, and Bryan just started the beginning of his third week of work. I still don't have cowboy boots, though...yet.

Dad and I drove down over two days, stopping in Tulsa for a night before finishing the drive. Chicago gave me a proper goodbye by hailing on us. Once we got out of Chicago, though, the coast was clear! I drove the whole way, while my dad did a fantastic job serving as DJ, thanks to Spotify Premium. We ran through many old favorites from our car trips to Williamstown, as well as listening to our favorite musicals and even some of my new favorites.

It was also prom night in Tulsa the night we were there, and apparently The Cheesecake Factory is a hot spot for prom dinners, judging by the number of teenage boys with awkwardly pinned boutonnieres and teenage girls shivering in strapless or short dresses. Despite the urgings of text messages from my mom and from Bryan, we decided it was probably best to not try to chaperone.

We got to San Antonio in time for a delicious barbecue dinner with Bryan, and Dad flew back to Chicago the next morning. 

I spent much of last week looking at houses (probably about fourteen showings of ten houses). We are so excited about the prospect of buying a house! We put in an offer on a house that we liked a lot, but when the sellers were not willing to compromise a lot on the price (and we didn't want to pay more than we thought it was worth), we withdrew the offer and decided to keep looking. 

This is the face (and the Texas beer) of a girl who had just been house hunting for the first time!

As enthusiastic as we are about buying a house, we also very much do not want to rush just for the sake of getting a house. (And our realtor just scheduled a showing for us for tonight!)

Friday night, Bryan and I went to a Fiesta event! I got here just in time to partake in the annual celebrations of Fiesta in San Antonio. Our realtor gave us tickets to Alamo Heights Night, with live music and booths set up where you could cash in tickets for samplings of food and drink from local restaurants. (Kind of like a smaller version of Taste of Chicago.) 

All weekend, I attended the International Reading Association conference, which just happened to be in San Antonio this year. (It was in Chicago last year, the first year I went, so apparently we'll just move wherever it is to make it easier for me to attend. New Orleans, I guess we'll see you next spring!)

Even though I don't have a job here in Texas yet, I still wanted to go to the enlightening sessions. I saw some great speakers and even ran into some old colleagues! It definitely made me excited to continue hunting for job prospects and get back into a classroom!

And yesterday, I rushed home (thank you, higher speed limits!) from the last session at the conference to greet the moving fan. Two hours later, our stuff is crammed into the apartment. Although the square footage of this apartment is comparable to our Chicago apartment, there's not as much storage, so I've been slowly unpacking today and trying to sort boxes into stuff we need right away (not much), stuff we'd need/like if we are here for several months (a lot!), and stuff we can store or get out of the way until we get into a house. It's just hard to do it without lots of space to put boxes out of the way!

The last week has also been full of Mexican food, walks around downtown, and enjoying the glorious weather.

 

I'm also cheering on the Bulls, even from Spurs country! You can take the girl out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicago out of the girl!