The House is Ours

We now officially own the house and the fun can begin.  We met with our agent at the house and did the final walk through.  Everything looked great, so we headed downtown to fill out all the paperwork.  I was surprised at how calm we were about the whole ordeal and neither of us had our hands cramp up (even with a last name like Van de Casteele).  Luckily our great friends Holly and Collin were able to watch Hudson, so that we didn't have to deal with him crawling all over the place as we were trying to sign the paperwork.  We met up with them while they were on a walk so we could pick up Hudson and they snapped this picture.  Hudson just looks confused.

Back Yard

Yes, that is our massive back  yard!

View of the house from the back

This is where this is some fun to be had.  We have a massive back yard, and right now there is nothing back there.  So we have a number of plans for this space.  We will probably end up having 4 different areas back here just not sure how it will look yet: a patio area, a lawn area, a garden area, and a let it go a little wild area - we've been looking into some xeriscape ideas for this area so it doesn't need to be watered quite as much.

1. Fix gap in fence - we are neighbors with at least five different houses and this means a hodge podge of fences.  Where two of these fences meet there is a gap where Sadie would just love to run through
2. Install a patio - We want to put in a paver patio off of the back slidng doors with enough room for some patio furniture and hopefully a firepit
3. Stain fence - while they did install a nice fence around a portion of the back yard it needs to be stained.
4. Buy patio furniture - to go on the aforementioned patio
5. Move irrigation - figure out what we are going to do back here and get the sprinklers set up for it.
6. Lay sod - it will be nice to get something green back here.
7. Firepit - also to go on the patio
8. Build a shed - a nice place to store all of our tools for the backyard
9. Set up a garden - we'll probably try and get one raised bed going this summer, but would love to have a couple for next year
10. Landscaping - not sure what this will look like but it should be fun
11. Build a stand for our porch swing - Mike made the swing for Cathy once we had a porch, unfortunately we don't have a porch at this house

Front Yard

Front view of the house

Steps leading up to the house

Front porch

I don't think we will be using our front yard too often, but we do want it to look nice.  So we'll be making some improvement up here.

1. Paint front porch - while we both like red - it doesn't seem to match the rest of the house, so we'll be painting it to match the trim
2. Move irrigation - there is a sprinkler system set up, but after testing to make sure it works, i'm sure we'll be adjusting some of the heads
3. Landscaping - figure out what we want to do here - the rocks will probably go and we'll move some mulch in, also put in some bushes and flowers, maybe something along the steps heading up to the house
4. Replace lights on the house - more gold colored metal out front...these will go
5. New house numbers - you can barely see these from the road
6. Lights by the stairs - after the landscaping is done, we'll put some kind of lights along the steps

Garage

Our car fits!

Room for storage

This will also be our first garage since being married.  Luckily, with just one car we won't have to fight over the parking space.  Awkwardly, there is not a door leading into the house, but it will be nice just to have a place to park our car.  Not much to do here, it is a garage after all...

1. Buy yard tools (shovel, rake, lawnmower, ladder)
2. There is a spot in the drywall that needs to be patched
3. Build some kind of shelving for storage

Downstairs

Downstairs Den - books and craft stuff go here

Extra bedroom with access to the crawl space

Tight squeeze in the bathroom downstairs

Washer and dryer in the downstairs bathroom

We don't have a ton planned for the downstairs at this point, so I'll lump it all together in one post.  We'll use the downstairs bedroom as a guest room for visitors.  The downstairs den will hold our books and Cathy's crafting stuff.  And the crawl space will be used as extra storage.

Downstairs Den:

1. Paint bookshelves - we have two different colored bookselves - we'd like them to be the same color
2. Curtains & Blinds
3. New desk - our current desk is huge, so we'll try and sell it and replace it with something a little smaller
4. Paint - not sure if we'll paint, but it will have to wait until we finish another project...

Downstairs Bedroom

1. Curtains & Blinds
2. Bed - when we have guests it would be nice for them to have a bed to stay on
3. Closet Organizer

Downstairs Bathroom

1. Shower rod & curtain
2. Shelves above washer and dryer
3. Install a pocket door - right now it's awkward to go in the bathroom and close the door, not sure how practical it is to install the pocket door, but we'd like to do it.

Upstairs Bathroom

We love the bathroom floor

Jacuzzi Tub - a bathtub that we will actual fit in

Jen and Kevin came to look at the house

Linen Closet right outside bathroom

So if there was one downside of the house it was the size of the bathrooms.  After some reflection we decided that bathrooms were not the most important thing to us, and we have never really had a large bathroom so we were fine with the size.  For a little room there are a lot of things we want to change.

1. Remove shower door - not the most attractive thing and pretty impractical for giving Hudson a bath
2. Paint - not sure if we'll paint the bathroom, but we might...
3. Replace shower bars - we are not huge fans of gold - fake colored gold things that is
4. Replace lighting fixture - they must of really liked gold things when the updated this bathroom
5. New faucet/sink - we are not huge fans of the faucet nor the sink vanity so they both will probably go
6. New shower head - put in something a little nicer
7. Replace mirror - it looks fine, but not really something we would pick out
8. Bathroom remodel - then again we may just get the urge to push the door back and make the bathroom a little bit bigger.  We'll just have to wait and see.

Hudson's Bedroom

Hudson's Room

Hudson

Finally there will just be a hallway in between Hudson's room and ours, instead of a bathroom.  We are excited that Hudson will be on the same floor as us...at least until a second baby comes, then he's booted to the basement.

1. Paint - Hudson's room is kind of boring right now, we'll add some color.
2. Curtain & Blinds
3. Ceiling fan - this was a non-negotiable for Hudson
4. Closet organizers

Master Bedroom

We can see Pikes Peak!

The only picture we took of the Master Bedroom

Now that we own a house I feel like we need to say "Master Bedroom" and not the larger of the bedrooms.  Here's what we want to update in here:

1. Paint - like most other rooms we want to paint here
2. Curtains & Blinds
3. New quilt for the Bed - Cathy says something about a color scheme...i think she already got one with store credit from Bed, Bath & Beyond
4. Paint night stands - our ikea night stands that we got for our first apartment still serve us well, but a little paint would be nice...
5. Ceiling Fan - we can so we will
6. Headboard - in five years of marriage we have never had a headboard, Cathy has some creative ideas up her sleeve
7. Closet Shelving - we are spoiled at our current house, so we'll probably be installing these sooner rather than later

Living Room

Our living room is decent sized and open, we are excited to get our furniture in and see how everything fits.  We also have our first coat closet ever, and Hudson is extremely excited about the ceiling fan.  And don't worry, we have some gates to put across both sets of stairs.

There isn't much we want to update, but there are some things we want to replace down the line:

1. New Paint - This is Cathy's territory, she picks out the color Mike does the painting
2. Installing Curtains and blinds
3. New TV Stand - Hudson loves to play with our DVD & VHS players, we're hoping to have something that blocks his access (also something new to store our DVD's would be nice)
4. Decorations - that's a lot of blank wall space...
5. New Couches - while we love the couches I inherited from my parents in 2003, we wouldn't mind having something new.
6. End Tables
7. Surround sound system - this is on Mike's list, probably not Cathy's but it would be nice

Rocky Mountain Community Land Trust

We didn't know what this was either until we found our house.  Since we are first time home buyers and we don not have a huge sum of money, there are a number of great programs designed to help us afford a home.  We found out about Rocky Mountain Community Land Trust  on our way to see the house.  Pretty much its a program that fixes up homes and then enters into an agreement with the homeowner where they take out a mortgage on a portion of the property owning the "land" in order to lower the amount of the loan that the home owner needs to take out.

There are a couple of interesting things with this, since they will own about 30% of our property value, we pay them a small fee each month, but we do not have to pay mortgage insurance.  Also when we go to sell they take a bigger chunk of the appreciation value, but the money is rolled back into the house for the next first time home buyer in the program.  We are also able to make whatever improvements we want to the house and the property.  We weighed the pros and the cons and feel like its a good fit for us.  We  are glad that the home will stay in the program to assist first time home buyers, and we know that because of the program when we do decide to sell, the home will go relatively fast (our house was on the market for less then 10 days when we found it).  We are so glad that there are programs like this to help people like us!

Waiting...

We found a home that we fell in love with during our second trip out with our real estate agent.  Due to our restrictions in location (close to downtown Colorado Springs, since I bike to work) and money, we saw some interesting houses.  We knew that we liked our Realtor when after seeing one house he said, "I wouldn't let you guys move into that house," and after visiting another home in rough shape he shared his hand sanitizer with us.  So we were super excited when we found a home that was in our price range, had been somewhat updated, and looked nice too!

I remember thinking before looking at houses that day that the two things I would not compromise on would be a nice sized kitchen, and a decent back yard.  Well this house had a wonderfully large, open kitchen and a huge back yard.  So after a whirlwind few days of seeing the house again, putting in an offer, and jumping through a bunch of hoops, we will be signing on the house on the 20th of May, and hopefully be moving in a week later.  While the home isn't exactly a "fixer-uper" there is definitely some work that needs to be done.  After enjoying 10 or so years of renting and letting the landlord worry about all those things, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get a little dirty.