Tim and are I exhausted from this past weekend wherein we found a NEW HOME!
Last Friday, we fought our way to Louisville through construction, rush hour traffic, and horrific thunderstorms. We arrived early Saturday morning, then I was awaken to the grating robotic voice of an Optimus Prime transformers toy at around 6 am that my niece continued to play with until I all but gave up on the prospect of any more sleep.
Our realtor, Jane Hayes, arrived at around 8 am to show us houses. (Our pal Shelley recommended Jane, and we really liked her!) She promptly handed each of us a spiral-bound book that included the agenda for the day and every house we would see. Then, the hunt began. Whether it was the cozy cape cod with a bedroom window a mere inches from a section 8 apartment complex or a totally renovated home dangerously close to a busy road, mostly, it was very easy to X-out houses. One was actually a few hundred feet from the Waterson Expressway. There were lots of cute houses in horrible locations or crummy houses in decent locations. By the end of the first day, we had two options.
That night as we were about to head to bed, Tim's sister Tammy got a call from my mother-in-law saying that she (and her newly divorced husband) were on their way. Tim and I were asleep before they got there, and then we were out househunting before they got up. Once again, Jane handed us each a spiral-bound book including the agenda and the houses we would see for the day. At the end of this shorter day, we had added one more house to our short list. Though this house didn't make the list, we really liked their very "Christmas Story"-ish lamp.
Meanwhile, Emma caught wind of the fact that Aunt Glenda and Uncle Tim were a short drive from her, and so she talked my sis, brother-in-law, and dad into driving to come see us. So, when they got to town, we showed them and Tim's dad the outside of the three finalist houses.
Monday morning, we awoke early again so that Tim could make it to JCPS VanHoose Education Center by 7:30am. He is looking into some classified positions, so he had to fill out paperwork and take 6 tests. The tests themselves took approximately 2 hours. I also filled out paperwork and signed my contract, then I graded papers while he was finishing up. Of the six tests, Tim scored nearly perfect on all of them but two. He failed the typing tests mostly because he followed the directions too closely. The instructions indicated that he should type as fast as he could without correctly errors, which he did, but then it deducted the errors from his w.p.m score. So, amidst an already hectically busy day, we had to figure out when Tim could go back to retest.
The mortgage brokers' office was a few miles away, and so we headed there. Unfortunately, we immediately realized as we looked at the exit mile markers that we had faulty directions. Immediately, we called the mortgage broker's office, only to get the nicest -- but also the most clueless lady -- I have talked to in some time. We were on the phone with her for about thirty minutes, and Valinda basically offered us no help. If only we had called Jane earlier; she set us on the right path in a matter of seconds. This hour lost, though, was demoralizing and stressful to say the least.
After this meeting, we had about 10 minutes to shovel food into our starving bellies before Jane picked us up to show us the insides of the three final houses. This time, Tim's mom and dad were coming along. I assumed they would just follow behind us, but then Bill said that neither of them were comfortable driving around Louisville. When I mentioned that maybe Tim could just drive behind Jane, Roberta guffawed, "TIM CAN'T DRIVE ON THOSE ROADS!" I guess she doesn't realize that her baby drives the streets of Chicago all the time and that he has somehow survived. She did quickly say, "I shouldn't have said that," when Bill told her that he drove all over Louisville yesterday and I reminded her that we live just outside of CHICAGO.
When Jane arrived, I asked if she thought we could all fit in one car. After 20 minutes of trying to get a baby seat out of her car, we all agreed that it would be acceptable for Tim to drive behind Jane. I had mentioned to Jane that Tim's parents weren't super comfortable with interstates. I was saying that so she would understand why they didn't want to drive, but she took that to mean that she had to avoid interstates. So, a typically 20 minute drive to the first house took 45 minutes. Tim was biting at the bit because we had to make a decision about housing, retake the test, and also somehow get back to Gurnee for school the next day.
Things got more stressful when we got to the first home and we realized that Roberta was not moving very quickly...she spent twenty minutes petting the jack russell when we just wanted to check out the house and make our decision.
After the third house, we were originally supposed to see two other homes, but with the speed the 'rents were moving, we decided was had to forego that idea. We asked Jane to take Bill and Roberta back to Tammy's while we went to the testing center. While Tim was testing, I was thinking and praying about our options. I called Jane to tell her that we were torn, and she said, "Did you pray about it?" I said yes, but after I got off the phone with her, I really tried to be tune out everything and just pray. We had narrowed it down to two; one had great curb appeal, but needed some work inside before I would feel great about it, while the other lacked as much curb appeal, but inside it was pretty much move-in ready. I sort of felt that the second was the better choice for us right now.
When Tim got into the car, I asked him what he thought. He was afraid that I would get mad at him because the one with curb appeal was so cute outside, but he felt like Rouge Way was the one. I was relieved that we agreed. So, we headed to Jane's office to make an offer.
Meanwhile, my dad had a company truck up around Gary, Indiana that he needed. He thought it would be swell if we just dropped him off there. We were ready to be on the road at 5pm, but he was an hour late, and so we didn't leave Louisville until 6pm. Don't get me wrong. I love my dad, and I'm happy to help, but this was just the most miserable timing to ask for a favor. Plus, I think it's weird for a supervisor to have to hitch a ride in a '96 Camry to do company business. He said the company would have flown him up, but he thought it would be fun to drive up with us! It was fine, but Tim and I didn't get some of that private talk-time that we needed to sort things out. While driving, we got a counteroffer. Tuesday evening, we accepted the counteroffer! The inspection is this Tuesday, we close on June 9th, then we'll be permanently out of Gurnee by June 16th! It's all happening pretty quickly!
Here is the house. This picture was taken in the winter so the curb appeal is a little better than this, but still it's not great. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.
When you walk into the front of the house, you see this living room.
Right past that black desk leads to the kitchen.
From the kitchen or the living room, you can get to the hallway that leads to the bathroom, and "three" bedrooms. One of the "bedrooms" would more likely be an office or mudroom because it's so little and the door to the back porch is in there.
The upstairs bathroom has a pretty nice looking vanity, but the tub is this ugly pink. At some point, we'll probably definitely want to look into doing something to that tub!
Here's the "sort of" bedroom that leads to the backyard. We really liked the covered porch. The garage also has another heated room in it that has been drywalled.
We also like that the finished basement offered more "living" space. There is room for a family room and a pool table. There's another bathroom down there, a storage room, and the laundry room.
I think we have mostly been too exhausted to process the fact that we have a home, but we are excited. This will be a fun new adventure, though I will sorely miss some of the amazing friends that I've made in Gurnee.
On a related note, at school we have an ABC countdown until the end of the year. Yesterday was "Q" day, which student council decided would be "Quit" day. I'm not sure how most people celebrated Quit day, but Tim quit that day! He told his boss he was not coming back next year!
[this is good] I am so excited! And not only because I plan to come school your arses at pool!
Posted by: R. Justin | 05/10/2008 at 06:03 PM
please tell me the pool table is not included!
Posted by: shelgwen | 05/10/2008 at 10:14 PM
Tim wanted to negotiate for the pool table, but we didn't. So, I'm sorry to say that there will be no pool table. However, we are crossing our fingers that it will be too much of a hassle to get it out and they'll just leave it. Did I mention, by the way, that we think the man of the house is an amputee? Tim found a prosthetic limb in one of the closets!
Posted by: Glenda | 05/11/2008 at 03:47 PM
[this is good] Tell Tim to beat said homeowner with said prosthetic limb until he agrees to leave said pool table in said house! Nuff' said!
Posted by: R. Justin | 05/12/2008 at 03:11 PM