Please, please, pleeeeeeease!

House hunting has been the biggest roller coaster ride of my life. It seems like there is a constantly a new surprise around ever corner… Today we got to experience our first Home Inspection.

The home inspector was amazing, way more thorough than I had anticipated, and hardly found any serious issues with the house… considering its age I was expecting some major problems. I would 100% recommend to anyone buying a home, to have a home inspection. I actually feel reassured knowing that there aren’t many huge problems with the house. I was happy to find out we have a new roof, new shingles, a new furnace, a solid foundation and updated plumbing.

However, we did find one very pressing “issue;” Knob and Tube wiring connected to the “new” electrical panel. As far as we can tell it looks like there is just a small amount of this wiring which will need to be replaced to bring it to code and make it insurable… but we can only see what is visible in the basement. We are now rushing to find an electrician who can do an inspection and give us a quote on a Sunday so that we can get our insurance quite and have the financing finalized. I can’t wait until this is over and paint colours and floor plans become my biggest worry… I would love to hear other peoples experience with this type of wiring. I am expecting this to be a very costly repair (expecting the worst and hoping for the best), even with the upgrades that have been done, but feel like it would be worth it for the amount we love the house and the condition the house is in.

So, if all goes as planned and we are able to get the wiring fixed (and hopefully the price of the house adjusted accordingly…), we should be moving at the end of the month. But, we all know from the very important lesson learned from House #1: until you are actually in the house, anything could happen! So I am doing my very, very best to NOT GET EXCITED.

But I’m not doing a very good job… I’m already day dreaming and mentally planning everything out. Fantasying about having places to put all of our stuff… Yearning for a backyard for Oliver to run in (However small it may be…)

The house itself is quite unusual; I passed it by so many times because, well, it looks kind of weird. It has a Gambrel Roof, which you don’t see a lot of in this town. It is half brick and half white stucco & board. It has a little bit of everything going on; one Dormer that creates the cutest little window seat in the stairway, oversized wood moulding around doorways and windows, pale wood floors, and the largest bathroom I have ever seen – complete with an avacado green bath tub. But a Bath Tub all the same! Oh…. to have a bath… The more and more time I spend in the house, the more and more I fall in love with it – even the wood panelling.

After looking at 20 homes or so (we have literally looked at every house in our price range in town that does not have a serious structural issue), I feel like we are really making a good choice. I’d even go as far as to say that this might just be my dream house. We put offers on a total of 5 houses:

1. The DIY house – which has sideways light switches installed in the trim around a door, the electrical pannel was behind the kitchen cupboards, and had two bathrooms side by side…

2. The Red Roof House – my second favourite house; it had lost of character but sold for over asking…

3. That 70’s House – in hindsight I don’t know why we put an offer on this one…

4. The ‘Estate Sale’ House – the sellers took a week to respond to our offer (6 days beyond our deadline date!!!)… and countered with more than double the deposit and not a dollar lower than asking. Not surprisingly, that house is still for sale, despite another offer being put on it.

So, necessary renovations aside, I am still so happy (and nervous) and looking forward to getting all of this unfun stuff out of the way! Keep your fingers crossed for me!