David and Ashley: March 2013

Two months later and I'm finally making an update. It seems as though that's how this has been going for the past while. I have, on the other hand, kept up pretty well with my photo blog. If you've been following that blog, then you know how I miserably failed my resolution for January. HA...figures. People never change. It's been on my mind ever since though, and I haven't forgotten my goal. I WILL try again now that the weather is warming up. (For some reason that makes me feel that it will be easier...psh. One can dream right?)

So...we bought a house. A month ago. I've wanted to write a post about it for forever. But, I'm weird and knew that I'd want to post pictures of it...and I can't post pictures until it's all put-together, ya know? Anyways...this is that post. If you would have told me in December that we would have been home owners in February, I would have laughed in your face. That's how sudden and fast this was for us. It was a very good decision, but unexpected as well. We had talked casually about looking at homes at the beginning of January. We have been watching the market closely for YEARS and wanted to see what was selling and what we could comfortably afford.

I know this is going to sound conceited, but I don't care. (You can disagree and laugh all you want). I consider Dave and I to be very responsible with our money and it's a sense of pride for me. It KILLED me that we had to take out loans to pay for school. (Even though we only had to for one year). Trust me, I tried to avoid it. Now, before you go all "You could of done it, you just weren't willing to sacrifice...blah blah blah..." yes, it's true we could have gotten through school without it, but it would have taken us twice as long to graduate. (Yeah, no thanks). Also, since we both worked full time and went to school full time, we knew we could pay them back fairly soon, paying little to no interest at all. Pretty much EVERY penny we've made since graduation has gone to those loans and a huge chunk of them are paid off. I can see that I'm going off on a tangent here...

The point that I'm trying to make is this. We despise debt and do everything in our power to stay away from it. We own both of our cars and we pay our credit card bill in FULL every month. We never pay interest because we live within our means. When it came time to buy a house, we knew we could afford it, and we knew that we could continue making significant payments on our loans. So, it took a lot of convincing (ask Dave) but I finally agreed that it was OK to buy a house and still have student loans. You may see that as me failing with my goal. But we learned that it made more financial sense to buy now, than to wait until our loans were paid off. House prices are finally rising after all.

WOW...that was long winded. I promise I'm almost done. SO...before we got off on THAT lovely bit of info...We started looking at houses in January. We knew we wanted to live in Bountiful and toured a few homes here and there. We found a few, but weren't really excited about any of them. We didn't really mind, because after all, we were "just looking". Then, we got serious. We knew what we could afford and started browsing realtor sites and ksl for listings. It was SO emotionally exhausting. (Anyone that has shopped for a house knows). We would get really excited about one, and then we'd go tour it and it would be a total let down. This would happen over and over and OVER again. I was losing patience and getting grumpy.

Then, we found a house. The house. We looked at the pictures online. It was perfect. We set up a time to tour it and got so excited when we pulled up to the driveway. We toured it. Dave LOVED it. Me...not so much. I don't know what it was about it, but it just didn't feel right. I couldn't see myself living there and that was a problem. I wanted to love it, but I just didn't. Also, it was a short sale and I knew what a pain those could be so we let it go. Dave was crushed to say the least. We set up a full day of touring houses the next Saturday. Friday night, I got the inkling to look on ksl and see if anything new came up. A cute little red brick house in Bountiful had just been put up for sale (for sale by owner even!) and they were having an open house the next day.

We toured that house first Saturday morning and LOVED it. There was seriously NOTHING that we didn't like about it. Dave even scoffed at the other house that he had liked so much before. BUT, we knew how these things went. We didn't want to get ahead of ourselves or become overly attached. We toured the rest of the homes that day, (ALL) of the homes in Bountiful that were in our price range. There were some nice ones, but we kept thinking about that first house we saw. We knew it was a great deal and was in MUCH better condition than all the other homes we had toured in our price range. We called the owners and made an offer later that night. By Monday morning, they had accepted our offer.

The next month consisted of all that boring financial crap that we all love so much. It wasn't the most fun we've ever had, but it wasn't overly stressful either. If you remember, we've been down the house buying road before, only to back out at the last minute. (Our offer was accepted, the house had been inspected, yadda yadda). That first time around was SO awful. We were so stressed and finally realized that this was not the right house/time for us. So, it was so refreshing this time to have everything work out and to feel so great about our decision. We closed on February 11th. It's been the busiest and most rewarding month so far. We LOVE our house and feel very blessed to be where we are. Now, here's what you really came to see...PICTURES!!

Kitchen