Remember when I said we would be extensively remodeling our current home? Right, well, we ended up just buying another home. This is no simple feat since 2020 has been a real bitch (and continues to be), so I want to take a minute to reflect on how lucky we are that Nick and I were able to pull this off.
To catch the internet up we bought the house about two months ago. It was a long arduous process of finding the ideal home in the Bay Area that was large enough to work with this new WFH situation. We looked for 2 years, and made 3 offers on other homes before finally upping the ante and offering a very generous 25% on top of the listing price to make this new home ours.
Do you know that home buying during COVID is the most insane process? You have to reserve 30-minute time slots to go see the house of your dreams, sign a bunch of waivers about your health, and not touch anything without gloves. It’s crazy to know that buying a home in the Bay Area in a COVID environment means that you get as long as one episode of ‘Friends’ to decide if this home is what you want to spend your life savings on. Think about it, people buy cars now and even those have return policies and test drives. Even stocks! Volatile as they are, but what you see is what you get. You pay the price as listed and then strap in for whatever ride. Home buying is nuts. We made it for the second time in our life and we are extreme pros at also inspecting the home as we go to make a rough estimation of what needs to be done. Structural issues? We can spot it. Life span of the roof? Check. Water issues? Oh man, yes, we learned this one the hard way.
Anyway, so we make an offer on our new 2,000 sq ft house and it gets accepted. Yay! Now you go through the mountain of paperwork to close on the home, which these days is taking about 25+ days. During this time you make no unexpected moves with your money because there is an entire industry of underwriters and loan officers that will basically babysit and guide you through this monster process of rates, points, and funding.
Cut to November, today, and we are not moved in but we are certainly right into what most people on home remodel shows call “the exciting part.” We are waist deep into a spreadsheet that I have created that has detailed itemized lists of every single minute thing we want to do to the home before we move in. To make it even more fun we have another tab in the same sheet that details what it will take to repair our existing home to sell or rent. (more on that later…or never? I don’t know, the internet is very unkind to people who are in a position to rent, no matter how moral or hard-working the home owner).
On the docket? A kitchen remodel with a wishlist of our dream appliances (read: $$$$), refinishing the hardwood floors and re-staining them with a beautiful white wash, installing quieter more efficient HVAC system (sexy and expensive!), painting the interior, and also remedying some invisible things behind the walls and in the attic. Super fun, super exciting, and also super nerve wracking when you have to write a check for 5-digits every other week and have sensual spread sheet sessions where we move little blocks on our massive Gannt chart that is essentially our countdown to move in.
Why am I sharing this? Because I’m in a new phase in my sharing with the internet.
I started posting on my blog over a decade ago as a place to talk about what I like in my life, which in my early twenties was fashion, design, and a good dose of personal stories to commiserate with other like-minded folks. I’ve blown past 30 and now I am on the precipice of 35 (!!) I have noodled with my options to shut this down, but I realized that I should embrace the fact that I still enjoy making posts, keeping a few dear friends who read this up to date, and continue to document my design life.