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The One Where I Become a Homeowner

February 28, 2012 By Chelsea Lipford Wolf Leave a Comment

The. Call. Came. In. Yes, that call. The one where Julia, my Realtor, told me my offer had been accepted…I’m buying a house! No sense in prolonging the process, so I got started securing financing immediately. Mortgage, insurance, appraisal, survey—all expensive to come by and necessary to buying a house. I went back and forth with my mortgage loan officer to finalize all financial background information, set a closing, found there was a problem with the self-ordered survey, thought we resolved said problem, and rescheduled the closing date.

Day of closing—literally the ups and downs of buying a house in a four-hour period. Apparently the little problem with the survey I mentioned had not been resolved. The carport on my almost property was actually two feet on my neighbor’s property. My neighbor had agreed to sign a waiver that would allow me to continue on with purchasing the house. Obviously he had not signed the waiver, and since the whole process was moving so fast, it was easy for the lack of waiver to get overlooked. Luckily, the sellers had chosen a stellar closing attorney who worked quickly with my dad to find a solution—I would sign something saying I would tear down the carport within 20 days of closing on the house. That was no problem since it kind of needed to go anyway.

Whew! That was a close one. Mom, dad and I headed to the closing attorney’s office to sign the several-inches-thick stack of papers around 11:30 in the morning. By 1:00 pm, I had signed the next 30 years of my life away and begun work on “updating” my new home! Lucky for me, Jodi Marks, co-host of my dad’s TV show, happened to be in town, so she was able to help me with some of the “demo” inside the house. We ripped up old carpet, started patching the smaller cracks in the plaster, and tore a hamper/bookcase out of the teeny, tiny bathroom. Maybe an hour and a half of work, and it already looked SOO much better.

Then came the first full work day. As I mentioned in my previous post, the house came with one major/minor issue—major and costly for some, minor for my Dad and his crew. The main beam running through the middle of the house had a dip in the middle from what looked like years worth of water damage. My dad and Tim, one of his workers, agreed to come over the first Saturday I was a homeowner to help assist (okay, they did all the work) with correcting the beam. They jacked up the house, while I was in it, and built a new pier (since the house was built on a crawlspace) for the beam to sit on.

Once they crawled out from under the house (hey, someone had to do it!), we got to work on tearing down that troublesome carport.

Read about the lengthy process of preparing the inside of the house for move-in in my next blog!

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Home sweet home!✨It was a nice respite to go on Home sweet home!✨It was a nice respite to go on a work trip to @exploreclt after spending a week on a road trip with 3 small kids.🙉But there’s no place like home!
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Now time to tackle Mt Laundry because thankfully the little people wore clothes while I was away! What’s on your agenda this weekend?
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Happy 3rd birthday🎈to the biggest mama’s girl Happy 3rd birthday🎈to the biggest mama’s girl I’ve ever known! She weighs as much as her big siblings but still likes Mommy to hold her.😜 She’s got plenty of sass and insists on doing everything herself. Which is why she normally has hair in her face and a tornado of chaos all around her. Pretty much our life since she came into it. But the best kind of chaos that grows and stretches you and teaches you to slow down and accept them just the way they are.☺️
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Can’t believe it’s been 3 years!🥺
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FINALLY painted this eyesore of a wall and finishe FINALLY painted this eyesore of a wall and finished just before dark last night!🙌🏻 My husband and I decided instead of starting a new project (ahem a baby nursery) we should finish the projects we’ve already started. Since baby is due in the summer, it will be so nice to have our backyard up to par so we can rest and relax out there during recovery. ☺️
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We started this project back in October by stripping and scraping the many layers of paint so we could waterproof the bricks and paint the wall to match the house. But the house was painted exactly a year ago. So it was way past time to knock this huge item of the time-do list. And it feels like such a relief to not have to walk by the unfinished-ness every time we come home now!
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Next up we’ll slowly tackle patching hardwood floors and finish painting and replacing our interior doors that are taking up room in our garage.👏🏻
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What’s something you’ve knocked off your to-do list lately?!
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