Closing Day On Our First Home
One of the happiest days of my life (aside from the day I married my wonderful husband) was the day we closed on our first house. It was a Friday and our final walk through and closing were early in the morning. I decided to take the full day off from work because I was so excited and I wanted to spend the day in my new house.
We started our morning walking through our home with our realtor and all I remember was being so giddy.
CLOSING
Next we were off to our closing. I was very nervous that the closing would not go smoothly. Getting all of the paperwork together for our mortgage had been incredibly stressful. Every time we turned around the mortgage company was asking for additional paperwork, proof, or verification of something. Even at the beginning of the week we had not finalized everything and I was really worried we would not be able to close on time. Miraculously though the closing went smoothly. We signed a lot of paperwork but everything went as expected.
Then came the moment that we were given the keys to the house. Holding those keys in my hand for the first time felt amazing. I felt proud, excited, grown up…I felt like I could FLY! I know it sounds dramatic, but I had watched so many of my friends purchase condos back in their 20s and I always felt a little bad that I had been unable to at that time in my life.
After the closing Elliot went to work and I went straight to our new house. As I was driving to our new home, Pharrell’s “Happy” played on the radio and I sang along thinking how truly happy I was at that moment.
New Home
FIRST MOMENTS IN MY NEW HOUSE
I arrived to the house, walked in the front door, and just stood in the front hall as sunlight filled the house. I just took a minute to take it all in and enjoy those first moments of walking into my first home; to take a minute to really, really look around before I got to work.
When I had walked through the house that morning I noticed that the previous owners had left this old gross outdoor rug on the back deck. My first task was to remove this rug and throw it out. I ran outside quickly, lifted up the rug and to my dread and surprise I realized that the previous owners has stained the wood deck around the rug! So here I was staring back at a big rectangle of dark brown / red stain in the middle of my beige / tan deck. I just stood there for a minute in shock and truly annoyed that the previous owners could be so lazy. I threw the rug back down and realized I would clearly need to re-stain the deck soon.
Staining a deck around the rug.
So I went on to my next task. The previous owners had a decorative mailbox cover that was not my style so I decided I would remove that from the mailbox and throw that out and then went back into the house. I was trying to determine which task I would take on next when the door bell rang. I went to answer the door and it was an official from the city scolding me for having my trash cans out. I told him I was sorry and that I literally just closed on the house about an hour ago. I thought that maybe the old owners had scheduled a special pickup for the garbage, but I quickly learned that was not the case. I was informed that I needed to pull in the cans immediately or I would be fined. I was surprised how rude the man was especially after I informed him I was new to the neighborhood. I was a first time homeowner and I did not know this stuff. So I carried in all the garbage into the garage and reminded myself that I would need to be back Sunday night to take all this garbage back outside.
The next task I decided to tackle was cleaning. I decided I would start with the Master Bathroom. On the walk through that morning the toilet looked like it had not been cleaned in forever and like someone let a #2 sit in the toilet for a long time. I started cleaning the toilet and quickly realized that the stain on the toilet would not come out no matter how much I scrubbed. I even put more toilet cleaner in and let it sit for a half hour before scrubbing again. I tried again and again and I could not remove the stain. I was suddenly feeling a little less excited about the new house and a little frustrated.
Owning a home was clearly going to be a lot of work and I had a lot to learn. Unfortunately a house does not come with an all-encompassing manual and sometimes I have to read multiple websites before I can find the answers to my problems. It takes a lot of time and work and with everything else going on in life sometimes this can be overwhelming. I learn new things everyday and I want to share this information with you so that you do not need to read a million websites to find the answer. I want to provide you with the simpler solution if I have discovered one. I am excited to take this journey with you as we Learn Life’s Footwork together!
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