I don’t mind hard labor but…

Seriously, I understand why people buy brand new homes. We have the rare opportunity to go in for a week before we move in and get the house ready. I planned to spend a whole day cleaning and painting. I truly thought that I’d be able to clean all the walls and floors, patch and sand holes, and paint all the 4 bedrooms and the living room/dining room, especially since I was going to have help. Ya, there was so much more work than I thought. First off, the previous owners left a crap load of CRAP behind: bags of clothes, 30 pairs of shoes, a tv, cans of food, condoms (ya you read that correctly), along with a myriad of other stuff. It took about 45 minutes walking around the house tossing everything. And don’t even get me started about the backyard – luckily between our real estate agent’s gardener and my young women from church, it looks a 1000 times better. The blinds in the living room took 2 of us an hour to clean – gross. Then we started doing everything and it was just so dirty and we had more patching than we thought. A HUGE shout out to Chelsea and Stephen who spent literally the whole day there helping us clean and paint. We wouldn’t have had a good paint job without Stephen’s expertise and now we know how to do all the other rooms correctly the first time around. We were able to finish painting the living room/dining room with the help of my mom, sister, and Eva although it took us until 11 pm. It seriously feels like we didn’t get anything done even though I know there were multiple people working all day from 7 am to 11 pm. There’s just so much more to do and we haven’t even done any remodeling with kitchen, windows, or bathroom like we were hoping. Money hasn’t run out but there’s not enough left to tackle a project of that magnitude. At any rate, I was sore, tired, and had to go to work the next day and feel like there’s no way we’re going to get it all done before Saturday when we move in – even with my dad doing drywall, my mom , sisters, Chelsea, and Eva cleaning and painting. It’s frustrating and I’m a little annoyed with myself for underestimating the work involved. And I’m a little annoyed that we haven’t gotten the a/c yet! Ah, the joys of being a home owner!

Quick House Update

We are still in escrow on our house, and up to this point everything has been running smoothly. That's the part that makes me concerned I guess, I'm not a pessimist, but it almost seems this has gone too well for us so far. Anyway, we are scheduled to close on this upcoming Friday, September the 18th. We still have to install a furnace in the house before the close of escrow, which is going in tomorrow, and the appraisor has to come and check the furnace to make sure that it was actually installed to code. This is also scary because if escrow falls through for any reason then we just paid for somebody else to have a brand new furnace. Then we just have to wait out the last few days of escrow out and hopefully not lose our minds. We appreciate all of you who have lended a hand on our behalf and we definitely have seen the benefit of all your thoughts and prayers. Thanks for everything, and please keep sticking with us on this one.

House!!!

On our vacation to Utah we finally heard some news about the house that we have had an offer on for 4 months. We opened up escrow on August 20th while we were in Utah by scanning and e-mailing all of the necessary documents. The house is a 3-bedroom (technically) really 4-bedroom because there is a permitted storage room that is used as a fourth bedroom. It has a full bath and a 3/4 bath in the master. There is a space for a separate dining room and living room, and also a place for laundry inside, which can be a bit of a luxury in California. It is listed at 1199 sq. ft. not including the storage/bedroom, and the lot size is 6422 sq. ft. The house is in the boundaries for the high school that we want our children to go to (has a good football team) and also allows us to stay in the ward that we currently attend. I think that is most of the information, so now I will take you on a tour of our new home, at least hopefully on Sep. 20th when escrow closes. Short sales can kind of suck so we were unsure about doing this, but I wanted everyone to be able to see the place anyways.

The front of the house.

The front door of the house.

The bedroom that will be the baby room, so Daniel for a little bit, and no that doesn't mean that I have any news concerning a new baby Brinkerhoff on the way.

The bedroom that will be Daniel's after he outgrows the baby room.

Another view of Daniel's room.

Our 1950's style bathroom.

Our green master bedroom, obviously some painting has to be done.

Another view of that lovely electric green room.

A view of the living room.

The other side of the living room.

A view of what will be the dining room.

Kitchen 1.

Kitchen 2.

Kitchen 3. There is no stove or dishwasher, so we have some things to take care of.

Where the laundry room will be located.

The storage/bedroom that is actually bigger than the master.

Another view of the storage/bedroom, and I wish I could keep that blanket.

Backyard 1.

Backyard 2. We will be pulling out most of the trees if not all of them and making this a large place for children to run around.

Us by the sold sign. Pay no attention to my pregnant belly, oops! Just kidding, this is Matt writing this blog and seriously don't pay any attention to my pregnant belly.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of our house. Come again soon.