Homeless

The problem with building your first house is finding a balance between your current rental agreement and the estimated completion date (which realistically will never be the day that they tell you it is). Which is a problem we are currently facing.

See we currently rent a house from a horrible property management company. Seriously, they are awful, zero communication (unless they want money), the house was a mess when we moved in, they don't do anything for us. Anyway, our lease is up in September and rather than hauling our possessions at fur babies to an apartment for a few months we thought we would go month to month until the house is done. Well, that was a major fail since the horrible management company wants to hike our already exorbitant rent rate up another $100+ dollars and we would be required to give 60 days notice. Andy and I decided for the rate we pay it just wasn't worth it anymore. We moved down here pretty quickly and had to find a place to live fast, which is how we ended up in this house in the first place, so the rate we pay was more than we wanted in the first place. Now we are stuck trying to find an apartment with a short term lease, which is proving difficult and the worst part is we don't know how long we need. Our estimated completion date is in December but we haven't even broke ground yet leading me to think it may be a little longer than we anticipate. So currently, we are homeless, because we have given notice that we will be vacating come September and we haven't found a place that will work with our situation.

Looks like I finally found the downside to building. Boo.

Building: The starting point

As you know we kind of fell into building. I don't want to say that we rushed the decision but we definitely jumped to it quickly. Given our not so great house hunting path over the past few months, I think that building had been crossing our minds for a while but Toledo didn't have the same opportunities for building as there are in Columbus. Regardless I want to take a little time and talk about the starting point and how we came to decide on the builder and plan we chose.

Going into the process we had to factor in that certain builders only built in their own communities while other builders would only build on land we had purchased ourselves. Taking that into consideration, we knew that we would automatically have to eliminate any builder that would only build on land we owned because we didn't have the land or the time/money/energy to purchase land. After eliminating that round of builders we went through the list of builders that we could afford and took a look at floor plans, location of communities, and tried to find reviews online to help us decide We focused a lot more on the overall look and location of homes at first deciding to research reviews once we found a couple of builders we really liked. Once we found a couple builders that seemed reputable we did some more digging and research through online boards and Google. Through that process we narrowed it down to Dominion Homes and M/I Homes but the more I dug, the more negative things I found about Dominion whereas M/I had a good mix of reviews. Plus we both liked the look of M/I a little more. So off to M/I we went to talk to them about possibly building with them.

Stepping the M/I show room it was pretty impressive but we had some questions and really wanted to see an actually house. The woman we met with was super sweet and informative, she took us to some models and let us walk around, answered every question we had and put no pressure on us whatsoever. After seeing some of the potential houses and options she asked us to pick one we thought we liked best, put in some options and gave a ball park figure for the price of the house and our monthly payments so we would have a good idea to think about. She sent us off with her e-mail address and phone number so we could contact her if any questions came up and sent us on our merry way.

We headed home with a lot to think about and consider. We talked it over, wrote pro/con lists, but found that we the more we talked and wrote the more we wanted to build with M/I. Once that decision was made we had to decide which plan we liked best. We knew that if we were going to build we wanted to get a house that had room to grow since it seems pretty silly to buy a brand new house and have to move in a few years when we grow out of it. There was one house in particular that stood out for both of us that met our needs list: 3-4 bedrooms, at least 1.5 baths and a good sized living area. That house was the Rosemary plan.

Now that we had a builder and a plan we had to go through all of our selections, which is a story for another day.

I have a little secret

Lean in close...a little closer...okay too close. Anywho, my secret, I have an addiction. It only started yesterday but I know that it's going to be a problem. I got an account with Pinterest and haven't been able to stop. I noticed that this seemed to be a craze, it started popping up over at Weddingbee and on Facebook. I even checked it out a time or two but I just could not understand it. I mean I thought it would be helpful for something like wedding planning but I am not planning a wedding (a vow renewal would be fun tho *hint, hint Andy*). Then I realized yesterday that I have a new house to decorate and fill with furniture. So it begins, I requested my invite, received it, took a few minutes to figure it out but once I did things got crazy. Furniture, recipes, clothes, hairstyles, all things that I try to keep track of now can be in one place. LOVE. Now I have to go pin some more...

The Big Decision

So yesterday I told you we decided to stay in Columbus and why. That still leaves Andy and I with some major housing decisions. See our rental house lease is up in September, we don't really want to stay here, the house is okay as well is the neighborhood but we are kind of far our from the city and my work. So we decided that we wanted to move, there were certain places we had in mind, closer to Brother and Sis-in-law Tal was something we wanted.

With all the chaos of the house hunting over the past 6 months, I decided for giggles to look at how much it would be to build a new house and it was surprisingly affordable. I showed Andy and he was surprised as well. After some perusing online we decided to meet with a building company, it was then that we discovered the Grant for Grads program. Something I had no idea about, apparently in Ohio if you graduated from an Ohio high school and have graduated with any advanced degree in the last 18 months you can qualify for a grant equal to 2.5% of the cost of the home. Yeah seriously, why isn't this in sky writing and on bill boards? The bad news is that this is the last month that I qualify for this program, so if we wanted to build we had to decide quickly.

 Some serious discussions took place as well as viewing of the models, floor plans and talking with friends and family. We couldn't really see a down side, a new house, exactly how we wanted it for the same price as a good house on the market. We do have to choose within the communities which means locations are limited. We decided that even with limited location we decided to build. That's right in the next 6 (or so) months we will be in a new house!!! We chose the Rosemary floor plan with 4 bedrooms and a bonus room! Excited doesn't even begin to cover what Andy and I are feeling, we are ecstatic!!! Now I guess we will be covering the building process and moving into our first home! YAY!

If I still have any readers out there do you know anyone who has built or have you built yourself? How was the process?

It's only been 3 months...

That's not that long, right? Right. At least I'll tell myself that to make myself feel better. So, no news is normally good news right. That hasn't necessarily been the case for us the last few months. Remember how we were suppose to move back to Toledo and were house hunting? Well that hasn't worked out very well. Here's our tale of house hunting woes and some big news.

We were house hunting in Toledo and found a couple great starter houses in some great areas. The first house we put an offer in on we found out already had an offer on it for 2 weeks (umm, why didn't you tell us before viewing the house???) but that turned out to be a good thing it was such a tiny house that there wouldn't be much room for us to grow. The second house was a fantastic find, wonderful neighborhood, great house, good schools. We put an offer on it and so did someone else, they asked us both to put our best offer on the table and we ended up losing out to the other offer. That one was a tough loss and I was ready for a break after that, which we took. Then we found house number three, great price, good schools, but needed some work, mostly cosmetic, so we thought, what the heck, lets go for it. And our offer was accepted!!! YAY US!!! Right? That's what we thought. So we go into inspection and find a whole mess of things wrong with the place including some pretty serious foundation issues, but since it was just a general inspection we brought in foundation repair to get an estimate. $20,000 in repairs. We ended up having to walk away from that house. It was really tough but it turns out to be a good thing. Let me explain.

During this whole house hunting debacle, I had been job hunting in Toledo. In fact I had been job hunting since January and still hadn't found anything. A couple days after we walked away from the last house I was going through some e-mail and seeing how many jobs I had applied to and the number was in the 100's. Seriously. I showed Andy and we ended up having a very serious conversation on the whole Toledo move. We had to make a tough decision, as much as we wanted to go back to Toledo we weren't willing to go back and sacrifice my job (or for me to take a menial job just to have a job). It's been really hard because I hate being away from my family but I realize that I need to have a job and if I wasn't married I would have to be where the jobs are and that is here in Columbus. I have a great job here, I have every other weekend off, I have the opportunity to advance. It makes the most sense logically. As for Andy he will remain working from home (he is still in the process of working that out with his bosses), which is a win for him. So now that we know we are staying in Columbus what are we going to do house wise? Well you'll have to come back to the next post and find out.

11 Months of Marriage and other nonsense

Today marks 11 months of marriage for us! I can't even believe we have almost been married a year, even more than that I can't believe I haven't finished my recaps on my wedding blog. Bad blogger, no cookie. There has been a lot happening in the SalTal household as of late, in fact it's been downright crazy. I should make more time to blog but it just doesn't happen. Andy working from home and using the only computer we have kind of puts a kink in things. So what's new with me/us? Well I'll tell you:

1. Let's start with the sad news first. Andy's grandma passed away a couple weeks ago. She lived a long life and it wasn't completely unexpected but it was still hard for Andy. We had the funeral to attend up north, which meant we got to see all of Andy's family which was the bright side of a sad event. I think he is doing okay, he won't really talk about any of it, which I understand. I have just been trying to be there for him any way I possibly can.
2. We have been formally pre-approved for our mortgage to buy a house as of yesterday. We were kind of bad and went looking before we were pre-approved but none of the houses were crazy expensive, which made it a little better. Now that we have our pre-approval letter I feel a little better about looking and I hope that we find something perfect for us in our budget, which I'm sure we will. Our next trip up to Toledo is in the end of March and we have four new houses to look at and one from our first round of house hunting that we are looking at again. All and all I think we will find the perfect starter home. 
3. Andy and I discussed it and I will (hopefully, so long as I get accepted) be starting grad school in the fall. We have been going around and around on this decision, debating when the perfect time to go back to school would be, but the truth is, there isn't a perfect time, there is never going to be enough money or time or energy. So I finally decided that I have to do what's right for me. I'm kind of sick of being directionless when it comes to my professional life and working at whatever job I can find so we can get by. I know what I want to be finally and I don't want to put it off any longer. So I'm going for my Masters in Library and Information Science. I'm thrilled with this decision, I love working at the library and would love to make it a career. I will have to find a job in Toledo that will allow me to work on my classes (I'm doing an online program) and pay enough to pay the bills but it seems less depressing if I will be working on my career.
4. I put in my two weeks at my non library job. I am feeling really mixed up about this one. Although I am happy because I will have more time to focus on packing the house for our move and cleaning, I am sad because I enjoyed it there. After some debate and discussion Andy and I decided that the effort (bouncing from one job to the next, taking away days off) wasn't worth what I was getting (one to two shifts a week). I knew that eventually I was going to quit, I just thought it wouldn't be until we moved. I think it was the right move for me, one shift a week wasn't really helping us out financially and since it was normally on a day or night that I would have off of my other job it was taking time away from Andy. I guess we will see how it feels in another week after I am officially done working there.

So that is what is new with us/me! Hope all is well out there in blogger land. Promise to try to post more soon.

V-Day Year One

I apologize for the lack of posting. Between work, house and job hunting I haven't got a lot going on that wouldn't bore you to tears. We did have a pretty nice Valentine's day this year. We decided not to do anything big since our anniversary is only a couple months away and we would rather spend our hard earned money on a mini vacation or something like that (we have made our plans but I will post that at a later date). So Andy said he would cook dinner we would put the "kids" to bed early and have a fire and just enjoy a quiet evening together at home. I had to go to work from 4-8 that night so Andy had the house to himself for a bit and he used that time to plan something hilarious. When I came home the front door was locks and I didn't have my key so I had to knock. And this gentleman answered the door:

 

(You should know I was in tears laughing when he answered the door like this)

Monsieur greeted me and informed me that my dear husband was going to be late but he would show me to my seat. We had a beautiful table set by the fireplace, Monsieur got me a glass of champagne and some water and excused himself. A few minutes later, Andy showed up and served our dinner, roast, mashed potatoes, peas, rolls, and he even made chocolate cupcakes for dessert. It wasn't much but to me it was awesome. We talked and laughed and had a wonderful evening together. We even had a slow dance in the dining room. It was a good night. 

What did you and your Valentine do for the special day?