So yesterday we looked at the house. The realtor was right, it does show nicely. From what we saw, there are anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 worth of things that need to be done on top of the initial purchase price of the home. It’s primarily cosmetic, there’s a few cracks in the ceiling from the house settling, and some issues with having to remove a lot of tacky wallpaper, possibly purchase a new water heater, and almost definitely purchase an AC/Heat unit being as I was unable to locate one on the parameter of the house. It’s 2500 square feet, and the rooms in it are beyond huge, with this we’d need some kind of a high powered air unit to make sure each room is properly heated/cooled during the course of the year. I see that costing somewhere in the $3,000 range. While the carpets LOOK clean, the previous owner had pets and there’s a few very dark spots throughout the house so I would personally prefer to just remove them all together and have new ones put down. This would be after all of the wallpaper was removed from the walls, everything was painted and fixtures around the house that were missing would be purchased. The remainder of the money would be to furnish the home, obviously you can’t live someplace with nothing.

The setup of the house is as follows:

Living Room – When entering the house there’s a small living room, large enough for maybe an L-shape couch and a TV, possibly coffee table – nothing extreme. There’s a large gas fireplace in the living room as well, and a large 3-window picture window for plenty of light.

Master Bedroom – Right off of the living room is the master bathroom to complete the ‘split floor-plan living’. The room itself is 13×18. However, the walk-in closet it 10×10 – this would instantly void the need for us to have excess dressers/bookcases in the room. The closet houses pull down access #1 to the storage space above. We could honestly get away with one dresser and maybe a small entertainment unit for the TV, that doubles as storage for under garments and what not. Per the realtor, the closet could be used as a nursery in the future based solely on the size. I personally wouldn’t want the baby sleeping in the closet so that’s a hell no right there, heh. The bathroom has a nice size soaking tub, double sinks and a decent size glass-sliding door shower with two sections for shelving.

First Bedroom and Second Bedroom – There’s a blue room (first bedroom) off of the living room at the beginning of the hallway that’s 13×11. We originally were going to use this as either Sean’s office or Mine, however the room next to it is much larger and can be utilized as a very large office for the two of us. The first and second rooms are merged together with a Jack & Jill bathroom. It’s a decent sized bathroom to be utilized as the private bath for the two rooms, basic shower, toilet and sink area with some storage underneath. The two bedrooms offer decent sized closets for storage/clothing as well. The second bedroom, however, is a whopping 13×21. I shit you not when I say this room is HUGE, go measure a 13×21 area and tell me it’s not big? I could park my freaking truck in there and still have room for two desks and a couch!

Bathroom #3 & Laundry – Off of the very large room all the way at the end of the hall there’s a relatively small ‘public’ bathroom which is at the back end of the original structure of the home. Very basic , but obviously was an external wall because there’s a cut-out for a window that used to look to the outside. It’s a basic room, not much to talk about – directly across is a nice sized laundry room that has a pull down access point for the storage space. It’s not a stand-up attic on this end either, it’s a good height for boxes but the realtor noted she’s never personally gone up there being as there’s currently no electric in the home and she didn’t want to bump her head with no lights. (perfectly understandable). Either way these two rooms were the original “end point” of the home, however they’ve added extensions.

Den / Garage / In-Law Suite – A decent sized den with a gas fireplace, this would be utilized as “Lep’s Lair” as I’ve been calling it. More of a media/game room than a living room, this way if he’s playing games at night, I’ll be on the other side of the house in the master bedroom and it wouldn’t really bother me. This has a lead-out sliding door to the backyard. Off of the den there’s access to the two car garage, which shares access to the In-Law suite that was also built in this 3-part extension. The in-law suite offers a small kitchen, stack-able washer/dryer, and a private full bath. The room itself is about 13×15 so it’s relatively small but could be used as a small studio apartment if we ever chose to rent it out in the future.

Kitchen / Dining Room – These were the two that really blew my mind.  The kitchen is HUGE, and houses a nice corner wood burning fireplace, above it has a small cabinet to hide the TV (the hookups are already there).  There’s a large fridge,  nice stove, dishwasher, plenty of storage, and even room for a nice eat-in area.  From there there’s also a lead off into the backyard.  Moving forward (in the direction of the living room), there’s a nice sized dining room, it could fit a 10 person table and a hutch and there’s another lead off to the backyard.

Backyard - The yard is the size of the house, at least.  More than half of the yard is the in-ground pool and while its a little dirty, it could be absolutely gorgeous when cleaned out.  There’s also a small ‘pond’ area that has a pump and lights but since the power is off its just freestanding water filled with frogs.  There’s a separate small area that’s fenced off for the in-law suite so they have a private yard as well.  Every aspect of the fenced area is cement block so it doesn’t require any maintenance whatsoever. On the outside of the fence towards the side of the house there’s a lot of grassy area that includes a decent sized shed, it would require some clean-out work but its a decent enough size where we could extend the existing fence and give Bella, or any other dog we get room to play in the grass. There aren’t many trees in the backyard, so there’s A LOT of sunlight for tanning and enjoying the backyard in general.

Front – The front of the house has a large wrap around drive-way.  The side has a 6 car driveway past the two car garage. There’s a small island with some shrubbery and a nice sized porch on the front of the house that I can utilize as my usual relaxing area for a cig or even just relaxing outside for the fresh air.

All in all I would personally LOVE to own the home, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a home and even exceeds my expectations of everything.  Unfortunately it’s just not within our grasp right now as we’re already $30k in debt, we need to get another $10k on top of that to get the closing costs, PLUS we would need a co-signer to even get the loan.  The next few months (if this house is even still on the market) will require us to work our asses off to bring as much money in as possible to get our debts paid down. I look at it this way.  If the house is still available when we actually are able to do this, it was meant to be.  If not? It was something to walk into where we would know what our expectations are, and where we know we wish to be.

I guess, at this point, the future will tell.

Sean and I (plus Karen!) are seeing a house tomorrow. We’ve been looking at it for a little while now and finally got ourselves hooked up with a realtor and made the appointment to take a look from the inside. The over-head views and photos listed online have sparked our interest enough to want to walk inside. There’s a pretty big in-ground pool so that’s a major plus for us – we’re like fish in the summer time if there’s a pool around! There’s also a MASSIVE kitchen that offers tons of storage and natural light. I’m excited to get in there to look around. It’s four bedrooms, four bathrooms PLUS an in-law suite, so if we actually do purchase the home, we’ll have someplace to stick people when they come to visit so they can have some privacy as well.

The biggest issue for me is leaving everything in NY. My entire family and all of my friends are there. One of which is kind of giving a guilt trip cause we’re coming down here and not looking in NY. The reason being – TAXES. The property taxes for a home on Long Island are in the $10,000 a year range. This is ON TOP of the $3,000 a month it would cost to OWN the home itself, so we’re looking at about $3,700 a month in outgoing bills. Where as down here, the taxes are in the $1,000 range. This is the more financially sound option for us because it would bring our monthly payments into the $2,300 range, which means between the two of us we have to make $1,500 a month in order to not only pay all of the bills, but general house maintenance as well.

What we’re looking for, as far as a mortgage is concerned, is the ability to ask for about $30,00 more than the cost of the home. We’d utilize this extra money to pay off all of our other debts so we can then bring our ‘outgoing bills’ payment to the same amount without having to worry about whether or not its going to be the car payment or the mortgage payment.

We’re jumping into this, we know this full well. It would be more financially sound for us to try to pay off more of the bills before we even consider a home, but when you just have that feeling that everything is going to be alright… you act on it. It’s the same thing I did when I left my stupid office job. As soon as my notice went in, work came spewing out of the woodwork. And since we’ve been in DE? We haven’t really been able to breath because of the workflow. If this is the sign that everything is going to be OK, then I’ll take it – and run with it.

Sean and I have been in Delaware for the past month. Every time we’ve tried to go home, some major account pops up that requires our complete attention. Due to this, there’s been no possible way for us to hop in the car and drive five hours north to get back to Long Island.

Initially it was the account for Dover Speedway, from there it’s trickled down to numerous small accounts popping up at once that all require some ridiculously short turn around time. To top that off there are still modifications to do on sites that were completed a few weeks ago so that we can launch them for the client.  Whatever the case has been, we’ve just been too damn busy.  I’ve been told (hopefully as a joke) that if I choose to stay down here any longer my dog will be shipped via FedEx so that I can then stay for as long as I absolutely want, as long as they don’t have to deal with her anymore.

Right now I’m trying to complete FOUR accounts at once.  The task would be much easier to manage if there weren’t so many other factors involved. The environment isn’t an issue at all, I actually find myself more focused down here. The issue I’m dealing with right now… EMAIL… each of the clients is kicking over a multitude of emails to follow for changes/tweaks, and to top that there’s a few new clients coming out of the wood work.  Whatever made me think that Sean and I couldn’t afford to purchase a house down here has gone completely out the window.  Now it’s just the matter of actually getting HOME so that we can continue to work and pay our bills and then eventually go for that oh-so-hefty mortgage to get the house that we’ve both decided upon.

I know they say to never put your eggs in one basket, but this is a home that’s been on the market for almost a year, it’s in beautiful condition and has absolutely everything we want, including a very, very large in-ground pool in a fully fenced in back yard. It’s my ultimate goal to have the keys to this house in my hands before summer of next year so I can literally take three straight days off work and just float in the pool. Meaning, I have no intent of getting OUT of the pool for three days. Who needs air conditioning when you have a float and a nice breeze?

The house itself is $250k, as it’s been on the market for so long I’m offering $175, the negotiations can begin from there.  There’s 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a Florida room, large kitchen, dining room, media room, living room, AND an in-law suite.  What do two people need all of this space for?  Simple really.  The master bedroom will contain absolutely NO computer equipment EVER.  Two of the four bedrooms will be offices. Mine will be fully customized with the same color tones as on this template (White, Black, Grey and pops of Pink). Sean’s will have the more masculine feel.  The other two rooms (in the main house) will be designated guest rooms as I’m sure we’ll have frequent visitors via either friends or family.  The in-law suit contains a small kitchen, large room and its own bathroom. We’ll use this as the ‘guest house’ for the guests staying for more than a few days so they have a bit of privacy.

Regardless, I’ve decorated everything in my head and don’t plan on giving up.  We have looked in NY, the property taxes are absolutely ridiculous so there’s no reason to even continue our search there. Yes, all of my friends and family are up there, but affordability wise – DE is the place to be.

Either way we’re going to continue to work and get our finances in order, the issue really is getting back to NY. We have every intent of leaving tomorrow morning and then working tomorrow night to get caught up. I really wanted to do some laundry and clean up before we leave here but I honestly don’t see the laundry aspect of things happening. I could have spent the last five minutes getting that in the washing machine instead of blogging, but considering I’m still three hours behind on my email – getting up from my computer just wasn’t happening.

I’ve got my fingers crossed in hopes to actually go home tomorrow.  Being in DE isn’t bad, I’m not unhappy in any way, and I absolutely love Karen (Sean’s mom), it’s got nothing to do with her. I just know that we don’t actually live in DE anymore and everything we own (including a more stable internet connection) is back in NY.  I whole heartedly believe that if we brought Bella down with us for this visit – we’d never go back to NY. Regardless, I miss my dog, I miss my friends and I really hope that things slow down long enough for us to pack up and hop in the car.

Meh… forget the emails – I’m doing laundry. :hmph: