The House

We are actually homeowners. Home. Owners. It's difficult to believe, especially considering how many hurdles we had to jump to get this house. We put in an offer on December 14, 2011 and closed on April 26, 2012. Four months of paperwork; copy, sign, fax...repeat. We signed loan papers twice. There were days of hope and weeks of frustration. But it happened. And we are thrilled!

Our home is in Fairfield, CA. It is 1,500 square feet with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a 2 car garage. The master bedroom has a beautiful view of Mount Diablo.

We were happy to learn that Fairfield is considered the Bay Area and NOT the valley, which we were desperately trying to escape. I have to admit it's pretty nice to be able to hop on the freeway and be in SF in less than an hour.

We are planning on moving into the house on June 1st, the day after the kids get out of school. That means that we'll have stuck to our initial plan of only living in Stockton for a year. Alex and I promised each other that we would not-could not-live in Stockton for longer than a year.  And technically, we moved to Stockton on June 4th, so it will be less than a year. :)

The house needs some work done. Not major work, we already had several major things fixed while we were in escrow, but smaller jobs that will make it our own. So far our good friend helped Alex take down the hideous gold chandelier light in the dining room and replace it with a nice ceiling fan/light. We've also purchased all of the necessary tools to tile our entry hall, kitchen and dining room. We also plan on tearing out the carpet in the living room and replacing it with either tile or wood. The bathroom sinks are also hideous, so we want to replace those also. The whole house needs to be painted, but we can't afford it right now, so we're focusing on the kitchen and the bedrooms for now. It will take some hard work, but it will be well worth the effort.

Here are some pictures:

Front of the house. The garage is detached and in front of the house. This is nice for privacy.

The living room/dining room area. 

 

Kitchen. It has a dishwasher! You can't tell in the pictures but the walls are an ugly pea green. Yeah, that's got to go. 

View of the backyard from the dining room. It's small. There's a gigantic orange tree out there.

View from the master bedroom. This picture doesn't do the view justice.  Love the tile roof.

The master bedroom has it's own bathroom!

The view from kid bedroom #1.

The view from kid bedroom #2. We don't have neighbors directly behind us.

We are all very excited to move into our house! We're also extremely grateful to everyone who helped make this happen. We've been truly blessed.