We bought a house!

I mentioned here that I would be back to share our anniversary present to each other.  Nothing gets by Cassie, and she totally guessed it.  We found the perfect house!  And it's (almost) ours!  We could not be more excited!   

So this has been in the works for a couple of weeks now, but I didn't want to say anything before it was official.  We are past the inspection and the appraisal . . . so now we just have to wait until we close at the end of the month.  In the meantime, here's a little teaser picture from the entry hall we snapped during the inspection. 

Couple of fun facts about this house:

(1)  It is literally right next to this house (the one we had the back up contract on and didn't get).  How fun will be to get to know those next door neighbors?   The house we had the back up contract on was great, but neither Justin nor I were ever super pumped about it, but we LOVED the street.  Our new house is amazing and we are totally pumped about it, and it's on the same street we loved so much.  So now we get the best of both worlds.  Winning.

(2)  We put an offer on the house and were under contract about 12 hours after it was listed.  My mom was driving by the other house when there was still a chance it would be ours and noticed the for sale sign in front of house number 2.  She called to tell me, and frankly, I thought she was crazy because it wasn't showing up on the market.  I told her maybe it was a contractors sign, but she proved me wrong and called the realtor.  He said he had just put up the for sale sign that afternoon and it would be listed at midnight.  But that if we wanted to see it the next day, we could go ahead and schedule a time.  So we did -- we were already seeing another house in the area that morning anyway.  We knew right away that we loved it.  So we put an offer on it right after we got back to our offices that morning.  They countered about an hour later and it was a done deal!

The house needs some cosmetic updates, and we are meeting with some contractors to talk about remodeling the kitchen and bathroom.  The good news is hopefully there will soon be some great before and after pictures.  I am excited to share the progress along the way with y'all.  We cannot wait to make the house our own!