We were home shopping in somewhat of a rush back in 2008, because we wanted to quality for a tax program that gave first time home owners $8,000 (thanks Obama!). We looked at quite a few foreclosed homes with a budget of $90,000.We stuck to the west side of Indianapolis because the homes offer more value per square foot. Also, as a result of the way the city developed, there was a massive inventory of new construction homes sold during the bubble. We were afraid to get an older home, as there is inherently more cost in such a purchase. We made an offer on this one:

The one in the middle, that is. It only had a one car garage, but we liked it all the same. Here it is on Trulia (which is a real estate website). We thought it would be perfect, but someone placed a higher offer than us and we didn’t get it. We were discouraged at the time, especially because it pushed us getting into a house closer to our wedding date. After looking at more places with our realtor, we found a common floor plan in late ’90s construction that we liked: two story living rooms with lofts. He took us to several with that basic floor plan, but one stood out. Maybe because the front looked so unassuming:

Half that tree was missing as well. The porch was so dark and small, I don’t think we were expecting to see this when we opened the door.

I think the biggest surprise was how bright it was. Because we were looking at foreclosed homes, they were often poorly lit. All the south facing windows and open floor plan filled the house with light. There was no noticeable damage either, unlike many of the other homes. To our standards, it was move in ready.

Except for appliances. It did need appliances. And some upper cabinets. Feeling the stress of work, planning a wedding and looking for a home, I told Aaron that we should put an offer on this house and if it fell through, we would just wait till after the wedding. Not wanting to stay in an apartment, Aaron agreed to offer near the top of our budget to ensure we got the house. We probably overpaid, but it was accepted, and soon enough it was ours. Soon enough being the four months it took for the paperwork to be cleared.

I started this blog while we were planning for our wedding, but once we decided to buy a house, the posts stopped. The home was foreclosed, allowing us to take advantage of some tax incentives at the time and have instant equity as owner occupants. Three years later, we have done many improvements and are ready to sell the house. We’ve learned a lot along the way, chiefly that 1. homes have a way of absorbing both time and money in a subtle, effortless fashion and 2. yardwork sucks.

This seems to be a monthly update, so I’m going to run with it. This last month is more traceable than the previous update. Shortly after that update, I started taking the carpet off my stairs. Things went very well, as the stairs were in better shape than I expected. I prepped and began painting them, when from seemingly nowhere, our cat, Roxas, made a mad dash up the stairs. I tried to stop her; her entire back leg sunk deep into the paint can and she was off down the stairs again before I knew what happened. By the time I came to my wits she had walked all the way through the living room, dining room, and back again.

So, we got new laminate floors. They were difficult to install across two rooms and though they look fine, I am not satisfied with how they turned out. The floor is so tall that the transitions are really stretching to make the gap. The whole process sort of upturned our house, so it’s been a slow process to get it back together again.

There was also another trip to Ikea after selling our elliptical. And finally, finally bought the Malm bed from Ikea on price drop and I love it so much, that I am sure I should have bought that instead of a PS3, instead of a myriad of games and other knick nacky things that I did not love as much as I love this bed frame.

The countdown is on for selling the house. It is now October, which leaves us five short months before we can move out. I really wanted to get everything done so we could enjoy it all finished some before we sold it. But, there’s no guarantee that we will be able to sell it, so that opportunity is very possibly waiting out there for us.

For the last week I’ve been on a Japanese learning and reading bender, doing Japanese coach back to where I was previously and in book one chapter four in my college textbook. I made the commitment to do every single exercise in the book, which is incredibly redundant. I don’t really have a way to check my answers, so I’m hoping the excess of practice will allow me to catch most issues on my own. Soon I will be watching more anime to help bring it all together, as I don’t have the listening cd for the book.

I read Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Bossypants by Tina Fey, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m onto a book about how Nintendo invaded America and another about Surveillance in America, with one on request about how psychopaths are running America.Though I like getting things done around the house, it doesn’t help me to have things to talk about, so the books are filling that gap.

Over a month! I worked a lot on overhauling this blog, prepping to make it public as it is currently private, and my writing engine just ran out of steam. There is no particular reason, but part of my absence was the realization that if I really wanted this blog, and any other internet things to really look the way that I wanted, I was going to have to learn more about CSS, and maybe more about programming in general. I thought I would learn some about databases (to help organize my files) and some about programming for databases (to access my files) and a friend mentioned Ruby as a programming language that I should look into. Being the deliberate person that I am, I rented a book from the library about Ruby Programming and, about 70 or so hours later, read the book cover to cover, programming every example and improving upon the programs where I saw fit.

Though I failed to acknowledge that it at the time, I think this wore me out a bit, understandably. I also fell behind on a lot of miscellaneous housework, so I had a lot of mental and physical catching up to do. I rearranged the office furniture again, hung hardware for curtains, rearranged the master bath, switched bathroom mirrors, etc.

There was also quite a heatwave that kept me inside. I haven’t been outside in a meaningful way since, so our yard is out of control. Today I intend to find someone with an electric or gas powered weed eater, because I already went through both our batteries today and barely made a dent. I will also need a leaf blower to try to clean it all up. Our grass went completely dormant, so its not as bad as it could be. In a lot of the shady areas not seen from inside the house have grass knee-high, though.

So, how much will I be writing here? I just don’t know. I’ve made many plans to do so, but as it is one of many hobbies, it sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. I hope to do some new house projects that will inch us closer to being open-house ready, and will surely update those as I completely them.