Progress on Our New House

It has become a bit of a tradition for our family, every Sunday after church, to go and look at the progress made on our new house. A lot has been done since last week, mainly because the close date is November 10th and the builder is working overtime to make the deadline.

Last week we had an appraiser come to give the value of the house. It came in quite a bit lower than what we had contractually agreed to, so we showed the appraisal to the bank (they own the house because the original builders went into foreclosure and the bank took back possesion of the home) and asked what they could do for us. They dropped the price down to the amount of the appraisal which we were very excited about. Just to make sure that everything was ok, we hired a real estate lawyer to check over everything. She said she thought we were still paying too much so we had her work with the bank to get the price even lower. We paid her about $1,000 for her work and she got the bank to drop their price by an extra $20,000. We had previously locked in an excellent rate for our home loan which expires on November 10th so we added into the contract with the bank that if the house isn't done by the 10th they will have to pay points on the interest rate to get it down to the level we have now, which they agreed to do.

I believe the blessings we received pertaining to the house this week (i.e. deciding to have the house appraised early, having the appraisal come in much lower than we had agreed to pay, serendipitously coming across a lawyer that could competently work our case, having the bank drop their price, etc.) is a direct result of paying our tithing. We have truly been blessed.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the progress:


The kitchen is looking great with the new cabinets and appliances. We're really happy the colors turned out so well.


The new fire place is in!


It's nice to have the fence done, but it sure makes the yard look a lot smaller...though it's still really big.

I'm really excited to move in! You can tell 'cause I use lots of exclamation marks :o) Hopefully everything will go as planned and we'll finish moving in the weekend after the deal closes. Just two weeks away!