Some of you may know that Ana, my wife, and I have been in the process of finding and buying a house, a thing Ana has been wanting to do since she was a kid. In fact, we moved to New Mexico, to Albuquerque, for the specific purpose of buying a house in a place we liked and in a market we could afford to buy one.
Well, the search for the right house didn't take us that long. We drew up, each of us, a tiered list of things we wanted, things that would be nice to have and deal breakers. For the most part, our lists were nearly identical. We looked at a few houses when we first got here, sort of feeling out the market, but we didn't begin looking in earnest until we had our financing in process, something which we did through a state program for first-time home buyers and the assistance of a real estate agent who is a family friend.
We looked at about a dozen or so - maybe as many as fifteen - houses that met out basic criteria each of us finding one we liked better than the others . . . until we found this one house. It hit all of our needs, a good number of our wants and no deal breakers. So, we put in an offer and played the horse-trading game that most Americans do to buy a car, a horse, or a house.
In the end, we got pretty much all we asked for, except price - which we admittedly low-balled - but for less than the listed price. All did not go smoothly, the process is designed, it would seem, to frustrate home buyers. We had to take - and pass - an on-line course from the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority. Hoops through which to jump.
In the end, we closed almost a week later than chosen by the seller - but on the day we had originally chosen in our offer. And then the next phase began. Ana didn't want to live in a bland white interior as she had pretty much all her life. So, we chose and bought and applied paint on the walls where we knew there would be furniture as a first step. We'll get to the other walls after we get fully moved in.
The plan had been to rent a truck and have a crew of our friends - six in all - assist us in loading the truck and unloading it at the new place. We got the truck, but of the six, only one showed up and gave yeoman service, service above and beyond our expectations. She helped Ana do some last minute packing and then loaded the truck for a couple of hours and then helped unload it at the other end.
We got little of the furniture - not the TV console, not the dresser, not the large corner desk that will go in my office - we each have an office, and we have a guest room - and not the bed. So, because of our friends' croissant-level flakiness, we have been sleeping on our air mattresses and will until the weekend.
The major up side is that we got the TV moved and the new service from Comcast effortlessly set up and both our comfortable chairs and Avi, our 16-pound cat, after some initial shyness - he was confined to the master bathroom while we were moving and spent most of his time there cowering behind the toilet. But after we finished making a ruckus and moving stuff around, he came out and now seems to be perfectly at home. He has discovered box-land, the future dinning/game room, which is now full of boxes, some from the apartment some out of storage. We'll be seeing to those boxes over the next several months, eventually finding a place for everything, even if that place is not with us or in our home.
We have embarked on a journey, We describe this as our "forever home" meaning that, barring some major changes, this is the house we will live in for the rest of our lives. The house won't be paid for until I turn 100, which I think is doubtful. I said from the beginning that this would be the house were my wake would be held and I meant it. The end result is a 1713 square foot house with decent bones and recently upgrades and a large back yard with mature fruit trees. But the journey wasn't all that much fun and it is still not over.
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