A HOUSE to Call Home

I can hardly believe this myself, but it is true!! We are buying a house!

After about 3 weeks of looking at over 30 houses, we finally decided on one this past weekend. We had narrowed down our list to 6 houses and called in the experts (Jordan's parents and Grant and Anna) to help us take another look at them and decide where to go from there. :) We had a lot of fun on Friday afternoon looking at the houses!!

Monday morning, we took one last look at the house that was at the top of our list and then we wrote up an offer on it! Of course, there was the inevitable counter-offer, counter-counter-offer, counter-counter-counter-offer, counter-counter-counter-counter-offer, the bluffing, the stare-down...you get the idea - haha! ;) Finally, Tuesday morning around 10:00, they accepted our offer! We still have to go through the whole closing process (whatever that entails), so it looks like we'll be moving around the beginning of November!Below I have posted some of the pictures and details of it!

(Just a note: All of these pictures were taken by the realtor. Obviously, the owners are still living there, so there's lots and lots of clutter all over. You might notice that one of the bedrooms was made into the man's art studio, which was very interesting to see!)

The Front

The Porch

The Front Entrance (straight ahead is the breakfast nook, to the left is the front room, to the right are the stairs)

The Front Room (the doorway you can kind of see to the left is the dining room)

The Dining Room (the doorway you can kind of see to the right is the kitchen)

The Kitchen

The Living Room

Bedroom #1 (a.k.a. the office)

Bedroom #2 (a.k.a. the studio)

Bedroom #3

Bedroom #4 (the master - the door to the bathroom is the one you see on the right)

The Basement

The Laundry/Utility Room

The house is located in Clive, IA...just about a 5-minute drive from our apartment. Built in 1974, it is a big, solid house with nice mature trees in the yard. The back yard is fenced in and there are lots of flowers and shrubs planted all around the house (I'm going to have to get an education on how to care for them!). There's a nice little brick porch on the front and a wood deck in the back. The whole place is in wonderful condition with some really nice updates. I am excited to start putting our own touch to it...wouldn't it be great to see some color on those wall?!?! ;) I'm so tired of white walls! :P It is a 2-story house with 4 bedrooms (all upstairs) and 2 full bathrooms (both upstairs; one of which is in the master bedroom!). On the main floor, there is a half-bathroom. The laundry is in the basement, but there is a working intercom system...er, I mean, laundry chute...located in the hallway upstairs! :) The basement is mostly finished. The house definitely has a lot of space for us, so it's probably going to look pretty bare for a while, considering that we are used to just furnishing a few small apartment rooms! But, Craigslist has been good to us in the past, so we'll see what we can find there! ;)

I am just so excited to finally be moving into a house! God has been so good to us, and we have definitely had really good experiences with our apartments; but it will just be so nice to live in our own place. I am so thankful for how He has led and provided for us throughout this process! I'll be posting more pictures once we move in! :)