Our First (Purchased) Home

Steve and I have been living together since 2009. We started out in a one bedroom basement apartment and were eventually renting a two bedroom condo. In the meantime, my step mom and her sister owned a condo together. My step mom obviously lives with my dad so her sister was living there alone but they were both paying the mortgage and on the title. A couple years ago we started kinda going back and forth about buying the condo. JoAnn and Kathy needed the money from the condo if they wanted to retire and Kathy was tired of living there by herself. 

Eventually we started talking about doing it this year so I told Kathy that our lease was up at the end of July and we wanted to know May-Juneish if we needed to sign a new lease or if we wanted to go monthly for a little bit and she said she was ready to move. Steve and I called the mortgage broker my sister was using and started the painful process of applying. (Note - this process should be easy for anyone looking to buy a house. I just have a thing called "things that are easy for most people are not easy for Christy")

Once everything got in motion we sat down to talk numbers. JoAnn and Kathy had a figure in their head of what they wanted to walk away with once everything was said and done so they offered us the condo at about 30% less than it was worth. Combined with our down payment we have about $100K in equity walking into the condo. Our plan is to stay here for a few years (3-5) and then use the equity to buy a house. 

The only catch with the condo was it was pepto bismal pink on every wall (and some ceilings, and the squares on the doors) and had red carpet. So Steve and I got possession on July 17th and we worked really hard on it for a week and moved in on the 25th. Here are some before and afters! (I meant to take better ones but we never got around to it and now our house is a mess so no new pictures).

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

Spare Room Before

Spare Room After

Ensuite before (pink ceilings man...)

Ensuite After

Master Before

Master After 

We ended up choosing colors and then choosing different ones when we went to pick out the paint. I don't regret it at all. I wanted a cream for the main area so all our furniture would match, purple for the bathrooms to give it a spa feel and, originally green for the bedrooms. 

I fell in love with the Sprout green at the store and I was a little nervous when I started to paint but I love how it turned out in the master. Once we realized we'd need a second can of paint for the spare room we decided to pick a different color (I was only going to paint it green too cos I thought we'd have enough). It's hard to tell in the picture but we went with a light blue/gray color. I figured since it will hopefully be a nursery one day to pick a color we like for that.

We had the floors installed by Home Depot and I absolutely adore them. I want to replace the kitchen backsplash soon and we are thinking of having tile floors put into the bathrooms next year. 

And this, three months late, is our new home :D