We Bought a House

Last week we celebrated our 4 year anniversary. In 4 years of marriage we've lived in: 3 cities, 5 apartments, Chuck's sister's basement (for a summer when we moved back from Boston) and now, at last, A HOUSE. We close on it TOMORROW and move in this Saturday!

 

We have been casually looking at houses on Zillow for probably a year to get an idea of what we like and don't like so when we went out with a realtor to actually look a couple months ago, we knew exactly what we were looking for. Funny enough, the house we bought is not really what we were looking for. But we walked in and fell in love with it and think it's the perfect house for us where we are in our life right now. It's a ranch. It's a new build. It has a finished, walk-out basement. The kitchen is the definition of the Heart Eyes Emoji. The yard is small. There are built in bookshelves. We CAN. NOT. WAIT. to move in and be homeowners for the first time!

Like I mentioned, we have lived in 5 apartments in our 4 years of marriage. Two in Boston, two in Seattle, and one in Louisville. As we leave apartment life behind, maybe (hopefully?) forever, I thought it would be fun to look back on the apartments we've lived in and some of the ugliness and prettiness that sums up apartment living.

Our first apartment was in Eastgate, a students only apartment building on MIT's campus. We really wanted to live in Eastgate for our entire time in Boston, but the building is in such high demand we didn't win the apartment lottery and only got to live there for our first summer as we were subletting from someone. You might look at Eastgate in this previous post and wonder why we wanted to live there so badly with the 550 square feet, scary hallways, broken ovens and cockroaches. Ask me sometime in person and I'll tell you the difference in rent at Eastgate vs the rest of Boston and you'll understand. Also, the views of the Charles River and Boston were pretty unbeatable and Chuck's walk to class took approximately 30 seconds.

Our fancy AC unit in Eastgate

After one summer at Eastgate, we moved to our "Married apartment" in Central Square. We loved that apartment. It had the fun speaker system to talk to people at the front door that Chuck would sing into and entertain passerbyers with, a nice kitchen, a parking spot in the garage underneath the building, and some of our friends upstairs and in the buildings next to us.  We also had a lady next door who I liked to make up stories about to entertain Chuck with pretty often, including the one time I tried to convince him she had been killed by her creepy cat because a pair of her snow boots sat outside her door untouched for 3 weeks straight.

Small but cute!

In our short 6 month stay in Seattle, we lived in 2 different fully furnished apartments. The first one we lived in we rented site-unseen. Online it all looked great. In person, while clean and cute, it smelled basement-y, had lumpy floors, had plumbing issues, and no cell service on account of we were in the basement of a house. Also the lady in the conjoined apartment smoked outside her door aka outside our door and the smoke crept into our apartment. Fun times.

We had to sit in that exact spot on the counter to get cell reception.

So after about a month, we moved to a different fully furnished apartment in a different part of the city where we could walk to work and downtown easily, and most importantly, could talk on our cell phones without having to sit on the kitchen counter. That was an OK apartment. The best things about it were the location and view of the mountains from our living room and kitchen. The worst things about it were the ants we couldn't get rid of and the dogs next door that barked at every sound they heard all day and night. Also we had no AC and with all those windows it got a little toasty in there during the summer.

Mountains

When we moved to Louisville, we chose to live at the Meridian Apartments which were brand new at the time. I've talked all about this apartment before and how wonderful it is. We have granite countertops! The carpet is super soft! Our closets are huge! This apartment has been amazing and I really think we will miss living here but we are also ready for a change of scenery. The past two years have had their ups and downs as you know, and unfortunately now this apartment is associated with those down times. We're hoping to pack up all our belongings and leave any bad juju behind!

My favorite pic of our Meridian Apartment. So homey!

All of our apartments have had their pros and cons and while it wasn't always enjoyable sharing a wall with strangers or dealing with ants/cockroaches/dogs/cats, all of these apartments have been special to us in their own unique ways. We are so excited to move and can't wait to see what adventures are ahead for us in our new HOUSE!

 

Summerness

Remember when I said the blog would now mostly contain cute pics of our nieces and friends' babies? Well. I'm about to deliver on that promise. 

We've spent the last month enjoying our summer, spending time with friends and family, and traveling. Here's a summary of July in pictures. 

We spent 4th of July in Virginia Beach with Chuck's sister and family. It rained most the time we were there so we made the most of it anytime the sun was out!

Colonial Williamsburg

Fireworks on the bay!

I love how their dog sleeps on the steps.

We've been trying to utilize our apartment complex pool this summer more than we did last summer. We've spent a lot of Saturdays at the pool and a super fun Friday night pool cookout with friends.

Chuck's other sister (who lives in Louisville) got a new puppy and he is ADORABLE.

The whole family got together to celebrate my Grandma's birthday!

We went to the lake with friends to celebrate Jen's son Brendan turning 13!

And last but not least, we hung out with this little dude a lot. I CAN'T STAND THE CUTENESS!

That's all for now. An update on the house hunting process coming soon......

House Hunters: Cummings Edition

For about a year, Chuck and I have been talking about buying a house. When we moved back to Louisville 2 years ago, we weren't ready to think about buying a house yet. There was a lot of change happening all at once and we wanted to get established in a routine again before thinking about settling down in a house. Last summer, we decided to renew our lease for another year. We weren't prepared to make all the decisions that come with home buying and also well, we REALLY love our apartment. It was brand new when we moved into it 2 years ago and because the complex let us pick our layout and then personalize it with paint and light fixtures, it really feels like a home and not a standard, cookie cutter apartment. It has granite counter tops and (faux) wood floors and really soft carpet! We don't have to cut grass or pull weeds, and best of all when the fancy light bulbs in our track lighting go out, we call someone to come replace them! We are so spoiled here.

So once again we are faced with the "lease renewal" decision and we've decided that we're ready to leave apartment life behind and find a house. I'm extremely excited to start this process but also pretty stressed about it already. You see, while Chuck and I have very similar taste in most everything and agree on what we do and do not want in a house, we have very different approaches when making big purchases.

When it comes to buying a car or a couch or a headboard for our bed or a TV or anything that comes with a significant cost, on the first day we go shopping for the thing, this is me:

...except in a slightly less bratty, rude, selfish way. I'm a very impatient shopper. I look around and weigh the options some, but typically when I look at something I know right away if I want to own it or not.

When Chuck goes looking for the same item, this is him:

....except he's not an old grandma. But man does that dude love to do some research! He always has an idea of what he wants but he needs time to process, do some research, look at every possible alternative, and make sure he's getting the best deal.

I think we can all agree that while my way of shopping is way more fun, Chuck's way is way more sensible. The good thing is we know this about each other and are able to compromise. We don't make any impulse buys, but we also don't take 6 months to buy a couch. (Just about 2 months...)

But you can see where I'm going with this. The two of us house hunting together is probably going to look a lot like me wanting to buy every house right away and Chuck wanting to buy none. We look for the first time this weekend, so I'll report back soon... Wish us luck!