matching tracksuits

I just love that six, eight weeks after we bought our house, the Fed lowered interest rates by half a percent…

As of Thursday afternoon, K and I are homeowners.

And it was surprisingly easy. We’d heard so many horror stories about people buying houses — troubles with financing, troubles with closing, troubles with the realtor, troubles with everything. We literally had no issues at all. We found the house, made an offer, waited for the counter offer, accepted the counter offer, set a date for closing, then closed the house.

I suppose it helped that the owner now lives in Nashville and was simply interested in getting rid of the house and not terribly worried about how much money he was making. He was just losing money, I guess, paying double mortgages.

So now we’re slowly moving in, and the real work begins.

Over the weekend, we made a survey of the property we’re in the process of buying.

And of course, I made a video.

is a very, very fine house, though without the two cats in the yard…

Perhaps it’s a bit premature, for we haven’t closed yet, but people have asked about what “our house” (though, again, it’s still technically still not ours) looks like…

From the street, it looks a little like a mini-Brady Bunch house. But that’s only an illusion, for this is a coveted “tri-level” home, whereas the Brady’s house was conceptually a bit more confusing…

The back of the house includes a fairly spiffy bi-level deck. There are doors to the deck from both the dining room and master bedroom, making the Friday night cigar tradition a little more convenient.

The back also also includes a fairly un-spiffy outdoor parrot cage (?!?) that will quickly be converted into something. Ideas? Nah, I didn’t think so. It will be one of the first improvements completed on the house…

Yesterday, we spent the day surveying. We learned a few things.

First, it’s hot in Greenville.

Second, the rear property stakes are all but impossible to find. One is at a fence, making a metal detector fairly useless. The other is God-knows-where in the back left corner. Half an hour with a metal detector only turned up the metal eyelets of my boots…

Third, doing surveying with an inexperienced “surveyor” (i.e., me) makes the process a fair bit more labor- and time-intensive.

Fourth, it’s really incredibly hot in Greenville.

And the final thing we learned: working on your own (though, technically, not really) home makes otherwise-unpleasant tasks almost enjoyable.

Now that we have a house under contract, K has joyfully jumped into the wide world of paints. We have swatches and brochures and booklets lying all over the place.

Since I’m colorblind, I can’t really offer that much constructive input. After all, I did once buy a dark blue fleece jacket that turned out to be mockingly purple. And I did think for years that my friends’ parents had a gray car, only to learn, after I’d confused everyone by suggesting we take said gray car, that they didn’t own a gray car — it was light green.

Still, I’m glad someone in the family is interested in it.

Even L was taking part in the discussion.