Pennsylvania Street – commonplacebook.com

Goodbye, Pennsylvania Street!

Post author:HFM
Post published:March 23, 2007
Post category:House and Home My Photos

A small photoset of house pictures on Flickr.
I can’t begin to describe how happy I am right now! We closed on my old house this afternoon, and I drove directly to the bank and deposited the check into our savings account. Yay! Thank goodness. Now we only own two houses – ours and Stephanie’s, which is rented out. I have to call and cancel the utilities.
I thought I would be more upset than I am, but I went over this morning to gather up all the cleaning supplies and go through everything one last time, and I realize how much happier I am at our new house. This probably sounds really shallow, but I love that all the woodwork at our new house meets at the corners correctly, and we have beautiful hardwood floors, and everything is not all shabby and worn. It bugs me to look at pictures of the dog and cats from my old house, because the background of all the photos looked crappy.
Walking around the house reminded me of what bugged me all the time when I lived there; I had a running list in my head of stuff I needed to fix and work on all the time. I still have that list in our house, but it’s much, much shorter, and it doesn’t cover every square inch of the house.
And I can’t begin to say how awesome it is not to have that extra mortgage. There’s so much we’ll be able to do now – after we pay a bunch of bills, of course. Oh, sunshine day! I could not be more thrilled.

I think I’m finally selling my house tomorrow

Post author:HFM
Post published:March 22, 2007
Post category:House and Home

It’s been such a rollercoaster getting to this point, and I think that’s partly why I haven’t shared every update along the way. Every time it looked like we were making progress, something would come up to delay things or throw us a curveball. There were moments when I thought it was just never going to happen, and after a while, it became a bit exhausting to get my hopes up, only for plans to change yet again.

But this time feels different. Knowing that the buyer’s lender has officially sent the package to the title company feels like a huge milestone, and it’s really starting to sink in that tomorrow could actually be it – the day I finally close this chapter and say goodbye to the house. I know there were times I thought, “I’d like to Sell my house fast in Everett,” but even then, I had to remind myself to stay cautiously optimistic, just in case. Now, though, it’s hard not to feel a little excited at the thought of truly moving forward.

I feel a little guilty for not telling everyone sooner, especially my mom, but the uncertainty made it hard to share. I think part of me was just waiting for something concrete, something I could feel confident about. Now that we have a set time for closing, it feels a lot more real, and I can start to share the news with everyone. Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly tomorrow!

The House Next Door to Me

Post author:HFM
Post published:November 3, 2003
Post category:House and Home Journal

Is for sale at $29,900. [ Link redacted ]I hope that the neighborhood buys it, because if someone just buys it as an investment, they might be a crappy owner.

UPDATE: – The people who ended up buying the houses gutted it, then left it sitting for months before selling it again. Now (March, 2005) it’s owned by a really nice guy who’s got people working on it every day and it’s really shaping up.