More on the saga of home ownership.

Home ownership causes Zed a lot of joy. It causes me mostly worry. I worry about ever getting that dodgy deck corner replaced, the bog that is the back yard, that weird hole in the wall, I worry I need to buy a ladder and why the dishwasher leaked just that one time and now I have to check on it everytime. I worry when it rains and about the non standard light fittings. Its a raging paranoia.

But slowly I am discovering small joys. Like I can actually do weird stuff to my walls if I want too. I have recently rediscovered the thrilling website of Blik. Its decals for you walls. Standard designs and now, oh the excitement, thrill apon thrill, THREADLESS designs.

Oh they are American and the cost is moderate with shipping probably expensive, but I want want want!

Another cool feature is the prose decals. Pick a poem and the font and they will custom print it for you. It doesn't even have to be a crappy poem, you could use the opening lines from star trek even! "space....the final frontier...etc" stuck to your living room wall in a classy italic font of course.

Got Roof?

Well we just got our roof painted. And damn nice it looks too. It was a necessary job before winter really set in as the roof was showing its age. (47 apparently)
The colour is "New Denim Blue" which is a dark blue/gray. It looks spiffy.

The paint job was pretty good, but after the consultant guy came back to have a look he reckons it needs a little finishing. So the team (Rob and Rob) will be back soon to finish off.

I suppose I could post photos, but alas it is dark!

Urgh its dark by 6pm. How horribly depressing.

Anyway speaking of tradesmen, if you have need of one or have used one recently (for whatever purpose) you should visit No Cowboys. Its New Zealand based website where you can rate and review tradesmen from around the country. Its not all ranting and raving either, there are some real great trades people out there with a heap of five star reviews. Check it out bros!

New Oven!

Woohoo! Our new oven arrives tomorrow. And thank goodness. I can't believe the state the previous owners of this house left the kitchen. The oven was so disgusting and even after you clean and clean it all I can see is the filth, not to mention what was down the sides and behind the oven. I wont even describe it (lets just say it even made zed gag.) Anyway I have cleaned the oven space and its all ready for my brand new tiny little European oven. Just perfect for us two. I've had my eye on it for a while and just last week it went on sale 20% off! So I made Zed buy it for me. Its a little extravagant but honestly that "other" oven was a nightmare. So here's to domestic bliss and new ovens!

House Thing going well

Just got all our reports in! LIM, Valuation and Building inspection. Its all good people.
Except the piles for the deck. Seems the owners did a DIY fixit on the old ones. urgh. Not so pretty. Anyway a friend of mine happens to have a husband who is a structural engineer. Overkill maybe, but he's going to take a look at it on Sunday for us. Other problems include a 46 year old roof and a few bits of wood that need replacing. Just typical stuff for a house of that age. Structurally its fine and it passed the moisture test.

Anyway here is a pun to lighten the mood.

Conditional Offer Accepted

Wooooooooooo the lawyers have our money. as my favourite saying about lawyers and money goes............
"AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!
As we all know the weather has been crap in Auckland for the last few weeks....er months and when we first looked at this place its blowing a gale and persisting down. Despite the grey day I knew this was the house as soon as I walked in. The photos on trademe really dont do it justice. It gets heaps of light and is warm. It has wooden floors upstairs and carpet downstairs. the split level thing is really appealing, especially with Z's boys entering the teenage years!
I've been to see it twice, it doesn't need fixing up, but there is room to develop things ;-)
Its a house that fits our personality, we've been to look at some many boring little boxes! So nobody panic, we love it, its cheap, it has threee huge bedrooms and a study.
We go unconditional in seven days depending on building inspection, LIM and a valuation by QV.
Oh and finance. Its so crazy though, we had approval for a loan $40,000 more than this place, but the repayments were ridiculous and it would take forever to start paying off any decent amount of principal! So with this loan we are borrowing $349,000. We are going with fixed interest for the first year, that way the repayment amount is fixed and it gives us time to adjust to mortgage repayments that are about twice what we pay in rent now. Then if we find we can budget well (and interest rates dont get too high) we will move to a revolviong credit mortgage. That way we can pay it off a lot faster.
Oh and our mortgage broker has been FANTASTIC!!!!! She has gone above and beyond, been able to answer more of our questions than our dumb arse lawyer and always makes time to talk us through our newbie questions. She has taken calls from us at all hours and has always been cheerful and helpful and convinced a bank to lend us a ridiculous amount of money.
Raywyn Watson of Mortgage Express 09 4261210
She covers orewa and North Shore areas. Highly recommended!

Whew, all this legal law stuff is exhausting!

Here is the house.

Its a private sale, so I thought things would be easier, but frankly its still a nightmare. Lots of lawyering done today. Anyway our offer is in, its the asking price so that should be no worries, the only worry is the settlement date. We want to do everything by the book and get LIM reports etc, but the vendor is really rushing us! Argh!