We Bought A House - Part Two

AKA - I had a headache when we toured this house and don't remember taking these pictures!


Picking up where we left off ....

John spent the winter months applying and interviewing at graduate schools.  In March, he got accepted, and we decided that we could no longer live in the rental.  As much as we loved it, and as much as we put into it, we couldn't change the neighborhood.  It was getting worse.  The drug dealers moving in two doors down may have had something to do with that.

So, I still did not think that we would be able to buy a house, and started looking at rentals in the area.  John, however, had a different idea.  He said, "Let's just check and make sure that we can't buy a house before we take that idea off the table."  So, we contacted two different banks in the area to see what they could do.

Within a week, we were told we were pre-qualified for a mortgage; a higher mortgage than we had even dreamed of expecting.  Of course, since we weren't expecting anything, that was even easier to get!

After recovering from our astonishment, we contacted a realtor and began looking at houses online.  By now it was the end of March, and we knew that with John starting grad school in August, we wanted to buy a house and be moved in before he started.  The clock was ticking!

I'm still not completely sure about our realtor.  Perhaps she was a really good realtor, but John and I were so on the ball, that we never gave her a chance.  We scoured the internet, and send her the links to the houses we wanted to see.  She would then try to set up times to go see the houses, and we'd go out and see them.

We went with her to look at houses three times, and visited about 20 different houses in the area.  Here were our *must have* criteria:

1. Must be in a nice neighborhood
2. Must be close to the grad school
3. Must be move-in ready (or close to move-in ready)
4. Must have a backyard for Honey
5. Must have at least 2 bathrooms

The last week of April, we went out to look at houses for the third time.  We had about 8 houses to visit that evening, so we were rushing through before we ran out of light.  One of the houses we saw early in the evening had some really bad mold problems, so I developed a rather nasty headache.  We decided right after viewing the next house, we'd stop and get something to drink so I could take some ibuprofen.

We went into that house, and I just blindly took pictures.  It was a good thing, too.  Without those pictures I would never have remembered the house that we were about to buy; my head hurt too badly!

We toured 2-3 more houses that night, and then John and I returned home to our rental, and stayed up far to late that night talking through everything.  We uploaded all the house pictures onto the computer, and used the pictures as a reference for each house as we discussed them.  Between all our house-hunting trips, we ended up having four houses we liked.

Option 1:  Large 2 bedroom, 2 bath in fancy neighborhood.  We loved the layout and location (right across the street from the country club!), and the view from the back looked like it belonged in the mountains.  Downsides?  Just a bit too expensive, no real backyard, and no place for Honey.

Option 2:  Super cute 3 bedroom, 2 bath house.  I adored the layout, it had both stairs and a fireplace, and a very large fenced back yard with a patio and hot tub.  Downsides?  Would need totally new carpeting and paint, and the lack of gutters on the extremely slanted roof  was causing serious problems in the back.

Option 3:  Very well kept-up older 3 bedroom2 bath house.  This was one of the only houses we saw that people were actually currently living in, and it was in perfect shape.  Move in ready - gorgeously large kitchen, and a good-sized fenced back yard.  Downsides?  A bit too far from school and work, and a worrisome neighborhood a block or so away.

Option 4:  The newest house we looked at with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.  Located close to a school, this house had a uniquely open layout, and was the absolute perfect distance from work and school.  It also had the fenced back yard for Honey.  Downsides?  No flooring in the house, appliances from about 30 years ago (even though the house was only 10 years old), and the entire house needed to be painted.

Guess which one we picked?

OPTION #4!!

The main impression we got:  there were no floors throughout the house.  All the carpet had been ripped up, and it was just bare cement.

Looking into the Living Room from the Front Door.

One nice thing:  a gas fireplace.  Not on our Must-Have list, but certainly an unexpected bonus!

Yay for fireplaces that you don't have to buy or chop wood for!

The kitchen was really nasty - I think the fridge was from the 1960s (and looked like it hadn't been cleaned since then, either).  But it was a good layout, and good counterspace.

Not pictured:  Nasty old fridge.

It was a three bedroom, two bath.

Bedroom #2 - no carpet and strangely spaced shelving.

And here's a quick peek into the master bedroom, looking through to the master bath and closet.

Again, no carpet.  But the room was larger than the other two bedrooms combined.

We emailed our realtor that night, and told her we wanted to put an offer on the house.  She was surprised, to say the least.  Although whether that was because of the house we chose, or because or how quickly we came to a decision, I don't know.

She agreed to draw up the paperwork, and the following day we submitted an offer.


Next Up:  The Real Work Begins!

How to Cut a Dog's Nails without Tears, Bloodshed, and Panic Attacks

Weekend Update:

Despite both John and I being sick and spending the vast majority of the weekend in bed watching Youtube videos and sleeping, we had a good weekend.

John was able to complete his 3 papers, poster project, and take-home quiz and have them all ready to turn in today.  I was able to do a few loads of laundry and pick up the house a bit.  We also cut Honey's toenails and watched the season premiere of Revenge.  (If you haven't watched that show yet ... go watch it now!  The entire first season is on Netflix.)

How to Cut Dog Toenails

Honey is not a small dog.  She weighs about 55 pounds, and is all muscle.  She does not like having her toenails trimmed, and is strong enough to really hurt us (well, me anyway) trying to get away from the evil nail clipper.  When she was still a puppy (about 9 months old), and I tried to hold her while we cut her nails, she gave me bruises that lasted for 2 weeks all over my body.⁽¹⁾   After only finishing one and a half paws, she went into a full-blown panic attack, and we had to stop.  I held her quietly for over an hour before she began to relax.  It was not good.

Obviously, we couldn't continue like that.  We tried taking her to Petsmart to get her nails trimmed, and that kinda worked for a few months.  While it wasn't extremely expensive, it was still an (unnecessary) expense, and neither John nor I were happy with how they cut her nails - sometimes we couldn't even tell they had been cut.  So, I came up with a plan.

Plan:  Prove to Honey that there is nothing scary about getting her nails cut.

I am just pretending to guard the house until you leave and I can take another nap.

Tools:

Nail File (Link is to a file similar to what we own and use)
Dog Blanket
Benedryl  (Link includes information on effects benedryl has on dogs)
Bowl
Milk

Process:

To do this, I started giving Honey about half of a benedryl every morning and evening for several days.⁽²⁾  After 3-4 days, she became very dopey and sleepy all the time.  We then took her for a long walk to further tire her out.  By the time we returned to the house, all she wanted to do was sleep.

Next, John sat and made himself comfortable in a chair, and then we put Honey belly-up in his lap.  We stretched the blanket over her belly, and tucked the ends beneath John's legs, effectively trapping her in his arms.  He held her firmly while I started trimming her nails with the nail file.

She fought for about 3 nails, and then just gave up.  She didn't have the energy or the strength to keep fighting us, and so she submitted and let us do with her as we wanted.  I was extremely careful not to cut her nails back too far (the last thing we wanted was for this to be painful for her), and we kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn't panic.

She didn't - in fact she almost fell asleep.

When I finished trimming all four paws, we did not immediately release her.  Instead, John held her while I went to the kitchen, got her blue puppy bowl, poured about half a cup of milk into it, and returned.  While she was still being held, I let her drink about half of the bowl of milk.  Then John released her, and I moved the bowl to the floor.  She happily finished the bowl of milk, came over to us to be petted, and then went to take a nap.

No fighting, no panicking, no bruising.  And the actual process took less than 15 minutes.⁽³⁾

Since then, we've been reducing the amount of benedryl given to her beforehand.  She still needs a little bit to calm her nerves, but a single benedryl the day of works fine. Hopefully as she gets older we can take her off the benedryl completely.

We only use her blue puppy bowl for milk, and she only gets milk after her toenails are cut.  Now she gets excited when her blue bowl comes out, because she knows that even though her nails are getting trimmed, she's getting milk before it's all over.  She only fights now when she's uncomfortable (for instance last month she decided that she didn't like to be held belly-up.  Once we figured that out, she stopped fighting), and it's never bad enough to give us bruises.

A few notes:

1.  In all the times that Honey fought with us and struggled against us during this process, she never once tried to bite us.  She would scratch (not on purpose, but because she had long nails!) and throw her weight around and merely do her best to escape.  Trying to restrain her at those points became difficult and dangerous for everyone involved: John, Me, and Honey.

2.  I'm not advocating drugging animals, except for extreme situations and under the approval of a veterinarian.  The dosage and use of benedryl were all approved by our family veterinarian, and the purpose was to prevent further harm to both John and I as well as Honey.  The point is we are working with Honey to make her comfortable with this process, and as she becomes more accustomed to it we will be weaning her off the benedryl.

3.  John's parents used this technique (sans benedryl) when they got their new puppy, a purebred bassett hound.  Without the traumatic experiences that we had with Honey, the immediate reward after cutting nails worked like a charm from the beginning.  Due to a sensitive stomach, the bassett cannot have milk, but can have cheese.  So, my Mom in Law feeds the bassett cheese after every paw, and everyone is happy and relaxed through the whole process.  The trick is tying the nail cutting experience to something happy - like a rare treat.

This & That

Bits of Randomness:

Thursday is my favorite day of the week.  Wednesdays are still too far away from the weekend, while Fridays are too popular.  Thursdays are like the downward slope after you've just crested the hill at the end of your walk, but before you actually get to the end.  It's just a great feeling.


John's getting his first stipend paycheck this weekend.  We were super stoked to get that email.  What with various expenses this year, we've worked through the little we'd saved and been uber tight the past 4-5 months.  With both of us getting paid, we can hopefully start to build up our savings again.  What a relief!


My work has actually calmed down and gotten easier lately.  The busyness of the new school year is calming down, and this is my fourth year in this position.  By now, I've gotten most things figured out (although I'm learning that there is always something unexpected that pops up) in my normal work day.  Last year at this time one of my co-workers left for a promotion in a different company, and all his work was passed onto me.  Basically from September 2011 to June 2012 I was working both my job and his job - which was in an area completely out of my expertise.  Needless to say I was super stressed almost all of last year.  But now that they've hired someone for that position ... my life is much happier!


The house closing is tomorrow - we had an A/C contractor come out and actually fix the a/c for under $400.  And it works!  The house is actually cool again!  Of course, then we turned off all the power, so nothing works right now.  I'm going to miss that house - our first home.  But at the same time ... I don't think I could move back.


I gave Honey a dose of benedryl-laced peanut butter during lunch today.  Benedryl makes her sleepy, and I'm wanting her to be sleepy and calm so that we can cut her nails.  They are ridiculously long since neither John nor I like to cut her nails because it's such an ordeal.  That dog is strong!  We've found that the only stress-free way to cut her nails is to make sure she's very sleepy and worn out first.  So ... a day or so on benedryl, plus a few long walks equals shorter nails without bloodshed and bruises.  For us, not Honey.  Honey is perfectly fine as long as she doesn't completely freak out.  Which she only does when we don't "sedate" her.