I'm here...

Is anyone out there? I blame our move 100% for my lack of blogging. Seriously. I cannot believe how much of our time the move has sucked into its vortex to never be seen again. I’m so ready to be able to do something fun without the feeling of a thousand home jobs hanging over my head. Granted we did have some fun when we went to Sacramento a few weekends ago, but I’m talking about not having that feeling while at home.

This weekend my parents are coming into town, so after we moved in we decided that our goal to get the house unpacked would be this holiday weekend. So far it’s been a good/realistic plan. However HOURS of fun have been sacrificed for it, as well as HOURS I needed to read my book club book.

This past weekend we decided to be ‘responsible’ and not go down to L.A. for the last leg of the Amgen Tour of California bike race, and it’s actually a good thing we didn’t. We wound up working both days on the house and even took two more loads to our storage garage. We even had boxes to still unpack! We made some good headway, but I just want to be done with it.

The adjustment to the new digs is getting easier and easier, but there still isn’t enough counter space in the kitchen. I think that may be one of my permanent complaints.

I will do my best to get back in a blogging routine, so keep your fingers crossed that I do…or you can just leave me a motivational comment.

Home Sweet Home

A new year = change for the Grundman household. Is this welcomed change? Not really. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have decided to put our house on the market this month.

Ugh.

We’ve had the conversation many times asking ourselves why we spend almost all of our money on our mortgage payment. Is it really worth it? Personally I’d much rather have a little extra spending money to help me keep up with the latest fashion trends. However even though we talked about other options, we had yet to do anything about it. Now due to some financial changes, and the ever declining real estate market, we’ve decided to try to sell our home before we loose all of our equity.

Over the last few years, San Luis hadn’t shown any major signs of being affected by the market, but now we are starting to see a few. John has actually gotten his first two foreclosures in SLO, which definitely says something since he’s had this job for almost 2 years.

I think we might rent for a while and wait to see if home prices continue to drop…or buy if we see a killer deal on a place. I know I will be really mad if we buy a place and then prices continue to drop, ya know?

A few weeks ago we looked at a couple of properties with our Realtor. (Who has a really nice website).

One of the houses we looked at was a small, (850 sq. ft.), beach house in Pismo. It was really cute but it only had one bathroom and a one-car garage. I’m hoping if we find a place it would at least have two bathrooms, a two-car garage, and hopefully around 1100 sq. ft.

The house had some very interesting paintings inside. I understand the reasoning of course. You live by the ocean, and you want to see it right? But your property isn’t on the water. So what do you do? You paint the walls!
Since this house didn’t have a yard the owner decided that that wouldn’t affect her view.

The kitchen was actually cute, and I did like the counter tops.

We saw a couple of other normal condos, but nothing compared to this BIZARRE house that we saw in Arroyo Grande. I don’t even know how to describe it. It actually had a lot of potential if you didn’t mind redoing EVERYTHING. It was pretty big and had a real cool yard with a creek!

It had really cool original(?) fixtures:
It had a bizarre addition, which didn’t really seem like the interior…but also didn’t seem like the exterior. It also had this sweet built in BBQ! John was pumped!
The kitchen was super weird, but had this awesome ‘pass through’
I think this is on the market for $230k, but you are basically paying for the land. I am bummed that it is in such bad shape, because it would have been fun to fix up!

We also saw one condo that we really liked which is a short sale, but we are thinking of waiting to see if it becomes a foreclosure. It was kind of bizarre when we went to look at the place because it looked like someone was still in the house. I think the owner forgot we were coming and then left immediately when he realized he wasn’t supposed to be there! I was so worried that we were going to walk in on him doing who knows what! It was a total bachelor pad, which was dirty, but not too bad. I think he may have had a roommate as one of the rooms had an unmade bed, but there wasn’t a lot of possessions in the room. I also found it interesting how most of the space in the linen and kitchen cabinets weren’t full…when all of mine are maxed out!

Who knows what the future holds. I’m such a planner that this ‘unknown’ is killing me and it’s only been a month! There is a lot to do, and I don’t want to do any of it. Figures right? We actually don’t have too much to do to our house before we put it on the market, which is good. We are going to paint over the fuchsia wall in our bedroom and our fuchsia bathroom. Total bummer. I love the pink! Oh well. At least we don’t have to repaint more of the rooms.

Hopefully I won’t go insane keeping the home in ‘show’ condition. We only had to keep our condo clean for a month and I thought I was going to die! I’m sure it will take more than a month for our home to sell too.

They say buying a home is one of the most stressful life events…I better start scheduling some massages.