We bought a house!

On November 26th, Jesse and I officially became home owners or I should say the bank is lending us a home for the next 30 years AND THEN we'll be home owners. It's kind of crazy because with Portland's real estate market I never thought I'd actually be able to own a house in this city. Hooray for recessions and bursting bubbles!

It is far from our dream house, but it's a good size, in a nice neighborhood, large yard and has good bones. I know what you're thinking. It's like when your friend is trying to set you up and she's says "He's all right looking, BUT he is sooo nice and sooo funny and just a really great guy!" Then you finally meet him and he has the acne problem of a 15 year old boy going through puberty, the odor problem of yet again a 15 year old boy going through puberty and he happens to be about 50 pounds over weight. Not really what you were thinking when your friend said he was "all right looking." That kind of what I mean when I say it has good bones. In reality, the interior needs some serious updating!

The first thing you see when you enter the living room in wallpaper - big giant floral wallpaper. Then you turn the corner and see the real gem of the house - the kitchen. They say kitchens and bathrooms sell houses. Not in this case. Both the kitchen and the bathroom are hideous. I mean really bad. Let's talk kitchen first.

Four words: carpet in the kitchen. Who does this? Who thinks to themselves "You know where I need to put some carpet? In the kitchen." Totally, because it's not like you spill lots of liquids in the kitchen or cook smelly stuff that can get embedded into the fibers of material. The kitchen is totally the most logical place for carpet. And hey, while we're at it, lets just install the brightest ugliest carpet we can find. That's pretty much the kitchen in a nutshell. That and it hasn't been remotely updated since about 1965.

The bathroom has recently been updated - in 1984. The bathtub and tiling in the bathtub are original form 1951 when the house was built. The tiling is just weird. It only goes up about half way and the rest is sheet rock, so if you take showers you are basically begging for rot and mildew. The vanity, toilet and vinyl flooring are all very 1980's - lots of mustardy brown.

Needless to say, we have some major projects ahead of us. We already started stripping the wallpaper and were lucky enough to find another layer of wallpaper under the current layer. In the dining area there is even a THIRD layer of wallpaper underneath it all. Lucky us! We tackle the bathroom this weekend. My parents are being the awesome and handy people they are and are going to help Jesse and I redo our bathroom, since we are not very handy. That's the silliest thing behind this whole home purchase. We bought a fixer upper, yet we aren't really all that handy. Should lead to many ridiculous situations in the future.

These are interior photos of the place. Pretty much everything you see will be different within two months.
This is a view of the living room from the front door. There is wood floors through out which falls into that "good bones" category.
Check out those curtains!
This room right here is what made is fall in love with the place...yeah right.
Oh yes, that's pink and mauve tile in the tub.
This is our bedroom.
The office. We plan to rip out the built ins. I know they look cool in the photo, but really they're not.
Guest bedroom which is a mirror image of our room. We'll probably end up renting this room out to help us pay our mortgage.
This is our HUGE basement. This really was one of the selling points of the house. We have big plans for this basement in the future.
Our garage - nothing fancy.

Well, this is our starting point, thanks for checking out our blog and please stay tuned for updates. It should be interesting...