We May Have Found "The One"

Those of you who have been following our house-hunting journey may remember that on my first post on this subject back in April I compared finding a house to finding a life-long partner. I never imagined that our "love life" would be so messy from then on, involving a "proposal" that we let fall through, another "proposal" which was accepted and and appeared to be a successful "engagement" until in the end we were sadly forced to break it up, and a third "proposal," which was "Sealed, Signed, and Delivered" between last night and this morning. Now we're waiting to hear back from them, I'm strangely calm at the moment, but was quite anxious when I woke up.

OK, let me tell you a bit about this house, but first, a little story.

One of the days we went house-hunting, I think it was on the day we had my parents and my MIL with us. We drove them around yet another expensive townhome community so they could see the first house we almost made an offer on. Then, we drove around the neighborhood, first, by a brand-new, expensive yet very "ugly" (huge houses, tiny lots) cookie-cutter development, and then through some calm, secluded streets with older homes sitting on very large lots, full of trees. I immediately told my husband: "See, after we buy our "starter" home in this area [we were still considering a townhouse then], this is the kind of house and neighborhood I want. An older house that can be renovated to our taste, and which has lots of space for the boys to play and grow up in." I didn't give it a second thought because I was sure that houses there were way out of our price range. But little did I know that there was one of those houses (probably under contract at the time) waiting for us...

So, let me introduce to you the home we just made an offer on:It reminds me of the very first house we thought of making an offer, on the first day we went to look at houses, but it does look much better on the outside and is much bigger. This house has a few disadvantages, that's for sure, because it's a 42 year old "fixer upper." The inside has to be almost completely redone since most of the carpet is really really old and the kitchen is still the original one. The roof may have to be replaced in a few years and if you look closely on the photo above, the stucco wall on the right side of the house needs to be replace because it's bulging in three places. The lot, though, it's awesome. It's .74 acre, all level, with large trees (which do not need to be trimmed right now because they're far away from the house):
The house even has an old, but working playset in the back and there's a nice basketball hoop in the beautifully paved driveway (you can see it between the trees in the photo above). The back porch is ready to be screened (yay Tracy!). Besides, the garden and the landscaping are basically clean slates and I can certainly develop beautiful flower beds and plant flowering bushes and bulbs. I can't wait! Oh, and there are three apple trees in the back. Anyone has any advice about those? Can they be taken care of so they can produce healthy looking apples or are they useless? I'll need to make mulch/ compost, Cloudscome, so I need you to teach me how to do it, OK?

The problems of this house made us take a full week after we first saw it last Wednesday to go ahead and make an offer since we wanted to think it through very carefully. It's in the upper end of what we could afford and we won't have money to start renovating right away. BUT -- this is much much closer to my "dream house," I even think it might be it!!

Now the wait had begun. I'll keep you posted. Oh, yes, we're going to try to go ahead and close in two weeks, on the same day of the other closing, so we need them to get back to us very quickly! We'll see what happens.