Hey Babes! Hope you're doin' well, you look fab! Things have been pretty crazy on this side of the computer screen. Wanna' hear?
Cool. Here we go.
This past week we finally got to take a look at the place we'll be living for, at the very least, the next three years.
We finally got to see it for ourselves. We finally got to see the mystery that was Lubbock, Texas.
Now, mind you, this wasn't just any sight seeing trip. My parents, Tyler and I hunkered into my Dad's giant ass truck and endured those six hours of flat scenery for a very big, very important purpose: find a house and nail it down.
Overall, the trip was fast and intense. It was a rollercoaster of emotion, sleep deprivation, and trying to learn a lot of grown up words and terms. Seriously, does anyone fully understand "escrow"???
Let's break it down, shall we?
THURSDAY:
Tyler and I loaded up my jeep with our luggage and sluggishly drove to my parents house at 8 am sharp. Yes, that's right. 8 o' clock in the morning. Suffice it to say...we looked rough, y'all. Once we arrived we loaded into the aforementioned giant ass truck, parents in front and Lyler and I in the back. I couldn't remember the last time I sat in the backseat of my parents car to take a road trip. I immediately fell back into being thirteen years old. I wanted candy, a pillow, an iPod mini full of Fall Out Boy and a Teen Vogue to clip collage pictures from. Instead I had a fiancé, a Redbull the size of my pit bull, a laptop with potential houses to look at upon arrival and a candy crush level I still haven't beat. The thirteen year old inside of me was pretty pissed, but the twenty three year old that I am felt nothing but excited. Well, I did still want some candy, so that sucked. But mainly the excitement thing.
After six hours of trying to get the wifi to work and feeling gross after eating Dairy Queen for the first time (what are you all freaking out about, I didn't think it was that good?) we finally rolled into town. None of us had ever been to Lubbock before so we were just going off everything we'd heard. Which was scary.
"Oh...Lubbock, huh? That's rough! Hope you like tumbleweeds!"
"Man, it's just a flat wasteland out there.."
"Does Lubbock even have a Starbucks, Kelsey?"
(FYI: I googled that myself like two months ago out of sheer paranoia. They do. Hallelujah.)
etc. etc. etc.
With everyone grumbling about how crappy "little ol' Lubbock" is...we had our eyes peeled and ready to take it in, tumbleweeds and all.
To our pleasant, happy, relieved surprise we saw that Lubbock was...well...kind of like Edmond and Oklahoma City (y'know, like near Memorial) in a blender. First things first, Lubbock is not small. It is big and kind of confusing. It's on a loop, which my Dad and Tyler seemed happy about. I don't know why. Actually, I don't even know if I'm saying that right. "On a loop"? "Near a loop"? "Has a loop"? I don't know, there's a loop involved and the guys were happy about it.
Though we weren't able to do any actual browsing anywhere, I was so happy to pass a pretty decent mall, a whole bunch of restaurants, my beloved Starbucks, all kinds of shops I'm used to having near me (Target, TJ Maxx, DSW,) and a two story Barnes and Noble! Happy, happy bookworm diva. They have a World Market, a store I've always loved to visit in Texas, which we don't even have in Oklahoma!
We drove around Texas Tech's MASSIVE OMG SO HUGE campus. We didn't do any real looking, just drove around the perimeter to try and take it in for the first time. It was gorgeous. Also, daunting. After spending five years tinkering around UCO's quaint little campus, Tech looked like a whole city within the city. I'll be excited to get back down and meet up with my friend KJ, a fellow Tech student, and have him give me the tour of our stomping grounds.
By the end of the day we were all pretty wiped. We went to our respective hotel rooms and melted into the cushy mattresses, thankful to not have the word "FORD" stamped into our butts anymore. We all knew we had a big day ahead of us. The first day of house hunting. We had about 17 houses picked out to look at and our realtor had some that weren't on the list as well. All in all, about 20 houses to see that were within our price range. So, yeah. Big day.
FRIDAY:
We were up and out at about 8:45 am, on route to the first house of the day. In classic Fisher style, we were about thirty minutes early. We sat in front of the house and waited for the realtor, pissy that he didn't read our minds and know that when we said 9:30 we OF COURSE meant 9 am. Sharp.
Our guy, Josh The Realtor, pulled up (finally geez how dare you Josh gahhh) and with that, the day had finally begun. The first house was a no go. It was the most expensive of the houses and for no good reason. It was decently sized and recently renovated but...it just wasn't right. It's weird how that works. Like...when I pictured us house hunting I pictured it being really time consuming, really hard. Though it is hard in many ways, knowing if a house is good for you is not. When you're in a house and the vibe just isn't "it"...you know. Almost instantly. I can't tell you how many times we walked into houses that day and we were just like "....nope. Next!"
We saw a handful of houses after the first "no" and we liked a few of them. We had adopted a grading system. Standard school grades, A-F. Most of the houses from about 10-12 o'clock averaged about a C. Then, tucked amongst all of the mediocrity, we found it. A house that was built in the 00's, which was something my parents really cared about, that had a lovely little breakfast nook and a huge walk in closet. Though it was in pretty crappy shape, it would take a lot of cleaning and love, it was the first A of the day and we were all high off of it. Tyler and I were googly eyed, already planning our first breakfast in said nook, when Josh The Realtor informed us that the house was a foreclosure short sell, or something confusing and realtor-y like that. Basically we would have had to jump through a bunch of hoops to hopefully, maybe be able to move in anywhere from two months to six. I have to be in Lubbock for training by the beginning of August. It just wasn't possible. Our first A of the day, the glimmer of hope in a sea of sort of okay but not that great houses....dropped away into the "nope" abyss.
We were all so down trodden after that. We lugged ourselves back into the truck and silently headed towards the next location. It was another 00's house that was a foreclosure. It had a small kitchen that was missing a cabinet, the living room carpet had been ripped out, and it was a bit on the small side. But it was nice. And if we liked it, we had to put a bid on it that day because the next day investors would be able to bid and make their offers which are apparently looked at before regular buyers. Confusing stuff. All in all, the house was probably a B, maybe a B+ because it was newer.
We had seen all the houses we could. There were a few we didn't even go in, a few Josh The Realtor ruled out because they weren't in great neighborhoods, and at the end of the day we had seen somewhere around 15 houses. Still sad about the A house, we decided to go ahead and put a bid on this house. My dad told JTR to expand our price range a little and pull some houses to see the next day, knowing we could back out of the B+ bid if we needed to.
Back in our hotel rooms, Tyler and I sat and talked. We knew the house was fine. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere, it was kind of small, and it was kind of missing carpet...but it was fine. Our hearts weren't in it but our heads told us "it's only three years". Right as we were ready to lay down and drown out our sorrow with another episode of our latest obsession "Hells Kitchen", the phone rang. My mom informed me that the realtor had pulled some promising houses in our new price range and that we would be able to go see them that day. Rejuvenated with the possibility of the perfect house still waiting for us, we paused Gordon Ramsey telling some chef to fu*k off and headed down to my parents room. They showed us a couple of the houses online. My mom pointed out one that we all thought looked really promising. At that point though...they all looked really promising.
The first house was lovely. It was an adorable two story in a really pretty neighborhood. We caught the owner on the way out and he seemed like a hip, young gay man. Obviously this thrilled me. The house was decorated well and had a lot of personality...but it still wasn't screaming "LIVE IN ME, YOU'LL LOVE IT".
As we headed to the next location, the one Mom loved online, I felt a pressure lift off of me. Even if the rest of these houses sucked, the two story one we had just left was better than the B+. We had an option and it made me feel about a million times better. Even the sting of the A house was starting to feel far away, unimportant. I had hope.
Then we pulled up to it. IT, it. The one. The outside was so sweet. It had a wooden bear that welcomed us, an elephant fountain that delighted us, and a little rock pond in the flower bed that didn't work but was still pretty precious. It had big windows that looked into the kitchen and a little bench by a tree. We walked in and...I mean...we fell in love. It was a 70's house but you would never know it from looking. Everything, and man I mean just about eveeeerything had been renovated and updated. These people took care of this house. It had three bedrooms, two baths, a sunken in living room with hardwood floors and those windows that I mentioned...the windows that almost suggested...a breakfast nook. Insert goofy sigh here.
There were many features that I really, really liked. The bedroom may have not had a walk in, but it had two closets. I could make that work! The bathrooms had ACTUAL COUNTER SPACE! The kitchen had the backsplash I almost picked for my current kitchen when we renovated it a couple of years ago. The fireplace was beautiful. The backyard was big, but not too big.
And there, in that very backyard, was a flowerbed made of bricks that were in the shape of...
the Texas Tech logo.
It was home.
Here are some pictures that don't even do it full justice.
SO CUTE.
Love this living room.
See that fireplace? YAS.
Guest Room #1
Guest bathroom.
Guest Bedroom #2
Nookalicious. Ew. I'm sorry for typing that gross word.
See that metal backsplash? Love it.
Pano, betches.
Master bedroom. That little cute cutout is the bathroom!
Deb workin' hard.
Backyard. We love the brick patio!
Not a great picture, but look at the Tech logo!
Happy dude and dudette right there.
We still had a couple more houses to see...but I just didn't see the point. I was in love. I didn't want to leave, I wanted to buy it right then and there and then make the people move out that day just so we could sleep in it that night. It was...it.
I walked through the next houses as restless as a child that has to go to a fabric store with their mom after leaving Toys R' Us. Nobody wants to look at on sale flannel when you have a new Barbie to play with, y'all dig?
Long story short, we all loved the house. THE house. No grade needed. The. House.
We put a bid on it for a few thousand less, as our realtor suggested, and signed some paperwork that basically made it official that we had made an offer.
The night was restless as we waited for a response. Not even the screaming Gordon Ramsey could quiet my nerves. We had found a house we loved, something that had begun to feel impossible just hours before. The lethargy we had felt after we put a bid on the foreclosure house felt like years ago. Nothing before finding "it" mattered.
SATURDAY:
Saturday was bananas. I awoke to a phone call from my Mom at about 9:30. She informed me that the home owners countered, went down a mere $500, and that was their final offer. She told me that Dad was on the phone with the realtor talking and told us to meet them downstairs. Tyler and I nervously got ready. I pulled my shirt on (inside out, mind you) and headed to the lobby. We got in the truck and Mom told us that Dad made the offer. He met their price but demanded they leave the kitchen appliances. I didn't know you could do that. I silently hoped we could make them give us the bear, too. Also, the elephant.
Now...we would wait yet again. We got some coffee and sat in the hotel. Nerves raw and patience strained, Tyler and I went back up to our room. I grabbed a new shirt and had managed to put it on correctly when we once again received a call. They accepted our offer. Our trip was a success. WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!
Now we needed to get home, and a day early, hurrah! Deb instructed us to get packed and meet downstairs. Once we were checked out and loaded up, we headed to the house for another looksee and some more paperwork signing.
The house was just as perfect as we had unwillingly left it the day before. After about thirty minutes of fantasizing where our furniture would go and what flowers could be planted and what paint touchups were needed...we left. Now that we had placed a contract on a house in Lubbock...we probz needed to get back to Oklahoma to sell the house we currently have.
We still have a stretch to go on this house. Painting and packing and ultra cleaning, but I think we'll have it ready to put on the market in a week or so. Well, we better. Cuz' we have to.
In fact, this whole post was written in procrastination of the fact that I need to go clean out/pack up all the clothes in our bedroom dresser.
Sorry, Deb. I'll go now. Also, you're eyeliner looks good right now! Remind me to steal it next time I come over! ;)
xoxo,
Kelsey
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