In the home stretch

Okay, we’re ready.

The end of March is here, the emails and phone calls are winding down, the paperwork is in, our loan is approved, the repairs to the house have been made by the seller, and we are in the home stretch for closing.

We will go to Santa Fe on April 9, do a walk through of the house on April 10, and sign the closing papers on April 11. Then our dream becomes our reality ~ we will own our home in New Mexico.

John has told his boss that he is moving out of state, and that he would like to postpone his retirement for several months and work from the remote location, so that he can continue working on the project he loves at work. They were receptive to his idea.

We have not set the moving date yet. At the top of our list: call some moving companies for bids. We hope to move in the middle of May, if not just a little sooner! MAY!!! That is right around the corner!

We are working like crazy to get our house here ready to put on the market, and we are tired and trying not to bitch at each other. The major remodeling is almost done, and there are a LOT of little jobs to be done. I am cleaning every inch of this house.

We have a great second hand furniture store near us, so we wandered around it last Thursday night and bought a couple of chairs in like-new condition. A stuffed comfortable chair for relaxing and reading. And a dining room chair that we didn’t need but that we liked the almost-Southwestern design of. All purchases now are planned according to how they will look and where they will go in the new house.

There are two guys here today installing new gutters on the outside of the house … and my dogs are barking insanely….this could go on for several hours. It is very windy here … I am watching to make sure they don’t blow off their ladders.

Tonight I am going out with some of my friends from dog rescue for our weekly Whine and Dine at a local restaurant. I need the chance to sit down and unwind. We are going to a Mexican place … imagine me voting for Mexican when in a month or so I can eat New Mexican cuisine to my heart’s content.

Oh … and one more thing…. MY KANSAS JAYHAWKS ARE GOING TO THE FINAL FOUR next week! ROCK CHALK!!!

Snow in Santa Fe

Here are a few pictures that John took in early March when he was in Santa Fe for the home inspection. Not sure where the first one was taken...but that is definitely not our new house in the picture. LOL. (Remember that you can click on all pictures to enlarge them.)



This was the view of the mountains from his hotel room on Cerrillos Road:



And this was taken on a drive he took up the mountain:

Counting down the days

Oh! The past few weeks have been busy! (I haven’t had time for so many of my online habits, like visiting all of the blogs I generally frequent daily.)

First of all, buying the new house is just one email, phone call, amended agreement, proposal and counter proposal after another. There are deadlines every day for which stuff must be done. I am glad our real estate agent in Santa Fe keeps us up to date on what comes next. I just don’t remember all this paperwork and deadlines when we bought our previous houses in Texas, Michigan and Kansas.

Then there is our house here in the Midwest, which still requires so much work to be done before we are ready to put it on the market. We are aiming for mid-April. Things are starting to look really good as far as the remodeling. The kitchen is coming together and really looks awesome. What concerns me is the garage full of stuff that needs to get tossed out (<---- my solution) or sorted through.

While John is working on the remodeling, I am cleaning and cleaning and cleaning so this house is spotless when we put it up for sale. And I am still finding things to get rid of to lighten our load when we pack up to head west.

A radon test (two of them actually) turned up elevated radon gas levels in the new house and the sellers have agreed to pay for the remediation. That will occur after closing.

Next thing on the schedule: closing on the house on April 11, which will mean another trip to Santa Fe to do a walk through of the house, sign the closing papers ….. And finally finally finally GET OUR KEYS TO THE HOUSE!!!!!

I keep telling myself throughout my busy days here: “This is really happening!!!!”

(Edit: Just noticed that in the picture above, you can see the backside of me taking off my boots to enter the house..)

Snow and Checking out the House

Hubby is flying to NM tonight for the home inspection at the new house tomorrow.

I understand they are having some snow in northern NM today but he loves it so he will think it makes things even more fun.

We are really not too worried about the inspection ~ it didn’t look like much could be wrong with this house, and if the inspector finds anything, we need to know it and then negotiate with the sellers to get repairs done.

(The pics were taken the last week in February when we were in Santa Fe house-hunting.)

Y'all come on in!

Here are some pictures of our new home in Santa Fe.

We are so thrilled with our good luck in finding this perfect house..

This is going to be such a fun house to live in!

Santa Fe - Best restaurants in the world!

Every time we go to Santa Fe, we look forward to the food!

We eat at some of our favorite places, but always try to go someplace where we have never been.

Last week in Santa Fe, we ate at our old favorites: La Choza, Tortilla Flats, Harry’s Roadhouse, and Blake’s Lotaburger (twice!)

But we tried some new places and all of them were great!

Diego’s Café is in the DeVargas Mall, and we found that their New Mexican food is awesome! We will be going back there often. They had excellent green chile…yumm!

We had breakfast one day at Adelita’s, just down Cerrillos Road from our hotel. What a fun place: VERY colorful décor, and great breakfast menu. I think their tortillas are handmade on the premises, and are so good. Really nice employees there.

One night we were headed for downtown Santa Fe, but there was a blackout in the entire downtown area, so we went back down south on Cerrillos Rd. We had heard Los Potrillos was good, so we stopped there. It was jam packed crowded because of the blackout downtown, but it was kind of a festive atmosphere and everyone was having a good time; and the wait was only about 20 minutes. We had heard good things about this restaurant, but I wasn't totally crazy about it: it was authentic Mexican and not New Mexican ... and I missed the green chile. Not sure I would go back again; too many other choices!

We even tried a new Oriental restaurant, Bamboo Asian Cuisine on Cerrillos Rd., where we had a really decent dinner from the Mongolian Grill.

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An aside…..not a restaurant but a food item - on our last day in New Mexico, we were in Old Town Albuquerque, and I bought a bag of Green Chile Garlic Pistachios from The Eagle Ranch in Alamogordo. Wow - they were really good - I think after I move to New Mexico, I shall send some of those to friends and family around the country to give them a taste of New Mexico.

Introducing our new house

Here is the report on our successful house hunt last weekend.

We looked at 14 houses on Thurs. and Fri. Most were not that special and had some features we didn't like. A few were really nice. ONE really stood out.

We went back to see it again on Saturday, and decided to make an offer on it. We were told there was another interested buyer, so we got our offer in right away. We had to wait for 24 hours for an answer. Sunday was a long day, we took a ride up into the Jemez Mountains past Los Alamos, NM, and the higher we got the harder it snowed until we were in a whiteout and had to turn around and go back down the mountain because we couldn't see any of the scenery anyway. All day waiting for the cell phone to ring….

Sunday night we got a counter offer from the sellers, and then we counter-offered, and they accepted it. We were really so stunned I don't think it has sunk in yet.

The house is on a 1.73 acre lot, and is 2071 square feet. Not huge, but just the size we were looking for. The sellers had it priced to sell, and took an even lower offer so we got a very sweet deal. It had only been on the market for 8 days.

The house is situated on one of the higher lots in Eldorado, so there are incredible views - the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the north, the Jemez Mountains to the west, and the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque to the south.

The house is gorgeous. It was built 14 years ago by a builder that we are familiar with who is now building million dollar homes. The house looks brand new. It has all the features we wanted - vigas in every single room of the house, including the bathrooms and the laundry room. Most of the house is tiled with Mexican Saltillo tile. There are two fireplaces, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. All the bathrooms have colorful Mexican talavera tile, even the bowls of the sink in the bathroom. The entire house has radiant heat under the floor. Makes it really warm to walk on. There are arches and touches of decorative tile in various places. The living room is mostly all windows and has a high 15 foot ceiling. There is a spectacular view outside of every window. The kitchen is great - big enough, large pantry, new stainless steel appliances, tiled counter, a nice sized island, lots of counter space. Outside, there is an enclosed walled courtyard across the entire front of the house, and a long covered brick portal the length of the courtyard. There is also a large enclosed yard in the back, so Starman and Sugar will have a nice place to play.

The house was just stuccoed last year, so the exterior looks brand new. There are some trees and other landscaping in both of the courtyards, and the rest of the lot outside the courtyard is covered in juniper trees and cactus and there is privacy from traffic on the street.

The ONLY negative is a very small dining room, but we don't have huge crowds of people to eat at our house, so we can live with it.

This is the part that has me believing that God picked this house for us: It went on sale just a week before we arrived last Thursday, so hardly no one else had seen it and were ready to make an offer on it. The builder is a man we are familiar with and have talked to about building us a house, so we have researched his work thoroughly in the past. And the best part is that it is six doors down from the property we already own.

It seems like we were given the opportunity to own this house after being so disappointed that we could not build a house on our lot. This turns out to be a better deal, because this house is just loaded with features that we could never have afforded.

We are very relieved and excited, and I still don't think this has sunk in yet. It's been such a long process it is hard to believe we finally made it to a decision.

The home inspection will be next week, the closing on April 11, and we can move anytime after May 1.

WOO HOO!!! Like I said, this has just not sunk in yet.