A Forgotten Milestone

For some unknown reason it just occurred to me that I completely missed a rather important anniversary. Well, actually TWO anniversaries. They both flew by uncelebrated, unnoticed. My bad. And my apologies to the most expensive purchase I ever made. Happy one year anniversary, house!

It seems unbelievable that it’s been (over) a year since I signed not quite as large a mountain of paperwork as I expected and made the house mine (and then ours a few months later.) Yet, May 31st was the day and it’s come and gone. Also unbelievable is the fact that we moved out of our apartment (more than) a year ago. But June 16th was the day we rented a U-Haul and moved our stuff in the pouring rain. It took a couple more weeks to get everything over to the house, but we were out well before our June 30th cut-off.

It’s been a year of home improvements, landscaping reconfiguring, furniture and pet rearrangements, and some unexpected replacements and repairs. We started with a total makeover for a few rooms before we moved in and our most recent endeavor was replacing the garage door. There are still many other projects on our list, some major (like our siding/grading/new deck plans), some less so (like repainting those ugly stencils in the kitchen.) But it’s kind of amazing to see how much we (ok, so mostly Adam and his dad) have accomplished. I wouldn’t say it looks almost like a completely different house, but in some areas it does.

Home ownership is definitely a mixed bag. One the one hand, you can paint walls, tear things apart, replace things all you want. On the other hand, you have all kinds of maintenance you never had to worry about before. Luckily Adam takes care of most of that stuff. On the one hand, you have a rather impressive asset to add to your books. On the other hand, the economy could tank, sending your home’s value plummeting to less than what you owe on your mortgage. Yeah, that sucked. On the bright side, this means our taxes should be lower this year! There’s no question that owning a home has definitely been more expensive than renting was: The mortgage payment is 150% of what we were paying in rent. We have higher electric and water bills. We have to pay for heat where it was included in our rent previously. We had to get a landline phone. We have to pay property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, PMI. But being in our own house, being able to have kitties, being away from the crazy Indian neighbors? Priceless.

So, here’s to year #1, house. Only 29 more and you’ll be all ours. (Hrm, that’s kind of depressing.)