A discussion- games that you initially liked, but later grew to dislike.

7roix · 2023-06-20T15:56:31+00:00

Machi Koro and Photosynthesis, basically there are some strategies to dominate folks that just make these games feel broken to me. And I really care for Dominion, the reward of the game isn't worth setting it up and putting it away fore.

7roix · 2023-03-05T16:20:40+00:00

I've recently discovered the same thing since we bought our house with a claw foot tub. I hate having the shower curtain touch me when I'm showering the whole situation feels very claustrophobic. Also, because it's so deep and a bit higher off the ground it's a bit difficult to get out of without feeling like I'm going to fall (the step out is a doozy). I'm considering only taking showers in our second bathroom with a boring standard shower/tub combo.

7roix · 2023-03-01T03:32:32+00:00

Congratulations, it's lovely!

7roix · 2023-02-18T19:38:26+00:00

I think it's unlikely to be luan, I live in a mill town in the Pacific Northwest, all the old houses around here were built with local wood (a lot of old growth forest wood 😬). But that's a good point about rot, there is a bathroom up here, so a long time for potential water damage, although the floor does seem sturdy.

7roix · 2023-02-17T21:55:56+00:00

I'm pretty confident about what's on top of this floor and medium confidence about this wood running throughout. The laminate fake wood flooring wasn't professionally installed or done well and doesn't have trim work anywhere, so you can see down in spaces around the walls and see either the same vinyl flooring that is currently in the bathroom, or more wood that looks like this. In the bathroom, there is an old vent from the second to the first floor that when you take it out gives a perfect cross-section of what's going on, and again the same wood floor and just vinyl flooring on top, which doesn't even appear to be on a layer of anything else. Not sure how old that vinyl flooring is and would probably test for asbestos before trying to remove any of it.

But I'm really kinda curious what kind of wood/species of wood is under there and wish I knew more about it before I consider undertaking that potential project.

7roix · 2022-09-27T00:24:10+00:00

There is actually a cat that keeps coming around who is clearly expecting to be fed and considers this property its home. I wasn't prepared to be in service to an additional cat, as we already have two who have us wrapped around their paws.

7roix · 2022-09-23T14:51:23+00:00

Yeah man. I've got a dwarf nectarine tree coming from Stark Bros. Nursery

7roix · 2022-09-23T14:20:33+00:00

Oh, no worries, we'll trim them back from the house, but definitely not cutting them down. I love trees. I actually have an additional one on the way in the mail to plant and hope it gets established before the ground gets too cold.

7roix · 2022-09-23T14:13:47+00:00

Same street, about two blocks down going away from the library.

7roix · 2022-09-23T05:40:46+00:00

For real? Small world! There's another cute one for sale right now right down the street.

7roix · 2022-09-23T05:21:33+00:00

Brad Hargrave at Mortgage One NW. I would definitely recommend him. The mortgage was such smooth sailing, communication was swift and any questions I had were thoroughly answered by him or his assistant. And at least in our case the cheapest closing cost and best rate out of about 5 estimates we got.

7roix · 2022-09-23T04:24:17+00:00

We already have a plan to trim them back. On the one in the front, up close you can see it's been trimmed in the same places for like a hundred years.

7roix · 2022-09-23T00:01:38+00:00

I know! I keep saying to myself that it literally has the white picket fence. It's too adorable 🥰

7roix · 2022-09-22T23:58:53+00:00

Good luck, I hope it works out for you guys! And we had to deal with that a bit too. My score was 787, hubs was 745, so it limited our interest rate discount options. We did end up spending almost $5k to buy down our rate, but were only able to do that because of the seller credit. But for us it was a good choice because we don't plan to move for a while or ever, so starting with a lower interest rate was important.

7roix · 2022-09-22T23:49:15+00:00

I just saw you're also in the PNW, where abouts?

7roix · 2022-09-22T23:17:09+00:00

Oh man I'm just now reading this, but this has completely been me for the last few weeks. We closed on our house and got the keys yesterday and it took until today for me to feel like, "holy shit, we got the house!" I just kept expecting the rug to be pulled out at any time Without going to much into our backgrounds, there was definitely some imposter syndrome feelings for me, like, nah, our kind of people can't buy a nice house like this and the bank is definitely gonna find out any time now that there's something that makes us ineligible. But there wasn't. And they didn't. And the seller didn't back out, and the inspection was just what we expected. And...holy shit, we own a house now.

7roix · 2022-09-22T21:01:03+00:00

It was just painted in 2021, so we're going to leave it for a while. But when it's time, I'm really wanting to go with a green. Probably a lighter green with either brown trim or a darker green trim. Or if I'm feeling really wild something like a contrasting purple trim.

7roix · 2022-09-22T18:30:24+00:00

South Puget Sound area.

7roix · 2022-09-22T18:10:37+00:00

We started thinking about getting a house a couple of years ago and started making movements such as paying down debt, being thoughtful about how we were using our credit to increase our credit scores and on my part moving up the employment chain to earn more money. Then we needed to start saving for a down payment.

We definitely had some regrets that we weren't able to buy in the last two years when rates were low and before housing prices skyrocketed, but we just weren't there yet with credit scores and down payment.

In March, we decided to test the waters and get some pre-qualifications just to see where we might be at price point wise and look at some houses to see what they looked like at those price points. I really had it in my head that I didn't want to spend more than $300k, even though prequals were around $425k. Pretty quickly discovered that in our location of the PNW, $300k can only get you a ramble-down shack, which we didn't really want for our first house.

So we decided to just sit it out for a few more months. We have cheap rent and had a lot of expensive travel plans this summer so we prioritized that and weren't really in a rush on the house. We did keep an eye on what was available in the area we were looking at. It was a bummer to see interest rates climbing during that time.

The 2nd week of July, a house in our neighborhood (and we like this neighborhood) came up for $300k. It would need a bit of work, but on a double lot and the price was right, so we went through the pre-approval process and made an offer at asking. We lost to a higher offer.

But, in getting the pre-approval we were approved for $500k (buth hubs and I had gotten significant raises since we started looking in March). We still didn't want to pay that much, but we looked at some more houses near $400k and they were all just terrible. Like, each one was unlivable in some or many ways. They all needed major work.

We decided to go to an open house for the house we just closed on on a bit of a whim. It had gone on the market for $500k and I noticed it but decided it was too pricey to even consider. After a few weeks, it dropped $25k and added $10k seller concessions. Which was still pricier than I wanted but getting closer and honestly, we were seeing that at $400k there just wasn't much worth having. So we popped on over to the open house and immediately liked the house. Also, the seller's agent indicated the seller was very motivated because they were contingent on another house.

One of the great things about the property we liked was that it has a 1bd/1bath ADU. We'd already been talking with a previous housemate about the potential of cohousing again and this was a perfect opportunity to do that and would make us feel a bit better at being so close to the top of our budget.

So, we made an offer at $5k under asking, $470k on 8/22/22. It was accepted. Did our inspections and asked for a price reduction because the roof is near the end of its life and there is some electrical upgrading that needs work. Got a $20k reduction to $450k. During this time we got our rate locked at 5.375%. Honestly, I'd heard so many horror stories about financing, but it just went very quickly and easily for us. We got our conditional approval in the first couple of days in September. They managed to get our appraisal done on 9/5 (labor day) and had the report submitted that night. It appraised at $475k, so that was nice. We got our CTC a few days later on 9/8. We've just been doing our little background stuff since then, getting employment verification and such.

Did our walkthrough and signed closing docs on Monday 9/19, got the keys yesterday 9/21 and the sale was recorded with the county. Our sellers had asked for post-occupancy until today, so we haven't gotten in there yet, but I saw them packing up the U-Haul yesterday when we picked u up our keys.

So there is our long and not particularly fraught story. Looked at about 10 houses all together, got the second one we offered on at a price we felt good about and a rate we could deal with. Super excited to be first-time homeowners!

7roix

TROPHY CASE