Update on renovation

I mentioned in an earlier post about the awesome door handle I got a steal of a deal on. Well I finally got photos of it after the hubby installed it. So much better than the crappy round door handle that stuck a bit,



Today we got the final coat of the tea bag color on the walls. We only have two areas that we need to fix and it will be done with that wall color.

Eventually I want to put either some metal art or plaster filigree up in the little triangle area that is its own level in the kitchen.

The tea bag color is in the kitchen, though sadly the photo makes it look more sandy than the light creamy green it actually is. Hopefully I will get better photos of the color.


Before I think I mentioned that the cabinets have been through some things. I have had to repaint a handful of them a few times. First time I painted the base, I had them outside.

They were on the two tarps but closer to the house… We of course forgot about the sprinklers. Thankfully mostly dry, we moved them onto the porch. I sanded areas that needed to be re-sprayed.

Next goof up was spraying several sets of cabinets and drawers on the tarp in the laundry room. Great space to do it in, but the tarp, while it was a good tarp, ended up with layers of paint and stuck to the cabinets, leaving weird textured chunks of paint on some of the cabinets. Thankfully the ones above, which are just primed, did not end up with any issues. The doors and such did in some areas though. The ones that did have issues got re-sprayed with the final coat after sanding.


So this time I decided to lay down different tarps in the back bedroom (future crafting room) and living room. I needed ample space to get the base coat on as many as possible. I am currently behind schedule by a little bit but thankfully not as far behind as I would have been if not for the spray gun.

I like this photo because it shows the creamy white with hints of yellow that the gilded endive paint has. While I am still nervous about the end result, I am excited to see it as well. This is the first time I have painted cabinets. I am crazy doing this all at once before testing it on one or some other wooden piece of cabinetry. I have not always been known to test something before jumping into it though. 98% of the time it works out great, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I managed to get 15 + pieces sprayed with the gilded endive. Still have all the drawers and a few other shelves/doors to paint. The lower section is not on a deadline like the upper section is. Those have to get put back up shortly, and I am trying very quickly to get them finished so they can be put back up on the wall.

I am excited to get to the actual glazing. I feel this is where my artist skills will come in handy. My family is loving the progress with everything so far. Walls are coming along nicely. Cabinets will become a French country dream.

Happy that today was a semi short day. Basically only needed to paint the kitchen and one other wall, then get as many cabinets sprayed as I could with the surface area I had available. I wish I could spray them all in one go but I just can’t due to needing to rotate them out for space reasons. They will all get painted. I just wish the color coat dried as fast as the primer does haha.  My brother brought his friend and having three people there to tackle the projects of the day made it go by much faster. I think we were only there about 4 or so hours? So not too shabby compared to the 9+ hour days we have been spending there as of late.
I actually get to relax and eat my mint chocolate chip ice cream ^_^

Day five of the renovation

Sadly this post will not have any photos due to leaving my phone at the new house accidentally.

So the boys got to the house early and got to the spray texture and second coating of paint. I showed up a few hours with food.

The first thought upon waking was one of “Oh shit…” We left the cabinets out back, no worries right? Well being that it is a new house we did not think to check and make sure the sprinkler system was off… For some reason when I woke this morning that was the first worry I had.
I called the boys and they confirmed they did in fact run but they were mostly ok and drying out. Basically upon inspection I just need to sand and repaint a few cabinets in a couple of spots. Honestly, if that is all that happens, I am fine. It is an easy fix and thankfully did not happen after the glaze will be put on.
Because of this little snag though, it did mean that the glaze is put on hold for today. I instead went to priming the lower cabinet drawers. I  got all but some of the doors done and the pantry. I will need to tape off and spray the actual unit the doors go into and the counter sits on after we finish painting the kitchen. We will let the paint dry and then tape it all up.

I used the sprayer to put the base primer on the drawers this time and boy does it really make things easier. The mask on the other hand feels impossible to breathe through :/
I would spray about 4 of them in the laundry room with a drop cloth underneath. They would take about 20 minutes to dry to the touch, then I would move the mostly dried ones onto the tarp in the bedroom, so I could lay out the next set to be primed.
I think I primed like 8 drawers? I honestly did not count so I am not sure.

The walls are looking so much better now with even just the first coat of the tea bag (light greenish) on the front wall. The previous color was a white with pink undertones. Yes, our favorite color is green if you did not realize this by now. We have always known we would want green walls.

All the utilities will be turned off tomorrow so we will have to get them turned on shortly after waking.

We keep finding things in the house that make us go “What the fuck were these people thinking doing it this way?!” but thankfully either it is easily fixed, or is mostly cosmetic.
Like for instance, painting over a patched up wall that every other area has spray texture on… So you have this big palm sized flat surface on a textured wall. Yea we fixed that. I would say they just didn’t care, but really I just don’t think they knew what they were doing. Funny thing is we barely know what we are doing and can do it a million times better. I guess some people have better beginners luck than others? Or maybe they did not bother to ask anyone at the store how to do it and what is needed.

One thing I have noticed when painting the walls is with the first coat I am freaking out that I made the wrong choice on wall color. With the first green, it looked like horrible green salmon camo when it was drying. Hard for anyone not to freak out a little. The second coat really made all the difference. Not to mention it is completely worth it for the $6 or whatever extra dollars for the paint and primer mix. I would not use anything else for this job. I chose satin for the paint type. Satin, as described to me is between a semi gloss and a matte. Matte being hardest to clean.

I am sure the tea bag will look exponentially better once the second coat is on there. I will say it is a little annoying that whoever painted the house did not know how to edge or use painters tape… I may have to go over some of the crown molding with white to fix some areas they got globs on.

We did not get into painting the kitchen today but it will happen tomorrow.  Still a lot that needs to be done but we are making good progress.

Day four of renovation

Got a lot done today. My brother and his friend sanded down the patched walls in the kitchen. We ended up saving time not having to remove the second layer of wall paper. The reason being is we learned the second layer of “wallpaper” was actually drywall… *blinks* I have never seen drywall that looks like wallpaper, but I guess that is the 80s for you? It kinda makes my brain hurt so moving on.

So I tested one side of a cabinet with the actual endive base color with the roller. It was an epic fail. You could seriously see the roll marks. Why make cabinet rollers if they don’t actually do a good job? So we decided to splurge and buy a paint sprayer. It was an unexpected cost, but after using it for the first time, I think it is my new favorite toy. Of course I now look like a snow queen, but my cabinets look amazing with the even color.
We ended up getting $30 off the model as well since they were out of the $100 models, he knocked $30 off the next model up for us. So even with the $18 2 year warranty we spent less. I was grateful for the price cut. Every little bit counts. Completely worth the money though I will say that. I will NEVER do cabinets without a sprayer again. I saved so much time. I use a little more paint than I would with a roller, but I can deal with having to buy another gallon of paint for a good finish.

I got over half the upper cabinets coated with the endive on both sides, the other 1/4 are either half coated or ready to get their coating. I am saving so much time using this sprayer not to mention I find it a lot of fun. I will most likely also use it to prime the cabinets in the lower part of the kitchen as well. Of course AFTER everything is super taped and covered up.

One thing we did not get to is the spray texture for the kitchen. The house was too warm to use it. It was 86 in the house and the can said it needed to be at 72 at most to not “run” So the boys will get to that tomorrow bright and early.

We got the first layer of green on the one wall. We will add a second coat tomorrow, then paint the other wall green across from it as well.
We changed the color for the kitchen and the opposite walls in the living room.. I looked at colors to try and match the plaster color and the color that matched looked horrid… So, we had a big laugh all day making jokes about what happened to be the new name of the paint color that did work… The name was tea bag. Yea, they ran with the fact that we are tea bagging the house >.> It honestly is a great color though and compliments all the other colors in the house nicely.

Photo time!


Our awesome paint color! We are using this on two walls of the living room.
Also my husband helping me tape up the room before painting. He kept that on his fact pretty much all day, It was awesome.


Nice wall color (first coat. Will look better later) Ugly wall color… I hate that salmon whatever color it is. We refused to live with it.


It will look so much more amazing when that ugly salmon color is not right next to the green. We actually finished all the way down the little hall and to the corner of the room near the wood in the upper right corner. (Wood was there because there used to be a fireplace there and I think the wood had stone over it at some point.)


Cabinet came out and bit between my toe. Luckily my hubby was prepared and patched me up as best he could. Of course this meant I was benched for about 40 mins. I hate sitting still… It was hard. So I sat and looked at photos on pinterest. Evil time sucking thing it is. I love pinterest.



Brother and hubby taping up the kitchen in prep for the spray texture.




I am now the snow queen. I am an artist and I never manage to get this much paint on me. I am actually pretty clean for an artist. I find this to be odd. I had so much fun with that paint sprayer. On the plus side, I will be less sore due to not rolling paint on cabinets for hours a day… Oh, this is all over my feet and legs as well lol.

I had to leave some of the cabinets outside to dry as the last coat got put on not long before we left. I don’t like that we left them out there but we did not have much of a choice.

I will take photos of the tea bag color tomorrow and the cabinets before the glazing begins! Curse of being an artist, a solid color is never good enough. Same goes for my hair color… I can never do with just one color in my hair. I always have to have at least two colors in my hair or I feel it is boring. My hubby was worried about having “feature” walls, as he has never had them before, but he is actually loving the colors and creative style it brings to our home. I can’t wait to spend our first night there.

Tomorrows goals:
Spray texture the kitchen to match the rest of the house. Spray texture dries in about 5 mins thankfully.

Paint the other wall green and add another coat to the one that is already green.

Teabag the kitchen and the wall in the living room after washing the walls.  Yes I had to say it that way haha.

Finish spraying the cabinets and start glazing the doors if able. Upper cabinets need to be finished before the lower ones do because they need to be put back up on the wall as soon as possible.

Once kitchen wall is dry then I can get to the lower portion of the kitchen. That might not be tomorrow though with the drying time being like 4 hours.

And now to try and get the paint off of, well… Pretty much most of me.

Kitchen cabinet photos

 It is hard to see the actual colors in the photo, but this is sort of my color palette. The green I have gotten 2 gallons of the paint primer mix. The green will go on two of the living room walls. The middle color was the plaster color I cannot use and will need to try and tone match it with another paint color. The brown is the eventual color of the trim.


The above have a double coat of primer.
In the photo below the bottom cabinet door has a double coat, the top one has a single.

The single coat still shows a lot of the grain. I did not think even with a paint and primer mix that it would not show through that. You can see how big of a difference that second coat makes below.


I painted the insides as well. Thought it would look weird if I did not.
The primer I used allowed me to not have to sand down the cabinets. I thought I would have to but the guy at Lowes assured me it would be fine if I primed them painted over it. The pour spout lid really helps keep the mess to a minimum, though it will spatter a bit when you close it.

Below shows the what the cabinets looked like before I got started on them.

Day three of renovation

Very exhausted after about 9 hours of work at the new house. I got all but one of the hanging cabinets in the kitchen double primed that weren’t already. My brothers friend joined us about an hour into working. My brother and his friend helped patch up the kitchen and scrub down cabinets yet to be primed. My hubby helped in the kitchen and installed the new door handle.

The door handle was an awesome used store find.  The door handle is Baldwin brand, that after some research, I found out costs around $250 online… I don't want to know how much the in store sticker would have been. I was able to snag this beautiful door handle for $15 at the used store. I tried to snap a photo of it but my phone had died by the time my hands were only mostly covered in dried paint.

The cabinets will get a off white color put on tomorrow called “Gilded Endive” Which has more yellowy undertones that match the antique glaze best.

Tomorrow we will also be sanding patched up wall before we spray on the texture.
I need to actually get the kitchen color… I found the perfect color for the kitchen only to find out it is not a color that goes over a plaster… It was the color of a plaster itself. I had planned on using the color to colorwash the walls in the kitchen, but now I am reconsidering it with the amount of work I already have with the cabinets. I think I might stick to a solid color, then if I have time, I may stencil or paint on a back splash in the kitchen. I guess it depends on how sore my arms are when the time comes in addition to how much time I have.

We were going to be painting the ceiling, but after considering the ceiling needs repair, we decided to put that on hold as we will most likely need to either repair or replace most if not all of it. No need to spend over a hundred dollars on paint when it may only be up there for so long. The color ideas for the ceiling still stand, just to be used at a later point.

I hope to get to getting the green paint on the walls since there will need to be two coats of it on two of the living room walls.

I know I have a lot of time left, but with as much that still needs to be done I am feeling very overwhelmed. I keep telling myself that we have done so much just in the past 2 and a half days, but all I see is this mountain of things that are on a deadline.
Gotta finish up everything at the new house. Gotta come back and finish packing up the old house and clean a little. There are not enough hours in the day for my liking.
I have a bit of a problem with trying to power house through tasks until I am falling over tired. I am trying really hard not to do that. In a perfect world I could go into overdrive and work through the night without any repercussions. Yea, like I said, in a perfect world. I am just nervous when I am sure I shouldn’t be. This is the first time we have done anything this major and it scares me to think I could fuck up the cabinets horribly.
The walls will be fine. We have done wall patch and fixes, as well as painting. I have confidence those will turn out fine. I just feel like I need to be at both houses at once and I can’t.
I am still freaking out over the end result of the cabinets and what it will be. My husband on the other hand is quite excited and tells me how awesome they are coming along even though there is only primer on them. He knows how nervous I am and is trying to give me motivation to be excited as I originally was.

I guess I am just trying to tell myself in my head that even if I royally screw up the technique, I can always just paint over it, and keep them a solid color. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is like every other painting type thing I have done, and the more stressed and nervous I get about it, the more amazing it turns out. At least that is how it has been in the past with actual paintings.

On a side note, I am glad I did not repaint my toe nails recently, or I might be upset about the unintentional paint splatters on them. I swear I even managed to roll the paint up the crotch of my pants, which was pretty funny. Paint is probably going to take a little while to come off my skin as it is. Glad I picked the clothes I did for this job.

Anyways, headed to bed. I will try and post progress photos tomorrow if my phone does not die on me. I need to really remember to plug it in while I am there and not just leave it laying around.

Day two of renovation

I am so very nervous. We decided to take the leap and paint the kitchen cabinets. O_O
While I am quite excited for it, I am also nervous as hell that I will monumentally screw them up. The thing that my husband finds so amusing about this is I actually am an artist. I paint. I love to paint all the time… I just have never taken on a project like this before.
Not to mention the biggest home renovation we have done is patch, texture and paint a wall. Fix some crown molding,.. So nothing too big

The decision on whether to really completely change the cabinet look was tossed around quite a bit, but really was finalized when we found out we had to remove the cabinets in order to get rid of the horrid wallpaper. Mind you, this wall paper was damn near falling off the walls on its own.
They had put the cabinets up after the wall paper, and with the wooden pieces behind the cabinets, there was no way it would not be noticeable if we left it behind there. So cabinets are all pretty much removed but one right now.

I would like to mention that I do actually like the cabinets as they are. I like the look of natural wood. I just think it is so amazing we can actually change things in our home that we should take advantage of it and go a little outside our comfort zones to make it our own. I like wood floors and wood cabinets, though painting the cabinets will open up so many more options when we go to change flooring in the years to come. We do actually plan on putting in wood or pergo flooring.

Ok, back to the current.

Washed half of the hanging cabinets in addition to the walls that will soon be painted. I got one of the larger ones double primed. I was not happy with a single coat of primer. I also got 75% of another one single coat primed so far. I will have to get photos of the painting process tomorrow.

I am using this blogs post for inspiration for the cabinets. http://porchswingsnhoneysuckle.blogspot.com/2013/02/paint-and-glaze-cabinet-tutorial.html

Mine will be the same basic idea, though I am not using a stark white for the base. Since my glaze is antique, and not the same tone as hers, I thought blending might be easier if there was already a slight bit of color to the base.

I am lucky enough to have great friends who have let me borrow some tools and a ladder. My sister, brother, and my sisters boyfriend are being awesome with helping tear down and clean things. I can’t imagine how we could even begin to do all of this without  the extra help. There is absolutely no way we could have done anything to the kitchen without them.

We decided we cannot take down the second layer of wallpaper with the way it was put up without having to re-drywall the whole kitchen. Since it is already sealed, we decided we would patch it, spray texture as planned, and then paint over it instead. Not the ideal situation but pretty much the only option at this point.

For the cabinets I recommend using a faster method than a brush and roller. I am sure a sprayer would have been a million times faster. I am tempted to look into the prices of one for the final color coat before the glaze.

I still need to get the paint for the kitchen and part of the living room. That will be for another day.

For now here are some photos of what we have done so far, minus the cabinet painting progress.


My handsome man tackling that wallpaper like a boss. Ok, so in reality anyone who breathed on it could probably remove it, but that is not the point.


Ugly wallpaper number 3.. There was a total of 3 different wall paper styles. Don’t ask me what they were thinking.


All removed except for the cabinets and what is behind them.


Look at that mess! Would you believe me if I told you we swept it up into a snow shovel because we could not find the dust pan? Yea, we can be a little crazy.

 
My sister and her boyfriend are in the above photos. I would say they are helping, but I don’t know if this counts as my sister helping haha. She was actually a big help but I had to say that anyways.


As you can see the separation between the wall and the cabinets shows the ugly wallpaper.

We started a bit later today than we had hoped to. We normally work late nights so our sleep schedules are much different. We wanted to start around 3pm but we really only picked a few things out and actually got started much later than that :/ Yea… We are new to this. It is a learning curve. We will get it down though and it will be amazing sauce when finished!

It has been a long day. Did not get done until about 11pm. I am sore and tired but it is so worth it. Actually feeling like I am getting more things done in the day than the day before. I am still nervous but really excited to see how it all comes out. To go from not decorating our rentals aside from the mantle really… to decorating and painting… It is a huge change and a much needed one at that.

Buying the right house

Finding the house:
Finding the house was not easy but then at the same time ended up being really easy. I know, I just contradicted myself. I will explain.
My husband have been looking for a house on and off for the past several years. We have gone through different jobs between all the looking. Almost ended up in a house we could certainly not afford due to people willing to push funding through despite lack of funds… Thankfully the whole deal turned rotten and we got to continue on the path of finding a home.
After the previous experience turning sour, we held off on looking for a few years at least. The idea of buying a home was quite nice to us again at another point, so we spoke with a trusted mortgage lender who gave us a much different pre-approval amount than the first one had. This guy was more realistic and explained what we needed to do to build our credit, and what kind of income we needed to approve for a better price range.
We had some work ahead of us at that point. I needed a better paying job. Some small debts needed to be paid off completely. Other things always pop up to eliminate savings one finds. So finally we got approved a few months ago for a lower end price range, yet still quite doable.
We started the search yet again for a home that would meet all our internal home requirements, as well as my need for external yard space. We looked a lot of homes we thought were in our price range, but when we ran the numbers, if anything were to ever come up, it would turn into an emergency cash finding situation. We did not want to be putting out exactly what we both made a month, especially if either of us had to take time off, or take a pay cut. It seemed all the homes were starting in the price range we approved for at the highest end. Once again, our house hunting was put on hold.
Not even two weeks later, our awesome real estate agent posted up some new listings that were between $20k and $55k lower than our original home search. We were quite excited at the change of listings and decided to look at some of the possibilities. We looked at 4 or 5 homes that next day after confirming which ones we wanted to see from the list.
Walking into the home we now own, we loved it immediately. After seeing homes with less square footage, less land, and all the wrong layout, this was a serious breath of fresh air. It had pretty much everything we needed as well as some things we just wanted. It seemed every other home there was something major lacking in it to put a kink in it, and make it a deal breaker. Now, that is not to say this home does not need some work. Being that the home was built in the 80s, it does need some updating, but other than that it is perfect.
We decided not long after seeing the home, heck, we barely even finished looking at the home before I could contain my desire to ask my husband if he wanted to put an offer on it as much as I did. Thankfully we both absolutely loved it, and for the price, we knew it would not come across anything better in this market.
We put an offer on the house the next day. Lots of paper work, switching lenders yet again, and still staying on the projected close date somehow, we closed on our house this month. I am really grateful for all the people we have had helping us through this process.
One thing that I found to be quite different from the usual, was that the 2 hours and several inch stacks of paperwork you normally sign for the final closing, actually was only about 40 minutes with a decent stack. They must have come up with a more efficient method for cutting down the pains of signing your life away. I personally think of it is signing your new beginning… but that is just me.
I have no problems signing paperwork for the house, even with the cost of the house. The way I see it is you are going to be paying hundreds of dollars on rent every month.. Why not pay it towards a mortgage? It is all the same amount of money (sometimes) so why not invest it in a home you own, rather than a living situation that takes away your creative decorating abilities, as well as could go sour. As you might guess, both have happened for us. We are quite happy to now have control over our living situation more now than we did renting.
When someone becomes upside down on their mortgage and has to sell, no matter how nice they are as landlords, you have to move… and moving is not fun on the drop of a dime. That is not to say renting cannot be awesome. Both renting and owning has its up and down sides.
So, a little about the house itself.
Our new house sits on .18 of an acre, which is smaller than I had originally wanted, but it works out just fine with the way the yard is laid out.
It is just over 1600sf. Our current place is about 1100, maybe just over, so it will be great to have the much needed space.
3 bedroom, 2 bath. Master bath is a little small, but it will work for our needs, and there is room to expand if we ever wanted to renovate it.
There is office space for my husband, two crafting/lab spaces for me… one is not currently finished, the other will turn into a guest room most likely once the bigger shop in the back is finished for my personal uses. The detached shop was a huge bonus for me for so many reasons. It was honestly more than I ever expected to find.
The kitchen is much larger, though ripping out the wallpaper seems like it might be a frightening task here soon.. I think someone used wood glue on parts of it. Why someone would do that I do not want to know.
It is a single story house. We originally wanted multi story, but I am not complaining. The shop I will use for my creative projects in the back has a loft area anyways.
One downside is that the property just has a gravel driveway. No car port, no garage… So since we do not wish to shovel show off our cars every day in the winter, we plan to build a car port off of the house to protect from the elements. Considering every other house around here that was $55k more even did not have any of those either, it was an inevitability we would need to build one. I am just happy we have the space to do it, though it will be a new thing for us to learn to build.
Another small downside is no more gas stove to cook on unless we want to find out how much it will cost to run a gas line to the house. I am not thrilled with switching back to electric, but it is something we can look at changing in the future.
The house is in the city we want. It is in the area of the city we wanted. It is a little bit out of the way, but right next to a major high speed road, so really it does not take much longer to get places than it did at the place we were renting. The commute was a concern with my husband until we had to stay at a hotel not far from the new place for a week, thus providing us with an idea on the new commute times. He seemed relieved to find it was not as bad as he expected.
Every time I go to the house I notice things that show even more that this house was meant to be ours. We wanted a cherry tree in the yard, or two.. And finding out one of the previously unknown trees in the yard is in fact a cherry was one. The neighbor has a currant or gooseberry bush that is partially hanging into the yard was another. Currant bushes symbolize protection, and I plan to plant more of those as well. Seeing that one just told me that our house was already being protected, even if not fully on our land. The fact that the exterior of the house and shop were painted green, both of our favorite color, also was another sign. Not to mention wanting a big mature tree, and having at least 4… not to mention one being a big maple, which works as a wonderful shade tree. Shade trees help cut down heating and cooling costs, for those who do not know why they are important to have.
All in all the process brought feelings of excitement, nervousness, anxiety, fear, frustration, surprise, and happiness. It was a roller coaster, but one well worth it. Yes, we may have not bought a house as soon as we wanted to, but our needs changed, our budget changed, really a lot changed. I am also one to feel if one door closes, it is so another can open. Every time we hit a road block on this journey, it was so something even more amazing could happen. When one house did not pan out, the next was even better.. When one lender did not work out quite as expected, the next one had better rates… So really the bad moments were not so bad, just a bit nerve wrecking until the good news came back. I feel there has to be balance in everything. This process literally had the most equal balance of good and bad moments I have yet to see in a single event. I don't think it could have worked out any other way honestly.


My tips for finding the right house:
Make up a list of MUST HAVES as well as WANTS but do not NEED.  Knowing where you can compromise on is a really big deal. Understanding that you will most likely not get everything on your list is also important.
Another good thing to put down is if you do not have one item, what other item would you need to make that ok. For a good example, we needed 3 bedrooms, but both my husband and I needed work spaces.. So we said we needed 3-4 bedrooms, but could do fine with 3 if there was another office, bonus room, or dining area that we could convert into usable office/crafting space. We ended up having more space than expected, and his office is actually now in what was once a separate dining room.
Thinking outside of the box on space really helps.

Do you want something move in ready or are you ok with renovations? Do you have the required skills to do major renovations? For us, we are ok with cosmetic renovations, but we did not want a big house that needed walls ripped out, or bathrooms to be completely gutted before moving in. Yes, we may very well rip out the master bath eventually, but right now it is ok, and not an immediate need. The shop is a big job, but we will get help with that, as well as it is not something we have to finish before moving into the house. Finding the line for what you will or won’t do, not to mention the costs included in doing that, is something you really need to discuss before getting a house.

Get pre-approved for a loan. Know where you stand budget wise. Run the numbers over and over. Make sure that new mortgage you approve for supports your style of living. If you eat out a lot, or go clothes shopping all the time, you may not want a large mortgage. Know where you can save and what you have available to spend.
It is also not a bad idea to shop around for lenders.

Check your credit. We used Credit Karma, which is free, to get an idea on our scores before going in. The better your credit, the better the rates. If your credit is not the best, pay off debts. Make sure the debt to income ratio is low. Having open credit cards with no balance on them helps. Pay bills on time, etc.. Keep in mind it can take 1-3 months for a paid off card to reflect good on your credit. That being said, if you are really young and have no credit, that does not mean your credit is perfect, it means you have no proof you are dependable to pay bills on time… So you will need to build up credit before they will even look at approving you. Get a credit card, buy something, pay it off immediately, etc. It is never a bad idea to get advise on how to build your credit up.

Make sure you have been in your line of work for at least a year.

Make sure your realtor is looking in your best interest and not the sellers. Do not work with a realtor who is also representing the seller. It is really hard for someone to work neutrally between both parties. We encountered this with the first home we found. We did not have a realtor and were just working directly with their realtor and the sellers themselves. I highly recommend not doing this. The deal fell through and there was no one there to make sure the deal was fair on our end, looking out for our interest, as first time home buyers.

Don’t buy the first home you look at. It is really easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of looking at homes. Even if you come back to that first home and end up buying it, still look at others for comparison on what you can get. No one wants to regret buying the home they did. By looking at other homes you give yourself options.

Think about how much yard space or land you want. Do you want a tiny plot of land for low maintenance? What would you use the land for? Do you plan to mow a lawn or pay someone else to do it for you? For me, land could have been, and was a deal breaker for quite a few homes we looked at. I could have loved the house, but would have been heartbroken if I did not have at least a little space to grow something.
Another thing to think about when it comes to land is do you care if it is a shared space, fenced, or not fenced, or how much privacy do you want? Keep in mind that fencing does cost quite a bit. Do you have the budget to fence your yard? I was not ok with shared spaces. I like my privacy. While the new place has a fence, it is maybe 4 feet and chain link, so not much privacy. Rather than spend thousands on fencing, I am planting trees and bushes instead. Again thinking outside the box.

Does your state offer tax credits for your home? Sometimes there are tax credits related to home buying, home improvement, etc.. It is always good to ask about these and see if you can save some money by utilizing these. We have not spoken with our tax professional yet. We go through the same person each year since it is smart to have someone who helps when you are not single any longer. She helped us know what we should put on our W4s once married to insure we would not owe any money back. Things like that can really help make your tax season awesome. Our lender emails us helpful information about tax breaks and credits that we should ask our tax professional about. As always, save receipts, and any approved donation receipts.
  Since we are moving there is a lot to go through in the garage being that we won’t have one to store things in. Garage sale and donations will most likely be our course of action there. I found out not every used store donation can be counted towards your taxes, it is only certain ones… I thought it was interesting to find that out.

Find moving boxes at local stores rather than pay for them. You would be surprised how much the boxes alone would cost for the move when each box is $1-3… Our landlord had a restoration crew come in and rip out all the floors due to a bathroom leak. They packed up most of our stuff but did not unpack it. We decided to keep the items in the boxes for the next month in prep for the move. We saved boxes from our initial move here, and then plan to get some from the grocery store for the last few.

Make checklists and question lists for everything as you think of it. Trust me when I say things will easily be forgotten. It is best to keep thoughts as organized as possible.

Find out if your house is in a flood zone.

Decide if you want to be in an HOA or not. We did not want to be in an HOA, though some people do because it can help with the resale value of the home. HOA does come with fees though, so bare that in mind when deciding upon it.

Are there any extra perks for the loan or land if you live in one city vs another. For us, moving to the city we did had the bonus perk of irrigation, so we do not have to pay for the outside water. Being that I want a large garden, this was a big bonus for me not having to pay for the outside water expenses. This is not available in the other city we were looking in. Some areas also are limited on whether they offer 0 down or down payment assistance. There is a city near us that offered 0 down because they were trying to get more people to move to the area. Talk to your lender about what is available in the areas close to the one you want to be in. It might change your mind.

Commute. How far are you willing to travel for work? Does that distance change if you are near a high speed or state highway? Sometimes you can live farther out but commute time will be the same depending on the roads, speed limits, and traffic flow. We lucked out being near a high speed road. It allowed us to be farther out but not have a terrible commute time.

Gas or electric. Does it matter to you if the house has gas or electric heat  and oven? It mattered for me as I love to cook, sadly our home did not come with gas, though should easily enough be able  to get a gas line ran to the house. Something to think about when buying a home.

What internet and tv options are available in that area? Will there be a fee if you have to switch providers when you move?

How much time to do you have to search, close, pack, move etc?

I am sure I could think of a ton more things to ask yourself but this should suffice for examples for now.