Finding Our House

The "plan" when we moved to Maryland was to rent for a year and then buy. Well, 5 years and a whole lot of praying/fasting and researching we have bought a home. Dan became a pro, and an addict, to the site Redfin. He searched Redfin daily. We searched Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. We met with more relators than I can count. We designed and paid for plans to build in Middletown, MD but weren't completely sold on the lots we could afford.

Early April we found this home. As we walked through it, and then into the backyard, I told Dan with a smile on my face, "I could do this". The home is on a cul-de-sac, 1.25 acres and 20 years old. It was advertised as a 4 bedroom and 3 and a half bath. It has 3 bedrooms upstairs, a big basement and full-bathroom downstairs. The "bedroom" the realtor claimed is really a dark "dungeon" as we like to call it,  without a window. The selling factor was the ginormous flat and private backyard. It had a play set,  netted trampoline and above ground pool with plenty of space to run and play.

After looking at the home the first time we decided we needed to have a usable 4th bedroom right now. So, Dan contacted a contractor to meet us at the home again so we could get an estimate on how much work and cost it would be to rearrange the downstairs and get a "legal" 4th bedroom.  After looking at the home 3 times we decided to put an offer in. As we were doing this we learned that there was already an offer in, but as fortune would have it she declined that offer and countered ours. When the money was right we signed an "as is" contract. The owner had just put on a new roof, new A/C Heating unit, and had just had the septic tank pumped, so we figured we could handle the little things and would go for it.

We started with all the inspections. Dan accompanied the home inspector throughout the house. He felt that is was a well constructed home and didn't find anything major to fix. Well, as Dan was walking the back yard he noticed a spongy-wet area of the grass, that was abnormally wet. It was right above tthe septic tank. Dan did some research and decided to have the septic inspected. It failed. The home owner didn't trust the test and blamed it on rain. She had her septic guy come out to walk the yard and he said it was fine. So, the owner offered to give us $4000 towards replacing it. Problem was that kind of problems costs about 5 times that amount.  We knew we would want to paint, update the house with white trim and other little projects but definitely couldn't afford to spend our savings towards a new septic system. The Lord was looking out for us and provided a way...

Bishop Richardson was currently building his new home in Urbana. He told Dan about a new Frederick County law that new construction or failed septic systems had to have the new BAT system put in. Frederick County had been given grant money for 14 new BAT systems. Dan looked into it and long story short (The nights were very long for Dan as he researched and learn all there is to know about a septic system, nothing was short about the is whole process.) I went up with the two noisy girls and got a 99.9% guarantee that we would qualify and get this grant from the director of the program. We couldn't be 100% sure until they had our deed in their office.  So we started on the paperwork immediately.

All this negotiating and research with the septic tank took 3 weeks. We finalized our "no refund of deposit" contract a week before we closed. Crazy! We closed May the 14th.

The day we closed we did a final walk through in the morning. After our relator left I ran for the trampoline! Dan took this picture from the back deck, this is only half of the yard. So fun!

We didn't have to be out of our Townhome until the end of May so, silly us thought we'd have a good 3 weeks to gradually, easily, move. HA! Now for the real work to start.