Just when you think you have something awesome

So most of the day Thursday, all I could do was think about the house that sat on the 10.5 acres.  Jason was so excited about it and it made me excited in return.   

I knew that I would get over the stigma of living in a mobile home and besides, I was probably the one putting that stigma on it for the most part anyways.

The house just seemed like such a good deal and it was huge.   Almost 2000 square feet and since that’s the kind of space we currently live in, there wouldn’t be a need to bother with downsizing much or at all.  

I don’t know if a lot of you are aware, but I have a slight addiction to furniture.  In fact, it’s borderline hoarding of the furniture.

image via Pinterest

Grams calls one day and says “my sister-in-law just moved and has a sleeper sofa, do you want it?” 

Me: YES!  We only have one guest bed right now and I think sleeper sofas are more comfortable than futons, so we’ll take it.

A different day

My aunt calls me: “We’re going to get rid of either our full couch or love seat, would you like either?”

Me: YES!  We may need a love seat soon and yours is at the perfect level of comfy due to wearing it in.  

A different day again

Jason’s dad: We have some dent and scratch dressers from the factory, do you want them?

Me: YES!  We need matching dressers for our bedroom.

Jason: We already have a dresser, where will these 2 go?

Me: In the guest bedroom.  I’ll find space.

Sooo…………as you can see, over the last 16+ months that Jason and I have lived together, I have collected furniture and it’s taking over my house and driving Jason crazy.  But I figured that if someday we moved into a big house, we would need to furnish it.  So why go buy a house and then have to buy furniture on top of that just to make the house look livable?  There was no need to worry if I had an abundance of mis-matched furniture, right? Right!

Well…with this house and it’s 2000+ square feet, I would actually have space to put all that furniture.  Yay!!

Mind you, at this point, I had not actually driven by the house.  My future hubs was able to find a few minutes in his ‘ol so busy day to take a peak at it.  What did he do?  Call me at work and exclaim how much I would totally love it!  

So that Thursday evening, I talked him into letting me drive down the super long, seemingly private driveway and take a gander at this potential future home of ours. 

 As a side note: when I asked said future hubby of mine if we could go look at it, I got an eye roll.  Clearly if he has seen it, that means that I have seen it through his mind and must already know what it looks like and why in the world would I want to see it again? (I got this same eye-roll when I asked to ride by the original foreclosure with the bad roof)

The drive-by was fun.  The house was cute and secluded and Bambi may or may not be stomping around on the grounds, so that was a plus I guess.

That Friday, at work, I was already wasting time looking up various ways to decorate the home so that it didn’t look like a manufactured house from the inside.  I think the outside was fine.  But why, oh why are there plastic strips on the walls inside the house?  Obvious from the pictures posted online.

I found several blogs about decorating a manufactured home like a regular house.  Besides, the blogs advised, it is your HOME, so you should treat it as such. 

I was also showing pictures of it to some of my coworkers.  One of the supervisors told me that he lives in a manufactured home and that you can simply take down the strips and tape/mud/sand like a regular drywall joint (I say that like I’ve done it before huh? Hahah, yea right! HGTV to the rescue)  Also, those funky plastic doors? Yea, they could be replaced too.  Will someone please tell me why they are ever installed in the first place?  Why a plastic door? Just put in a regular heavy door that makes a good ‘ol thud! when you slam it shut.

Anywho, so I was telling him about the main appeal of this house was obviously the land and Jason’s enthusiasm for it.  And this is where it gets interesting…..Supervisor advised me that the USDA loan may or may not be so keen to lend for a home with that much land.  

Skkkkkkiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! 

image via whatever this is via Pinterest

WTF? What are you talking about?  Turns out the USDA loan sets limits to what you can and can not buy as they don’t want it to be a farming loan or a construction loan.  Now, to me, I don’t think it should matter, if you pay for it and continue to pay for, you should be able to do what ever the h-e-double hockey sticks you want to do with it!  But I guess the loan program was designed for rural development, meaning they want a lot of people buying already made houses in the country, or some type of weird thing that I don’t quite understand.

But just to be on the safe side and because I really didn’t want to believe Supervisor man, I immediately did what any good future wife does, I text messaged that boy of mine and asked what to do.  The best advice we could gather for each other: email C-S lady.

Turns out, Supervisor man was right.  The response from C-S lady was straightforward…no can do.  No sir-ree!  Wasn’t happening.

This was my response:

image via Pinterest

This was Jason’s response:

image via Pinterest

Yea, so darnit! That was two houses in a row that we had already started making future plans for and that had been denied to us.

So our initial thoughts of Wow! Look at how easy this house buying this is weren’t at all justified as we were both pretty disappointed in this latest development.  

But we didn’t cancel the appointment to have Monica show it to us.  Jason and I talked it out and decided we wanted to talk to Monica about this whole thing.  SunTrust said she was knowledgeable about helping out first time home-buyers and maybe she could offer some advice/solutions to the dilemma.   

It’s not like the reply from C-S lady offered any suggestions, even when a response to her reply attempted to prompt further solutions.  Just no! you can’t buy that house.

Okay..thanks C-S lady for the help.

I was ready for our Saturday meeting with Monica to see what else the House Hunting in Rowan County could offer us.

Love as always

Meredith