We found a home! It’s a pretty weird story, actually. I was
looking on Craigslist for houses all summer, starting in May. I looked at least
every day just to get an idea of what to expect. I contacted some rental
companies and private landlords but everyone told me it was too early to look.
I didn’t expect anyone to hold a place for us for two or three months, but I
was hoping someone would say “but I do have a place that’ll be available
October 1st…”. That never happened.
One day in June I got experimental and decided to post an ad
on Craigslist about needing a place in the fall. I wrote a little blurb about
our situation and gave a few details about what we’d like, not getting my hopes
up. A couple days letter, a woman contacted me saying her family was moving
into a new house but would like to rent out their old one. She told me it was 3
bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms and recently renovated. It had a two-car garage, a
backyard, and a wood-burning fireplace. The monthly rent was at the high end of
our price range so I was hesitant to pursue it much further. She said it’d be
ready by October 1st and that we’d keep in touch. A few weeks went
by and I kept scouring Craigslist for other options. It was looking pretty
bleak. Anchorage has a large university and I noticed that the closer we came
to September, the crappier and smaller the places got because students were
snatching up rentals left and right. The price tags were nice, but we didn’t
want to settle this time.
Last summer, we lived in a moldy basement in a scary part of
Anchorage. It kind of put a damper on our experience in Alaska because we never
wanted to relax at home. I didn’t feel very comfortable. Garrett and I made a
goal to find somewhere that we would be happy calling home.
The woman that had contacted me – let’s call her Sandy – got
ahold of me once more to ask if we were still interested. We were still a month
away from moving so I was seriously at a loss of what to do. Should I just say
yes and get it over with? Or should I hold out a bit longer to see what else popped
up in the next few weeks? Around that same time, a woman from the office I’ll
be working at emailed me. She told me she was also a licensed Alaska real
estate agent and offered to help us with our house search. Excited about having
professional assistance, I told her yes and she immediately started attending
showings and contacting rental companies for us. She looked at places almost
every day and would report back to me about her impression of the place. It was
so nice to have someone who could be there when we couldn’t!
I decided to ask her to go check out Sandy’s place because I
had only received a handful of photos – and they were taken during renovation.
She agreed and was able to do a walk-through with Sandy’s husband. She really
liked it and reported back with raving reviews! I later discovered that Sandy
and her husband were really counting on us to rent the place. They had stopped
searching for renters after talking with me because they got the impression it
was going to work out. I never knew that – I thought for sure that they’d still
be looking for people to rent it out because the rental market is so
competitive for small family homes. Once we realized that we probably weren’t
going to find a place better than Sandy’s and that they would happily rent it
to us, we decided to move forward. After we got to Alaska, we drove down to
meet with Sandy’s husband in Anchorage and tour the house. We sealed the deal
and set our move-in date to October 1st!
The house is SO cute. It’s older – I think he said it was
built in the 80’s – but they spent a good amount on renovations. There’s crown
molding throughout the house, even in the bathrooms! The carpet is new and the
walls were recently painted. The windows were replaced last year, which is
great news for our heating bills! All of the appliances are brand new, except
for the dishwasher, which is a whopping one year old. The floors are high
quality laminate wood, the fireplace is stone, all of the light fixtures are
new, the kitchen cupboards were stripped and refinished, and the countertops
are only a couple years old. The bedrooms are good-sized and the master bedroom
has a walk-in closet. There’s only one full bath but it was beautifully done
and has a jetted tub! It came with a brand new washer and dryer and all the
doors were either replaced or refinished. The locks were changed and they left
us an area rug, a dresser, and a mock fireplace radiant heater as well as a
stand-up freezer and a wall TV mount. I feel like we won the lottery! Granted,
we are paying a fortune to live here.
We got the keys on Wednesday but had other important things
on the brain, too. We had to find Garrett a work truck ASAP and were having a
lot of difficulty doing so. I’d been scouring Craigslist (welcome to my life
this year) for an old Ford Ranger because Garrett said it’d make the perfect
work vehicle for him. Surprisingly, there were a ton of them around Anchorage
but either they had 250,000+ miles on them, were only RWD, or were way too
expensive. By Wednesday – after over two weeks of looking – we were starting to
get worried. He needed one by this Monday because I will be taking our
Pathfinder to work for my first day (ah!). He test drove a bunch on Wednesday
but nothing seemed right.
We’re also in the process of buying a couch because we have
absolutely NO furniture. I’m currently sitting on the floor of the living room
against the wall next to our space heater because a) we can’t get the
thermostat to listen to our demands for heat, and b) I have nothing to sit on.
So as we were waiting in the furniture store yesterday, Garrett was searching
Craigslist on his phone and found a little Nissan pickup within our budget. He
called the guy and was told that he was on a list of people waiting to check it
out. The seller told Garrett he’d call him back in an hour if it was still
available. An hour goes by and Garrett is stuck on this truck, saying it’d be
perfect and that he was going to “freak out if some jerk bought it”. Garrett
couldn’t help himself and called the seller back. Apparently the people ahead
of him never showed up to look at the truck, so Garrett said we’d be right
over. We got the cash out of our account (because who can say no to
cash-in-hand, right?!) and scurried to check out the truck. It WAS perfect! And
the seller must’ve liked Garrett because he accepted the cash offer, signed
over the title, and off we went! We named him (with my dad’s help, of course) “Ole
Lu” – short for hallelujah because HALLELUJAH WE FOUND A TRUCK!
So now we have a truck, a house, and jobs. Now we just need
some furniture!
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