Bethany Chobanian Lang
HOLY CANNOLI I’M BUYING A HOUSE.
Buying a house wasn’t a big huge life event that I’ve always wanted to experience. But as I entered my late twenties and saw my first friends buy condos, I began to realize that maybe I did want to own something. And I was sure as hell never going to own anything in Chicago – definitely not a house, and likely not even a condo. Condos in the last neighborhood I lived in Chicago (Edgewater) started at more than double the price I’m paying for this house.
So home ownership was part of the impetus for moving back to Pittsburgh. I figured I’d rent for a few years, save up for a down payment, and then slowly but surely find the perfect house. But as many other people will tell you, the whole home-buying thing can from I’ll-leisurely-check-out-houses-on-Zillow-a-few-times-a-day to HOMEOWNERSHIP-INCOMING very quickly.
In my case, I found out that I would be inheriting enough money for a down payment with an FHA loan, so I started looking. I saw six houses over the course of two days, and I bought the second one that I saw because I just KNEW. As soon as I stepped into the house for the first time it felt like home.
So now I’m dealing with the fun part: moving all of my utilities, booking movers, providing copious amounts of paperwork for my mortgage application. I agreed to a 30-day closing, so that’s made things even crazier than they would have been with a longer closing. But that’s okay. I’m ready to start my life in my home as soon as possible. It’s so exciting and freeing to think about not having to do this moving thing again for (hopefully) a very long time; to buy furniture that I know will always work and I won’t have to junk or replace because of a new apartment layout or size in a year or two.
And it’s nice to commit to actually decorating a place. The longest that I lived in a single apartment was three years in my first place right out of college, but because I was so poor, I couldn’t really decorate. I had an Ikea twin bed and my couch was the futon that had been my bed growing up. Every place since then, I knew I wasn’t going to stick around forever, so I got it maybe 50% decorated (as much as I could without painting and stuff that you can’t do in a rental), so nothing ever really felt like my own.
So now I’m being a super basic bitch and Pinteresting like there’s no tomorrow and futilely attempting to resist the temptation to buy furniture online and have it sent to my current place.
What I’ve noticed as I’ve read more and more home design blogs is that they can seem so phony. Everything is so meticulously curated so that it looks like no one lives there. I get that’s the aesthetic that these bloggers are often going for, but to me, it just solidifies my feeling that I’ll never have a perfect home like these people do.
And I noticed that a lot of home blogs are written by moms who talk about the challenges of making a home practical for kids. That’s totally reasonable, but I have absolutely no need to my make home kid-friendly, nor do I really want to read about kids while I’m trying to get ideas for decor. Just not my speed.
And these bloggers never swear, or talk about how poor they are, or whatever. It’s just all too conveniently perfect.
So I’m planning to write a series of blog updates about my new home called My Effing House. Because I’m a single woman with two cats and a dog who just bought an effing house and now needs to figure out how to decorate it and feel like home. And I hope you’ll be following along with me!