Our closing on Friday went off without a hitch! We spent roughly the same amount of time driving to and from the closing (which was at a lawyer’s office in West Newbury) as we did at the closing itself. If only the process up to that point had been so easy!

We spent Friday afternoon with Becky’s parents, going through the house and figuring out what supplies we needed to get started. Later on, Becky, Catherine and I took a trip to IKEA and Home Depot to buy a few supplies to get started with. We left Becky’s parents at the condo to do some prep work like spackling and sanding, laying down drop cloths, and removing three ceiling fans.

This morning, we met Becky’s parents at the condo (yes, they did go home in between…) and started working on basic refurbishments. We scraped, spackled, puttied, sanded, painted ceilings, primed the boldly colored walls, and put up some lighting fixtures. Unfortunately there was not much for Catherine to do, so she spent her time either napping, playing in the pack ‘n’ play, or being held by whoever wanted a break from the work. 🙂

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The construction forewoman at work

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We’ve chosen some paint colors, and the plan is to buy them tomorrow and start painting this week. We hope to be done with the painting by the end of next week so that we can refinish the hardwood floors over next weekend. After that, we’ve got some smaller projects to do around the house, and then by the end of the month, it will be time to move everything out of the apartment and into the new place!

You can see more pics from our first day of work here!

If this blog is your main source for news about the Wood Family, our lives might seem to have been pretty quiet for the past few months. Surprisingly, that is not the case! The biggest news that we haven’t yet shared on our blog is that we are in the midst of purchasing our first house! We wanted to wait until the purchase and sales agreement had been signed to publicly share the news, so here it is!

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([More pics here](http://prwdot.org/gallery2/v/house/first_look/).)

We started our house search nearly a year ago, and since then we’ve looked at single family homes and condos all around the area. We have looked at houses and condos in Amesbury, Haverhill, Beverly, and Boxboro, but none of them really tickled our fancies (or fit within our price range).

Finally, around Christmas time, we stumbled across a listing in Danvers for a 1950’s ranch style house that had been converted into a condo about four years ago. It is split in half down the middle, and the unit we were are buying is on the right side. Along with the unit, we get exclusive use of the yard on our unit’s side of the property. The unit currently has less than 600 square feet of livable space, but it has a half-finished basement that, when finished, would nearly double the square footage of the home.

We are scheduled to close on the house on Friday, March 9. That would give us a few weeks to make some basic improvements to the livability of the house before moving in at the end of March.

We’re very excited about the prospect of finally having a place of our own, and our families and friends are eager to help us get started on the various renovation projects. From here on out, we’ll be sure to keep our web readers posted on the progress!