Oak Cliff Home

Picking Wood Look Tile

~ mollymathias89 ~ Leave a comment

When we bought our house the floors were not really a selling point. The main living space has laminate, which luckily is not super ugly laminate. The bedrooms have carpet, which I HATE. I am not on the carpet train. Sure your feet have something warm and fluffy to walk on, but its typically ugly and just waiting to be stained.

We planned to eventually replace the carpet, but our plans got moved from the future to the present after the introduction of a new kitten.

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She make look cute, but she is a little monster and decided she didn’t like the carpet one bit. I’ll spare you the gross details, but our bedroom carpet had to be removed immediately.

We considered hard wood for about 3 seconds, but with four cats, tile is a way better option. Tile is wayyyy more durable than hardwood. You can spill liquids and don’t have to worry as much about scratches. With the wood look tile we could get the best of both worlds.

I didn’t want to spend more than $2 a sq foot, so we headed to Floor and Decor to see what options they had. Floor and Decor has some pretty good options, but there are ENDLESS wood tile options at other retailers as well. You can end up spending a lot of money getting really quality wood look tile.

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Processed with VSCO

Processed with VSCO

Processed with VSCO

Processed with VSCO

I knew I wanted something not too dark and something with a lot of pattern variation. I bought samples of these three to see how the looked in my home.

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The one on the left was the most expensive at $2.29 a sq foot, but it had the most pattern variation and grey undertones. Even though it was over our budget,  we decided to “splurge” since it would only end up being about $200 extra in total to go with this one and we liked it so much more than the others.

We got a few quotes on getting the tile professionally installed, but tile laying is expensive. It would have doubled the cost of the project to get it professionally done. My Dad has some previous tile experience, so we decided to do it ourselves.

Up next: Carpet Removal!

 

 

First Time Home Buyer: Winnetka Heights Cottage

~ mollymathias89 ~ Leave a comment

North Oak Cliff, Winnetka Heights

I’m so excited to be finally sharing this experience with you all! It was hard to keep hush about all the exciting real estate things happening in my life, but I have learned you shouldn’t get too excited until everything is signed on the dotted line. A tiny million things can and will go wrong during a the home buying process.

My client, let’s call them “C” was a first time home buyer who wanted a north Oak Cliff home that had some historic charm. Lucky for me, Oak Cliff is full of historic homes. There are a lot of garbage homes as well so I do have to do some sifting. I also learned that there are some real estate agents with magic photoshopping skills out there.

The first home we looked at was in Beckley Club Estates. It was recently updated and had a great kitchen.If you have never been to Beckley Club Estates you should really go check it out. At first you feel like you might be murdered as you drive under 35, but don’t worry! Just keep driving and then you will see a glorious wild peacock and you have arrived!  While C really loved the home, it had another offer already that the seller was going to accept. In this market, that happens all too often. It is always best to never get too attached to a home, which is a tough lesson to learn BELIEVE ME. I have fallen in love with so many homes and then start pinning all night about what i’m going to do to the house only to not get it and then have all these pins that I have no use for. It’s just sad. Don’t get attached.

The second home we looked at was in Elmwood. Elmwood is a neighborhood on the rise. It has some great Tudor homes and many of them overlook a creek with a natural wildflower area. This home had so many great things going for it. It had a HUGE backyard and across the street was a wildflower area and the creek, so it had a beautiful view. C fell in love and wanted to submit an offer. Unfortunately, she was leaving to go out of the country for a week, so we had to wait.

You always want to make sure you will be available for a few days after you submit an offer. Once it is accepted and executed you will need to schedule an inspection immediately and be available for negotiations.

C came back a week later, and while the Elmwood house was already under contract 😦 two new houses had popped up. One was a cute green cottage in Winnetka Heights and the other a completely renovated Tudor in Elmwood.

The Winnetka Heights green cottage was full of historic charm. Large front porch, porch swing, and claw foot tub. It needing some small updates, but overall so good. AND there was a cute cat outside that wanted to so many pats. Any house with a cat is a win for me! The Elmswood tudor was so beautiful inside. The flipper did a fantastic job of updating everything to perfection. C had a tough choice to make.

She thought about if for a few hours and decided to go with the Winnetka Heights Cottage, as I knew she probably would.I’m sure it was the outside cat that swayed her.  We wrote up the offer quickly and submitted it with fingers crossed. The waiting part after you submit an offer is the worst. I seriously hate waiting. I will send like twenty emails to the agent asking the status, so buyers, I get you. I get you dawg. Waiting sucks.

The seller came back and accepted the offer!!!! Most people right now are going through a rough time and having to submit multiple offers on homes before one is finally accepted. We were lucky, and C had a talented real estate agent that had the first offer accepted 😉

We were also lucky and got an inspector to come out the next business day. Good news: house was not falling down. Bad news: It was smelly and wet under the house. We had a plumber come out that day and I helped him discover the problem. By help I mean I stayed in the air conditioned house and turned on faucets while he crawled around in the muck under the house for two hours.

We got through the after-inspection-negotiations and were on our way! More waiting until the next big hurdle, the appraisal. The whole house buying process is so much waiting and you will lose all your hair from the stress of waiting.

Finally appraisal day was here! It was a little disappointing when the appraisal came in under. At this point we had to do some more negotiations, which were luckily pretty painless. FINALLY everything was good to go. Closing day came and went with no big issues.

Closing

I’m so happy that C decided to use my as her real estate agent. I am super jealous of C’s new home and I know that she will enjoy it for years to come!