One of the first tasks I’m going to have before I move in will be the mitigation of all the pink.

For example, the wallpaper in the dining area is just too busy for me.  I’d prefer something with less pattern (and in a different color, although I haven’t figured out what yet).

The living room isn’t too bad, since the pink is more subdued.  However, it just doesn’t suit me.

I was digging around to see whether I could do the change of address for my driver’s license and CHL online.  It turns out that it’s possible to do both online, so I don’t have to go stand in line at the DPS office. 

A long time ago when I first got my driver’s license, I remember that there was a space for organ donation on the back.  Somewhere along the way that disappeared and I never really noticed.  However, I found this in the DPS FAQ.

The Department no longer collects organ donor information as part of the Driver License renewal process. Should you choose to participate in the “Live and Give” program, donor cards are available to the public at any driver license office. For more information about being an organ and tissue donor, you may contact the Texas Medical Association at (512) 370-1300 or visit their website at http://www.texmed.org/.

I may look into this at some point in the future (I used to have it indicated on my license that I was an organ donor).

We’ve set the date for closing.  It’ll be on Thursday at 10:00am.  It’s kind of hard to believe that I’ll be a homeowner by the end of the day Thursday.

Of course, this whole house experience has me doing stuff I’d never dreamed of doing before.  For example, I’m reading a home design book in preparation for figuring out what to do with the pink wall panels and pink wallpaper.

It looks like we may move the closing on my house up a few days to the 26th, which is only eight days away.  That would be good, since it will give me more time to get the house ready for the move.  But it finally brought home just how much stuff I’ve got to do.

• Arrange insurance (in progress).
• Submit approximately 1 million change of address cards.
• Arrange mail forwarding.
• Transfer utilities to my name.
• Arrange phone, cable, and internet service transfers.
• Purchase and arrange delivery of a new gun safe (finally, I’ll have enough space for something suitable, rather than the dinky one I’ve got now).
• Paint living room panels some other color besides pink (!).
• Replace pink (!) wallpaper in kitchen and dining area (the previous owner really had a thing for pink).
• Replace bass wallpaper in hall bath (yes, the fish; I’m not sure how this fit into the pink theme, though).
• Remove Looney Tunes border in my new office (it apparently used to be a little girl’s room) and possibly paint.
• Acquire and arrange delivery of new office furniture (I’ll be working from home a lot more towards the end of the year; fortunately my company has a discount program with one of the big office supply companies).
• Get some new bookshelves so I can tame the riot of books I’m living in now (although I have hardly any books compared to this guy).
• Go through all my stuff and throw out anything that I don’t need (not a simple task, given my normal packrat nature).

Looking at all the stuff I’m planning to buy perhaps I should just arrange to have most of my pay direct deposited to Home Depot, Lowes, and the furniture stores.  It’d probably be simpler.

I met the inspector this afternoon and followed him through most of the inspection.  He found a few things that I’ll want the seller to correct, but none of it was major.  The structure is sound and all of the systems work.

So here’s a view from the street of the house.

Now I’ve just got to work out the financing.  I’ve been approved, but I have to send in a bunch of documentation.  But the financer sent the packet to the house, rather than to my current address.  It was just by luck that it arrived today just before I arrived and I was able to pick it up.  I’m not sure where the mistake occurred, but hopefully we’ll get it straightened out.

I made an offer on a house in Keller on Friday afternoon.  On Saturday, the agent called me back to say that the offer had been accepted.  So now we just have to get through all the details after the inspection is done.  Provided that the inspector is available, we should do the inspection this Friday afternoon. 

Unless the inspector finds some major problem, the current plan is to close on the house on September 30th.

I’m now down to three candidate houses.  We went back to two of them today, but we weren’t able to get into the third because their child was sick.  We’ll try again later in the week.  After that, I guess it’ll be decision time.

Anyway, between that and the other errands I’ve had to do, I haven’t had much time to write new entries.

I saw this house on Realtor.com and I thought it seemed like a really good deal, given the size of the house and the price.  I even went so far as to request a showing via the website (although they haven’t gotten back to me yet).  However, upon further investigation I found that the house is part of the Arcadia Park homeowners association.  For me, that makes it a non-starter, regardless of how good a deal the house may be.  One look at their rules confirmed this for me.

I have to deal with enough officious twits as it is without having to sign a contract to put myself under the jurisdiction of more of them.

I met with the mortgage broker today to give him the records he requested.  The only downside is that I waited so long to get into the game that rates have started back up.  I won’t be getting the really good rates that we saw earlier this year.  However, it still looks like the numbers will work out (I’ll just be paying a few dollars a month more).

After leaving his office I went out driving around to look at some neighborhoods.  I’d previously done a search on Realtor.com for houses in certain areas that met my criteria.  I didn’t get the agents involved, though.  I just went to the houses and checked out the area.  Along the way I also stumbled across a couple of houses that weren’t listed when I did the search (but that should have been).

The house that I was really interested in (4 bedroom, 2 bath, a little over 2000 sq. ft. for $108K) was somewhat of a disappointment.  The house itself looked fine.  Unfortunately, the neighbours didn’t seem so good (there was an old rundown house across the street and the place behind it had an old decrepit bus in their back yard).  I guess the neighborhood is the reason it’s not a lot more expensive.  However I did find a nice place about four blocks down (and the whole area around it was better) that wasn’t on the listings.  The only thing that might bother me would be living near a middle school and a huge church.  It looks like the street might get a little crowded in the morning (the church also has its own school).

I’ll probably go check out a couple more areas tomorrow.  Next week I’ll contact the agents to arrange some showings after work.