You guys, we bought a house! A really great one, in fact. I know I mentioned a few months ago that we wanted to buy a place, and we found a fantastic agent (Stephanie at Living Room Realty is awesome), and started looking for a place in December. We looked at some places that didn’t seem ideal, and then right before Christmas I saw the listing for this one and immediately knew we needed to see it. One thing you learn when looking at pictures of houses in online listings is that they can be deceiving. With the right angles, it’s pretty easy to make rooms look bigger and better than they actually are, so when you go to see it in person it’s a bit of a let-down. As we walked through this one, though, I got more and more excited because I could definitely picture living here. In fact, it seemed too good to be true. Why hadn’t it sold already? It turned out it had, months ago, but the sellers had various issues that made the situation difficult, and the sale had failed. Basically, we just got lucky by being in the right place, at the right time, with the right dedicated agent.

Yesterday, while we were on a plane from Perth to Melbourne, our good friend Karla signed the closing papers for us. We had to give her power of attorney because the timing just worked out that we needed to close while we were out of the country for this trip we had planned. (Contrary to how it’s portrayed in pop culture, when you give someone power of attorney it’s for a specific activity, so it’s not legal for them to like, rent your cats out on Craigslist or what-have-you. Not that Karla would do that or anything.)

Anyway, not surprisingly for a house built in 1912, it needs some work to bring it in line with our tastes, but it has so much potential and I’m really looking forward to getting home and tackling many home improvement and DIY projects. I’ve literally NEVER lived anyplace where I could paint a room any color I want, so it’ll be really fun to make design decisions on a house. I’ll be sure to share plenty of before-and-afters here on the blog.

In other news, after a very non-restful overnight flight, we are in Melbourne. So far we’ve only walked around a little bit and had a delicious lunch in the neighborhood where we’re staying (Fitzroy), but I love what I’ve seen so far. I can’t wait to explore the city more in the next week.