It�s official. We are finally homeowners.

Yesterday, we got the keys to our new home. After waiting sixty long days since signing our purchase contract, we are finally able to call it ours. We feel luck to find a property that we actually like especially in this tough Southern California market.

Btw…that is NOT my Corvette!

We had been debating on buying a house for the last 3 years and we were finally able to pull the trigger. We had been seriously looking for about five months and almost gave up multiple times. The tough housing market has not only driven up prices, but also depleted the inventory of good properties. In our home searching experience, if you found a decent home, it would have been gone in a few days and either went for the asking price or even more.

When we first saw this house two months ago, my first reaction when I first opened the front door was �This will sell in one day!� The next day we decided to submit a bid realizing that our offer would probably be a needle in a haystack. I was shocked when I got a call the next day saying that we got it. It was pretty surreal.

Our new home is located in Placentia, CA. Neighboring Anaheim and Fullerton, we are on the northern tip of Orange County. Our home is a ten-year old, 1850 square foot, four bedroom, two story house that is located near the southern part of Alta Vista Country Club. We finally get our master suite that we have been looking for. Lucas gets his own baby�s room and there is even a small back yard that will be great for Koda. All four bedrooms are upstairs, while the first floor consists of the kitchen, family room, living room and dining room. The size is perfect for us and should be great for our growing family.

After checking out the house last night, I am already planning improvements that our bank account cannot afford. The house is perfectly livable now, but of course we would want to improve it as much as we can. Ideally, I would love to rip up the floor and put in hard wood. But the sellers had just put in new tile and carpet, so we decided that it would be ok for now. Also, the kitchen is a little cheesy with its fake-looking peach colored cabinets and white tile counter top. A kitchen makeover would cost a pretty penny, probably around 10K, so that will have to wait as well. The improvement that will provide the most bang for our buck will be a quick paint job. All the walls are white, so we are planning to do a major paint overhaul. We have already chosen our colors, so hopefully that goes well.

I would love to install structured wiring all over the house, but it may be too complicated a project for me to undertake as of now. The geek in me dreams of having multiple data, voice, video and audio lines in all rooms in the house. I think it�s feasible, as I�ve seen many tutorials and DIY projects online. It seems to be quite the challenge retrofitting an existing house as many of the examples are done with either a brand new house or an older one story home where feeding wires through the attic proves to be simpler. I�m afraid that our older two-story home will require some professional installation instead of me hacking my way through it.

Tomorrow, I will be painting the garage floor with an epoxy coating that should make it look clean and neat. This will be my first in what is sure to be an endless line of projects for our new home. Buy shares of Home Depot. I will be doing my part in increasing their profits.