I have never bought a new car. Yes, I have “owned” a new car once, but I didn’t buy it. I wasn’t even really consulted about it. It just showed up one day.

The same could be said of the two houses I “owned.” The first one really was a nice house, but I didn’t pick it. I think it was the big hot tub and tiki bar in the backyard that swayed heads, even though I was adamant that I wanted the Brady Bunch House, the one with the family room.

I knew deep down that with a young boy, the living room of the Big Blue House would end up filled with toys. It did, and the once big house became very small indeed.

That house fell by the wayside, a byproduct of me losing my mind and flying off to Florida to be with a total stranger “forever.” We ended up having a house, too. To be fair, I did pick this house. It was a nice triple-wide manufactured, about 1,900 square feet. The only mistake I made was putting it on the land that I didn’t choose. Yes, you read right. I didn’t pick the land. It was a “gift” from her parents.

As such, I never actually owned the house or the land. As we all know, the bank owns your house until you make your last payment. But even if I had managed to endure 30 horrid years in that house in that at best, rocky relationship, I would have never actually been able to stay there because the land under it was not mine. It was hers.

It’s funny how you can make mistakes like that in your life. You think love conquers all, but it doesn’t when it comes to the world of real estate.

Now, the reason I bring this all up is I bought a house last week. I somehow ended up with a house, even though I never thought I made enough money to even afford a new car. I drive a 12 year old car around for that reason.

But the house? Well, Kat and I decided we should probably own one someday. That someday turned out to be now. We looked at maybe a hundred houses online, then decided we should actually see some in person.

We could have gone the Open House route and just self-toured. But we found a real estate agent who seemed nice enough. Approximately 20 days ago, she showed us four houses – three that Kat had picked, one that I had picked.

The first three were disappointing in one way another. The fourth was what would become known as the “box the house came in”. It had little curb appeal – being very green with two white garage doors and zero flourishes of architecture. I was not hopeful. But as soon as Kat walked in and saw the living room with its 20 foot vaulted ceiling soaring up to the rooms above, she was sold.

I guess I don’t even have to mention the cavernous master suite that is something like 39′ x 19′. You could park two cars and a bed in it. We even get a creek, even though the appraiser calls it a ditch.

Now, Seattle is a very tight market. There are far more people looking for houses than houses to be had. As such, people regularly get into bidding wars over houses and the final price can be way more than the listing price.

We knew that we would have to go through the “process,” which meant being disappointed a time or two or three before we finally had an offer that would be accepted. So we jumped into the game with House #4. There were competing offers are promised. We won that round and then played the endless back-and-forth numbers game, making an offer, countering theirs, then finally signing on the dotted line.

Then the fun and games began. We didn’t know a thing about buying a house. We were only starting the process. Suddenly we found ourselves having to learn all about closing costs, mortgage insurance, inspections, appraisals, locking in rates, points and such.

Early on, we thought the whole thing was going to go down the tubes before it really started. As the clock started ticking on the 45 days to closing, we found that our lender, well, sucked. They wanted Guido-level rates to close. It was as if they looked at the total in all our bank accounts and said, “Yup, that should do.”

It wouldn’t have been much fun living in a house with no refrigeration, no way to clean our clothes (well, there is the ditch), no window coverings — you know, the little things that add to your level of health and give you some privacy from prying neighbors’ eyes.

As I noted last week, I had to feel like a cheating husband. I had to court another lender on the sly who promised a much better deal. This with the appraisal deadline looming and the threat of not getting the needed appraisal back in time to close.

Like any fairytale, there was a happy ending. The lender appears to still be Prince Charming and everything is chugging right along – at the moment. Today, I will return from the beach and pack our first boxes.

They won’t contain anything important, though. I’ve been down this road before and whenever I tell my friends about this home buying thing, they tell me their horror stories, including one about how they failed to close on closing day because there were too many bedrooms for the septic tank.

I will continue to be optimistic, though a bit guarded. It’s indeed an exciting thing to think that I will finally “own” a house that I not only helped pick, but get to also own the land under it. For me, this is a first.

Of course, I didn’t do this all myself. I can thank Woodstock Girl for all this. She was sure we could pull this off and never doubted that we would end up with Casa Verde, as it’s now become known.

When they hand me the keys, Glass Half Full Guy will believe it,

In the Emerald City, packing tape in hand,

– Robb