Fingers Crossed/Thumbs Pressed

Will & I learned last night that the seller has also signed the P&S so we're one step closer.  It seems like we should celebrate each of these little victories, but we know that this all means nothing until we have the keys in our hands.  We're hoping that will happen early to mid June. Fingers crossed, or as they say in Germany, thumbs pressed!

Here are a few more photos of 10 Union:

Some people have been asking where in Salem 10 Union Street is.  Here is it!  The image is small but as you can see we're close to the common, close the museums, and close to the water. Our awesome friends Jill & Ryan live .4 miles away, right across the common.  Google estimates that it will take us 1 minute to drive there (one minute!) but I think I'd rather walk or bike.  Maybe skip!

These are the stairs that lead to the loft area.  I kind of want them to keep them as is.  I used to live across the street from a few really cool houses in Cambridge that were featured in Dwell magazine.  The owners/architects pretty much gutted the place, except for the stairs which they kept from the original home.  That was my favorite part about the house.

View from the loft down onto the dining area.  They're going to be putting up a railing soon.  We hope to put a living room up there, with our brown Ikea couch which pulls out into a bed for guests.  The condo is a two bedroom, but the loft space and the second room off the master bedroom allow for several alternative guest spaces.  We like guests so this is ideal!

This is a good view of one end of the dining area, which as you can see has the loft above it to the left, and the kitchen just off the side.  

The other end of the dining room (and my sweet husband!).  There are two windows to the left which look out onto a nice old house, a not-so-lovely parking lot for the Hawthorne Hotel, and the beautiful Salem Common.

Macro

Yesterday we signed the P&S!  Of course there were some bumps along the way, which is nothing new for us in this whole process.  When you're signing your 3rd P&S in the span for 4 months, something is bound to go wrong, right?  Were the Platow's surprised that our names were no where on the entire document!?  Heck no!  So our fantastic agent simply filled them in with pen and off we went, signing away.

We drove up to Salem following the signing, to hand-deliver the documents to the seller's agent.  We couldn't help roaming around a bit.  Will focused on the big picture (neighborhood, furniture we need, proximity to the ocean and the common), and I focused on the details (faucets, fixtures, knots in the wood), some of which you'll find below!   

The Friendship of Salem.  The water is a quick walk down the street, as is this amazing boat.  THE ATLANTIC OCEAN!  I can't believe we'll be so close.

This is our  new neighborhood!  

We love the light in this bedroom in the late afternoon.

The view from the office.

Will standing in the office.  We have decided to put a small desk and a cool sleeper sofa.

The view from the bedroom: A Psychic and a statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne!

The dining room.  We're thinking of getting this table and this credenza from CB2.  This one from Ikea would probably do though.

 

Micro

Union Street is a one-way street, lined with houses built in the 1800s.  There's also a church, whose bells toll beautifully (we heard them)!  I was happy to see many lilac bushes lining the street as well, reminding me of my childhood home in Sterling.  
Hardware is important!  
The house across the street, which we see from our dining room, was built in 1858.  I'm going to find out who William Parker was.

I'm so glad this awesome door is being kept.  

The beams are GIGANTIC in this place.  This is part of the main beam up in the loft area.  Does this concern anyone?  I want to have my friend Thea, who is an architect, do a stroll through with me.  Will keeps reassuring me that if the city gives its approve, the place has to be safe.

Light fixture joy!  This is outside our main entrance.

The boot scraper!  There's a slight crack in the back but I think it'll be around for quite some time.  I wonder about the lives of the people who used this so long ago.  Exciting!

Union Street

We're going to sign the Purchase & Sale today at 3pm in Cambridge, then we might drive up the 25 miles to Salem to sneak into the unit, and celebrate!

We're trying to buy our third condo now, with the first two falling through. Today was our actual move date for home #2, so it feels fitting that we are celebrating something today: the P&S for home #3 (THE home)! We like this new place better. Our fantastic friend Jolene saw this condo with us for the first time a few weeks ago and stated that it was SO US. I felt that, too. We're almost there!