After months of waiting, we’re finally in our home!
There’s not this much snow on it now, but I just love how it looks with all the snow!
Ahhhhh.
Entry gate to our home
It’s a loooooong story of how we ended up with our new home, and what we went through to buy it. I won’t tell it all today (that will come later!) but I do have to share some parts of the story (yes, there really is more than this long post)!
Steven and I had wanted to sell our townhome and move for a few years. We wanted privacy and more space (land, not necessarily house space) We also wanted peace and quiet – we had years of discourteous, disrespectful townhome neighbors. We decided last summer was the summer to do something about it. Finally.
Steven searched Zillow for houses with land and privacy. We’d drive around and look at them. There was only one house we were excited enough to consider asking an agent to show us around inside.
But we decided before we went and saw it, we should probably meet with an agent and see how realistic it was to sell our house – because we needed to sell to be able to buy. In August, we met with an agent who had recently sold a townhome in our neighborhood. After discussing our house, he asked if we were looking to buy, and we told him yes, and started describing what we wanted, and he said “I have a house just like that!” And lo and behold, it was the house we wanted to see! Wow! (That was a sign, right?! Ha.)
We toured the house in August and I fell in love with it and could immediately imagine myself living there. I stared thinking about it a lot. I talked about it a lot to my friends and family. I definitely became too attached. I drew the house in AutoCAD and sketched some renovation ideas Steven and I had. We even had an inspection done (since it was a foreclosure and had been sitting vacant for awhile). But I realized I was becoming too emotionally connected, with no chance to buy since our house wasn’t even on the market. So I stopped thinking about it (however, Steven kept thinking about it since he was there for the inspection and became much more attached to it then).
The back of the house in August. The top left windows are the master bedroom, and the bottom right ones are the room we’re using as a dining room. The little window is the kitchen.
The windows on the left are the dining room, and the rest are the living room.
We got serious about selling our townhome in the fall. We packed up a lot of stuff and put it in storage, staged the house, and listed it in early November. We thought the house wouldn’t sell, and we’d have to relist it in the spring. It sold in two days! Wow! But that meant we had to get out and had no place to go.
We drove around and looked at other properties in November. Amazingly, the house we looked at in August was still on the market! We weren’t sure about it though, because there were a few issues – it required construction work (we’d have to get a special loan for that), the price needed to come down because of the amount of work required, it only had 1.5 bathrooms, it didn’t have internet/cable access because of its remote location, the taxes were (ARE) really high, there were a lot more inspections to be done (well and septic…), and so on…
But we looked at a ton of other houses and none of them were for us. That house was the only one we both loved.
So we went back to the original house. And made it work. We negotiated with the bank, found a general contractor, did a lot of other inspections and research, got the special construction loan, and worked hard on keeping things moving forward…
And here we are!
The living room
It hasn’t sunken in yet – that I am living in the home I fell in love with instantly upon seeing, and even more upon stepping foot in. I feel so lucky. When I woke up there Sunday I thought “this is really my home!”
North side of the master bedroom
South side of the master bedroom
Yay!
And Data is doing well! We brought him over to the house early Saturday morning. He got to explore before the movers arrived and after they left. Data loves the windows. The ceiling fans still freak him the eff out. Sigh. And there’s a visitor he doesn’t care for that I’ll tell you about later (it’s NOT my parents, ha!).
I’m happy we brought Data in the early morning instead of late at night like the last move – this way he was tired and ready for bed (rather than running around like a nut all night). Sunday morning was the first day in weeks that he didn’t wake me up early to feed him – he needed his sleep!
My parents were a HUGE help this weekend! It was so nice to have an extra pair of hands and for Steven and I to divide tasks and do things with one of them. Bobbi came over and helped clean and unpack, too! I LOVE that she is only a ten minute drive away. Love, love, loooooooooooove!
The house is still in unpacking mode, hence the mostly empty pictures! We’re getting there though! A lot is unpacked and the appliances arrive today, yay! Expect many photos in the weeks to come!
Here’s the kitchen before moving in – it already looks a lot different – we removed a few cabinets and the weird wooden panels.
The other side of the kitchen – the dining room.
The room we’ll use as the office (outside of the kitchen)
Another view of the living room. And there is a garage, big basement, guest bedroom and 1.5 baths. But we can look at those another day!
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