We loved our old home and we always said if it just had a garage and a basement we would be all set. We made it work for us and we loved our little home our friend. I would occasionally look for houses for sale and then readily come to the conclusion we are happy where we are and life would go on. One day David and I were driving Jensen to preschool and we were looking a the outside of houses becausee we knew we wanted to change the outside of the house. I talked about the houses I love. Brick front, white pillars, black shutters, with rocking chairs on the front porch. Also recognizing this would never happen with our little home and on with our looking we went. A few days or so later I dropped the children off at school and turned the wrong way out of the school parking lot and to be honest I was thinking about other things(primary) and soon enough I realized I had no idea exactly where I was at. Did I take the 1st or 2nd turn? I had no idea so I stopped on the side of the road got my barrings and decided if I turned right left right left I would get out of the twisting turning mess and I drove straight into a home I never had seen before brick front, white pillars,black shutters, rocking chairs on the front porch and it was for sale. I honestly could not believe I was staring at the house I had described days before. I went online took a look at it and decided it was out of our price range and the layout was less than desirable and didn't think much of it, I did however show David it and he was stunned as well but we were happy where we were and pinning over something that couldn't be, is not us. A week or so had passed and through a series of events our circumstances changed and the house was setting right on our price range. We went online and looked at the house again and we talked it through and decided we really are happy where we are and making a big change like that right now was not on the docket and off to bed we went at peace with our decision.
At roughly 3am I woke up like a shot and all that was on my mind was that house. I got out of bed and went online again looking at the house. I knew right then we need to try to buy that house. We got the name of a realtor on Sunday and called him the next day to set up an appointment to look at the house. That Monday morning a contract was put on the house. I was bummed. I couldn't believe it. We decided to meet with the realtor anyways to have him appraise our house and I told him we really wanted that house and if it didn't work out were we could buy it then we would just keep our eyes open and call him if we saw something we were interested in but we weren't going to be house hunting so to speak.
I spent the next few days mourning the loss of the house I loved(well at least I know I loved the outside). David and I had a heart to heart and I was so certain we should buy that house and my oh so wise husband said did you ever think that you saw that house to get you prepped to actually start looking for a house? I had never thought about it that way and so the hunt began but what kind of house did I want, I had no idea. It was decided the next day was Saturday and I would go to all of the open houses that day to see what I liked about houses, what I didn't like etc, I will tell you I was very critical of evey single house we went to see that day. I learned I don't like saunas in the basement, cramped spaces, flowery wallpaper in almost every room, basements that were cut up into so many rooms it seeemd like a dungeon, yellow oak cabinets and trim everywhere, houses near busy roads or on curvy roads with no street lights. We spent Saturday evening researching new builds and quickly realized this was not for us and called the realtor and had him set up visits to 3 houses and then we added one we saw on Saturday it was a busy open house and David really wanted us to go back to it. It was our favorite from Saturday but I felt like it was too big and we would not use all of the space and it felt like it would be indulgent of us to get such a large home for our family but it happend to be on the same street as another house we were going to see so why not check it out again.
I did my research of the houses we were going to see on Monday and also read about not using spaces in homes as they were originally intended. When we went to look at houses again I looked at them differently. How would we use each room? Would it go to waste? With this new found ideaology I looked a the houses differently. It was more about how we would live in the houses. I asked myself if the kids are outside playing how accesible is the bathroom so they wouldn't need to trapse through the whole house, can we cook together in the kitchen, is there a room for us to have be a peaceful retreat, is there a playroom, is there a place were we can do art projects and science experiments and not care if it gets a mess, is there room for food storage, is there a place for them to read and do homework, is there a place to be able to play games, is there a place for me to do my projects? It seemed like a tall order for our budget but all of those things were and are important to me and so off we went. The first house we saw we didn't even look at the whole thing and the same with the 3rd. The second house was great until we went into the basement and I went into the laundryroom and started gasping for air(can I say I was sick for a week after that) David rapidly ushered me right out of the house. There had to be black mold and cats in that room. We then went to the house we had already seen but mind you I was being quite cynical and there we no less than 5 other couples in the house the last time we toured it and I was looking at it very differently. When we walked in I saw all of its possiblities. I actually could see our family living there. I went through every room and stood and looked and knew what it would be.
The realtor seeing we liked this house said there is a house comparable to it and we shoudl go see it so he set up an appt with me the next day to go look at a comparable house to that one and then David went and saw the comparable the next morning, honestly they compared in price and I loved the master bath of the comparable but the layout was eh and really there was no comparison. We knew which house we should buy and so we put in a offer and the next day, the last day of school we had ourselves a house!!!
In the previous post you heard of the craziness surrounding the closing and move to our new houme and by the time we put our old friend on the market there was an offer in under 3 hours(we didn't even have a for sale sign in front of it yet) $500 less than what we wanted but it was SOLD lickety split!
I look back at this whole experience and am see how Heavenly Father jsut guided us through the whole thing and am so grateful for all he ahs blessed us with over the last year!!!
