Howdy friends! Today I thought that I would share with you about the place I now call home. As I mentioned before, I recently purchased my first house! It would be this wonderful new adventure that has kept me from blogging. It was right at the time of my last blog post in July of 2012, cough, cough, that I found out I was awarded the bid on this house! It was quite the journey to say the least!! I was in a weird place in my life…I think I still am. I was living with my parents and creeping into my late twenties. Insert depression and tears of not being where I wanted to be at this point in my life. It was time for a change and a big one! I needed my own space! We were all suffocating from all of my “junk”. I had moved home from college with a rather large collection of items, furniture…just plain old STUFF! And my stuff was taking over my parent’s house! They were sick of it and so was I. So I began looking at apartments. I looked high and low. However, I was stunned with sticker shock! To live in a decent area within my hometown and to only feature a modestly spaced one-bedroom; meant a cash flow I did not have. Insert another flood of tears because not only was I living with my parents and frustrated, but I could not afford to move out either! So is life, I suppose. One great day on my way to a family brunch with sweet friends, we pass through a neighborhood very close to my parent’s house and in a family-friendly part of town. And there it was…a horrible ugly house with spray painted graffiti that read “Happy Holidays” on the front of it. It really was an eye sore! But for some reason, I was intrigued. It had potential and I could see it. As soon as I got home I did a little research. The unsightly home was VERY cheap. Shocker. I mean, really, it has Happy Holidays spray painted on it.
My parents and I started crunching numbers and realized that the mortgage payments would be half the price of the one bedroom apartments I had been looking at! And the home was a foreclosure with only a one hundred dollar down option. Umm…okay, I can do this! With a large design project about to be complete and with my life savings, I could even afford to renovate this unattractive little gem into my dream home! And so the journey began! I toured the home…with my hand over my nose most of the time…and made an offer for less than asking price that day. We are talking crazy cheap people! Of course, I immediately started planning in my head!! I already had design plans in the works and sketches drawn! All of this excitement was quickly turned into heartbreak when the next day I learned that there were multiple offers and I was NOT the winning bidder. Lovely. I thought I had just stumbled across my dream home and it was just taken from me! Back to square one. I was totally defeated, but I started looking at more cheap fixer-uppers…constantly. Several months went by with no such luck. I still drove by the house once a week just to see what the new owners who stole my house were doing to it. And wouldn’t you know…they weren’t doing anything! It could be so cute!! Why are they not working on it!! Crazy, they must be crazy. About two months later I got a call from my realtor that said, the previous bidders had their finacing fall through and I was now the winning bidder. Holy moly. I had it. It was now MY house! After a long process to get the paperwork in order…because buying a house from the government is a real pain in the rear…the spray painted, eye sore was all mine and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it! I closed on the house November 2012 and finally moved in May 2013. Today I have most of the renovations done…well sort of! Over the next weeks and months, I am going to share with you my journey of renovating my very first home. So stay with me…it has been an exciting ride! So let’s begin…here is your first tour! These pictures are from the day of my inspection. The home is approximately 1600 sq. ft. on the main floor and has a basement that doubles the size. It has 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, living room, and family room/kitchen. I don’t have any pictures of the basement to share because…it is SCARY UGLY. So scary, that I didn’t even take a picture of it that day! But I have BIG plans for the basement! So welcome to my humble abode!
And because I just could not leave you with these lovely pictures of the nasty BEFORE, I had to share a sneak peek of the after! I had to have the whole house painted due to the "Happy Holidays". I am so glad that have those holiday decorations down and gone!!
