We have had some less than pleasant (albeit humorous at times) memories. Like living in apartments without a washer/dryer. Or the time we had to take out the WHOLE kitchen and live without a fridge/oven/microwave/dishwasher/etc for a month. Or dealing with downstairs neighbors whose smoke would stink up our apartment on occasion. And then of course there is the time we moved across country blindly and ending up in a semi-sketchy complex.
We have also had some great memories in these homes. Our first place together as a married couple. Our favorite Provo apartment (two bedroom with washer and dryer for the win!) Bringing home our daughter from the hospital, even if it was to the sketchy Houston apartment. Watching her learn to crawl and then walk around the apartment in Tomball. And the many laughs and memories along the way.
Through it all, we had the same philosophy about choosing where to live. We often settled for the minimum required to get us to the next stage. There were always bigger and newer apartments we could have picked. Complexes in better areas or with nicer amenities. We even looked at many of them but always decided to save our money for the eventual "big move".
Well, that big move finally happened! When we initially came down to Texas we weren't sure what to expect and certainly didn't plan to settle down. God has had a different plan for us, however, and shown us time and time again that this is where he wants us. Once we understood that plan we realized it would be smart to buy a house (thanks to a very affordable housing market).
The process was far from easy. I'll try to keep this short, but it was quite the ordeal. We started looking in August and made an offer on a home we saw the first day out. Another offer was put in on that house the same day and they beat us. So we kept looking. Shortly after that we found another house in the neighborhood we really liked but needed a bit of work. We decided to put an offer in on it and lost to a higher offer again. Football was about to start up and Brett's schedule to look at houses/sign papers was soon to be severely limited. We had one last shot to go out and look at houses and we fell in love with one. Things seemed to be falling into place and they accepted our offer and we were under contract. We were a little uneasy about the location (we had to move out of a ward that we love) but really liked the floor plan and the neighborhood seemed great. 2 weeks after we signed the contract the appraisal came back low on the house. There were some errors on the reported square footage and the owners decided they couldn't sell it for the lower price. The canceled our contact and took it off the market. Heart broken and frustrated we started the process again. We half-heartedly put an offer in on a house expecting to get outbid, and we did. Finally I got excited about the prospects again when we met with a builder and were able to get a floor plan for a new house that fit in our budget. We even thought we had a contract for a few weeks. The builder was being wishy-washy and kept taking things away while simultaneously increasing the price. A few avoided calls later (from them, not us) what was once a great deal soon became something we would have been settling with. We backed out and started AGAIN at the beginning.
This time we were ready. It was mid november (almost 4 months after starting) when we walked into our soon-to-be home. It was at the top of our budget but was in the neighborhood that we initially really wanted. It may sound silly, but from the first step in the door something felt different about this home. We had just come from a smaller/older/cheaper home that we felt pretty good about and could have made work. But this one, this one was different. It filled us with excitement! Brett says this was the first one he really, REALLY, liked. Looking back, we might have been foolish with some of our other offers...whoops! Luckily, someone was looking out for us!
Long story short, we made an offer, they countered, we accepted and everything else went smoothly! We closed the day before leaving town for Christmas break and moved in on Janurary 18th. It was the perfect Christmas present. We've been here for just over 2 weeks now and still love every part of it!
Okay, enough words. Here is a photo tour of the house..... Our home!
(for added fun, play "spot Brooke" in some of the pictures)
Front of the house
When you walk in the door the stairway is directly in front and the living room is off to the left.
There is a formal dining area that we decided to use as a playroom. It received proper initiation by 7 toodlers last week when we hosted playgroup with a bunch of friends.
Breakfast nook (aka where we eat every meal since we got rid of the formal dining room). The door on the left leads to a HUGE pantry that I forgot to photograph. The door hidden on the right leads to the garage. The door not pictures on the left leads outside.
At the top of the stairs is a game room/family room. We have the TV up here but need to finish furnishing the rest of the room. The laundry room is upstairs also.
Bathroom upstair
Linen closet in the hallway
Brooke's bedroom
Each secondary bedroom has a walk-in closet. Also, I learned (as you will see later) closets are incredibly hard to photograph.
The 3rd bedroom full of random stuff right now.
The master suite is on the right side of the house (when coming up the stairs) separated from the other bedrooms by the family room.
The larger closet (mine/storage)
Brett's closet
The backyard with firepit and shed
Dud you spot this little girl in the pictures above? One thing is for sure, she loves the new house and all the new places to explore and play!
3 comments:
Congrats on the house:) looks like a great place to live!
Awesome house! have fun making it your home.
Don't you love how you move into a house and suddenly it feels like you need a ton more stuff?
It looks like a great place. Congratulations! Your house buying process sounds way different than ours... we looked at just a couple of houses that were for sale, actually with the intention of convincing the sellers to rent to us, but then started to change our minds as we realized how good the housing market was at the time. All of the places we looked at would have been great options, but when we found out the health teacher (who is in our ward) was thinking about selling, we went to see his house and later that day we were talking about all the things we wanted to do with "our house." It wasn't even technically on the market! I totally understand the feeling when you walk into a house and know that it's the right one though, because we definitely had that, even though it was only the 3rd house we looked at and we only looked in one area. Our process was so easy and unusual that I'm afraid when we do eventually move we'll have no idea how to go about buying a house the way people normally do!
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