I’ve alluded to the fact that we want to move, but I haven’t really gone into much detail on the blog. I keep thinking that once things are actually moving along a little more that I’ll start some sort of weekly series about what we’re doing and where we’re going and what our timeline is. But the fact is, it’s a slow process and who knows when we’ll actually start making progress and in the meantime details are piling up that I don’t want to forget. I’m always interested to read blogs where they share the process of building or decorating and the thought process behind what is going on, so I thought you might like that, too! I might not post regularly until we are actually building or buying or renovating or whatever, but I figured that today was as good as any other day to spill the beans, right? So forgive a really long post without any pictures.
This past spring marks ten years that we’ve lived in the Rock House. We found ourselves there quite by accident, but have loved every minute of making this house our home. Beemer wasn’t quite a year old when we moved in and we brought both of our babies home from the hospital here. We’ve had birthdays and dinner parties and so many momentous occasions here. Josh has been ready to move on for several years, but I just haven’t felt ready. Sure the house is small and we would be more comfortable in something a little larger in a less busy neighborhood, but something about it still felt like home to me. I knew that when the time came, I would know it and would feel comfortable and at peace about leaving.
Right after Mother’s Day, on a Tuesday night, we were talking about having bought my car and how to better budget for the remainder of the year. Budgeting turned into life conversations and we were discussing our careers and how happy we were and if we thought God would ever lead us into a new direction. Josh was saying he needed a hobby (insert snarky laugh here) and mentioned flipping houses. We’ve talked about buying/renting/selling at some point in the future since construction and decorating are two things we both love. I joked over dinner that night that what we really needed was a fixer-upper to make our own and that would fulfill our need for more space and his lack of a hobby. I casually mentioned that we should look at local real estate and just “see what’s out there”. The girls were away that night and we didn’t have anything else to do. In true Josh fashion, he was willing to indulge me but cautioned me that we were NOT in the market to move right now and he was worried that I would see something I liked and decide that I had to have it right now. That’s only sort of what happened.
There was this house that I’ve always wondered about. I had no idea who lived there and the front is kind of weird and not completely my style. I didn’t drive by it often, but when I did I was so curious about what it looked like inside and how much it would cost. The last time I was in the neighborhood was the fall and it had a for sale sign in the front yard, but I still wasn’t completely on board with moving. Wouldn’t you know that this was the first house that came up in our search that had the things we were looking for — a large fenced yard, garage, 3+ bedrooms, more than one bathroom and a dedicated office space for Josh. He laughed when I raised my eyebrows and made him flip through the photographs again.There were hardly any interior photographs, but the list of amenities and the outdoor images were enough to make us smile. We decided to request a showing even though the house was about 20% more than the top of our budget. The real estate agent emailed me back right away and we scheduled a showing for Thursday morning.
I tried not to think about it too much, but I’m an over-thinker by nature. I think I got about 3 hours of sleep that night. I didn’t know enough about the house to be excited and since there weren’t many interior photos it’s not like I could decorate it in my head. I don’t know what kept me up, but I spent the majority of that night mulling over the possibilities of our future. On Wednesday night, the girls were at church and we were debating what to eat for dinner. Josh mentioned grabbing fast food and doing a drive by. See? That’s why he’s my soulmate! There wasn’t much to see that we didn’t already know, but just seeing it in real life made me a little more excited.
We didn’t tell anybody we were even thinking about moving, much less looking at a house. We met the real estate agent at 9:30 on a Thursday morning and I was a nervous wreck. When the agent opened the front door for us and before I could even look around I heard a voice from around the corner call out. The sellers were eating breakfast in the kitchen. The agent apologized profusely and we did the best we could to look diligently while being respectful of the current owners. I originally planned to take some photographs for reference, but I felt weird doing that in front of the sellers, so we took diligent notes and attempted to recreate the floor plan when we got home.
The house was built in 1996 and it looked like it. Although the bones were good and everything seemed structurally sound and well taken care of, there was a lot of brass, wallpaper borders and figurines. We had to have a very discerning eye to imagine us there with our own things. To make a long story short, our “pros” far outnumbered our “cons and we were both a little surprised at how much we liked the house.
The agent sent us a list of ten or so more houses in our price range, but nothing else seemed remotely close to what we are looking for. Unfortunately for us, we live in a very rural area where larger family homes rarely go on the market. Small farm houses and garden homes have more turnover, but typically families build houses if they are looking for more square footage. We have toyed around with waiting for something larger to come onto the market and hoping it was something we liked, building a new house or buying the house that I grew up in from my parents since they have toyed around with downsizing. We aren’t in a huge hurry, but at 34 I’m ready to think about buying a house that can grow with us, but leave us without a mortgage by the time we retire. Without a lot of options, it’s hard to know what to do and we don’t want to rush into making a decision.
The more we talked about the house over the next week, the more excited we got. We asked the agent lots of follow up questions and eventually scheduled a second showing. Although it was outside of the budget we had set for ourselves, we could have afforded to pay full price if we wanted. I’ll be honest and say that nothing was harder than resolving not to spend that much. We knew the sellers were motivated and decided to make a low offer to see if we could get them to negotiate a little. What happened instead, is that we were outbid and another wonderful family ended up with the house.
I won’t lie and say I wasn’t upset to begin with. I don’t like to lose. The other problem I have is that I feel like I can make any house cute. I don’t want to settle for anything less than the perfect house for us, but I have a tendency to fall in love immediately and dream up ways to “fix things” without thinking about what we really need. We spent the next month talking our housing situation to death. We’ve looked at a few more houses, in person and via the web, but nothing has spoken to us yet. We are leaning heavily towards building exactly what we want. I think the benefit to viewing such a great house is that we learned a little more about what we do and don’t want. We found a few places where we aren’t willing to settle and a few other things that we could take or leave. I’m not saying that if an amazing house shows up on the market today that we won’t consider it, but for now we’re looking for land and tweaking some house plans that we’ve been in love with for years.
If you follow me on Pinterest, you’ll probably see lots of pins on this board as we talk more and more about what we want out of a house. The kids want to look at bedroom ideas on the web ad nauseum, but I’m glad they are as excited as we are to move forward. And if at some point we feel like we’re supposed to spend more time at the Rockin’ House, then we’ll just do a few more renovations and be happy here, too.
