Finding Our Home

About five years ago we got serious about buying a house, we wanted to get one right after we got married(10 years ago) but the market was crazy!  Everything was really high, and it just didn't seem possible, but we didn't give up, we kept our eyes and ears open.  After, my husband graduated from college and we had two little kids then we really started looking again and didn't want to give up until we found something perfect for us.  While we started looking seriously, for a house, the market changed(again), the housing market crashed and we were able to see more houses in our price range. Although the prices didn't drop as much as you would think, it was better!  We didn't have a lot of money, so even the "deals" were too expensive for us!  It seemed like everything was out of our price range!  It was really discouraging, but we just kept going and trying our hardest to get something for our family.

After looking for a while(like a year) and seeing so little that would work for us, we knew our only option was to go with a "fixer upper."  We were going to make something work for us, even if it didn't look perfect!  I had to brace myself for something awful but tried to remind myself that I would like it in the long run. 

 Sometimes, it is so hard to see the potential when the house smells and looks so bad(I think the smell is worse)!  

Looking for a "fixer upper" really opened our eyes to look at houses in a different way, we were looking more at the structure, and the floor plans instead of the countertops and carpet(the carpet and countertops were usually super gross).  We started to get pickier in our looking, because, although, we knew we wouldn't be able to get a house that looked perfect we could get something that will be perfect for us in the long run.  We prioritized our wants and made sure the house we were buying had the things that were most important to us.

If you are looking for a house, make sure you make a list of the things that are most important to you and do not compromise on those!  This was our "must" list: master bathroom(I was surprised at how many starter-homes do not have a master bathroom!), three bedrooms upstairs (because I had two little kids that I wanted close to me, but not having to share a room), a garage, an unfinished basement(not a must but a bonus), we did not want to be on a busy road, and a good sized backyard.   I didn't think that list was too demanding but it was super hard to find a house, in our price range, that had all those things!

We looked and looked, but FINALLY, we were able to find our house:

Doesn't this look like an adventure waiting to happen!!

 Ahh!  This kitchen gives me anxiety just looking at it, again!  It was so scary buying this house but I love it now!

This is how all the bedrooms looked!  They were so dirty!  The carpet was original to the house and it totally looked like they had changed the oil of the car in this room, it was so frightening!

We put offers in on probably 30 houses, over the year we were looking, but every time we would be outbid and we didn't want to go more money(or couldn't go more money).  It was a really frustrating time.  The house that we ended up buying was the worst looking house that we had put a bid on, but it was the only house that had all of our "musts" and we feel very lucky to have gotten our house at the time we did, even with the problems that it had or we never would have been able to afford it!

 OH MAN, our house needed a lot of work!  My sister walked through our house before we bought it and she begged me not to buy it(she just didn't have the vision:)).  It was seriously nasty!  It was really dirty and smelled really bad(like a stinky dog and cat pee).  We hoped that just getting new carpet and new paint would get rid of the smell, but we ended up doing a complete overhaul on the whole house, and I love how it turned out!

When I say EVERYTHING needed to be re-done, and I really mean EVERYTHING!  I'm going to break things down in a couple post and talk to you about some of our step by step choices.  I also wanted to give you some of the tips that I've learned a long the way.  I hope this is informative if you have any questions just let me know and I'll try to get to them best I can!

  

We knew it was going to take a long time to get everything done, but we also knew it would be worth it in the end!  Honestly, when we moved in I was told it was going to take 10 years to fix it all up, and I was crushed to hear that(that's WAY too long)!  We have been in the house five years and we are still doing fixing but it has slowed down a ton in the last two years.   We've finished almost all of the main projects, and now we are just doing things slowly.  Honestly, I don't know if we'll ever be done because we want to do more work and change things, I think it is just part of owning a home! 

It has been so much work, but I would do it over again in a second!  I loved making the decisions to make my house my own.  I loved watching my visions come together!  It has been amazing watching how my husband has learned so many new skills and has been able to do so much to our house.  He does mostly every, I paint and buy supplies.

Here are some afters:

I need to take more pictures of how my house my house looks now.  I'll be posting more "after" shots when I go into more details of everything we've done.  This is just a look at our kitchen/living room area.  So there is more to come!