our house story

I hope no one sees this post as bragging or anything like that, I just wanted to document our house as we bought it.  I always enjoy getting home tours from others on their blogs but if that’s not your thing, you are more than welcome to skip this post.  Here’s the story of how we came to buy our home.

house front they had spray painted the grass green, nice!

 

We first walked through our house on December 6, 2011.  It was out of our price range, but in the neighborhood we wanted and near another house we were seeing that day so I asked our agent to indulge us, I was thinking that maybe we’d just throw out a low offer to HUD since we’d have nothing to loose by doing so.  We ended up really liking the other house we saw that day, it was in really good condition and had more bedrooms upstairs, plus it was less expensive so we offered on the other house (we were outbid) and didn’t pursue our house at that time. 

Entry & coat closet (this is the part of the house that has changed the most, pretty much everything has been painted or stained)

  

main floor bath & deck

 

December 21st, the morning before we left town to go home for Christmas I noticed that there was a significant price drop on our house (about 10%), putting it into our price range!  But we were hurrying out the door for a road trip.  So Dan and I talked about it as we drove to Utah and though we couldn’t remember much about the house, we called our relator and asked him to put in an offer on the house another $10k lower than the new price and asking them for concessions.  What can I say?  We’re cheap.  He seemed pretty skeptical and told us not to hold our breaths but we felt good about it. 

laundry (mud) room & garage this is the half portion of our 2 1/2 garage, it comes in handy.

 

formal living & dining

  

We found out on Christmas eve that our offer was accepted!  I was shocked.  We hurried and overnighted earnest money and signed contracts before everything closed up for the holidays.  We looked up the online photos but really couldn’t remember how the house was put together, we just remembered weird things like the metal pole they had in the entry to the formal living room, and the green carpet in the basement!  We just knew that we loved the neighborhood, the house was plenty big and it was a killer deal.  The day we got back in town we had our realtor take us out so we could go remember the house. These pictures all are from that day (Jan 3, 2012).

family room

  

Kitchen/eating area

 

Master bedroom we each have our own closet and vanity, which is so nice!  It makes us totally efficient if we want to get ready at the same time.

  

 

2nd (girls’) bedroom & closet

 

Jack&Jill bathroom (connects to the girls’ room and the hall)

 

We closed on the house mid February, just a few days before Sophie’s 5th birthday.  It was surreal to walk out of there with keys, the first while in the house it didn’t feel like it could really be ours, I was just waiting for someone to show up and tell us to get out.

3rd (Jacob’s) bedroom

 

4th (basement) bedroom

 

Some people shop for a house and buy one that suits their taste.  I think our experience could better be described as house hunting.  Because I devoted hours each day to watching our favorite neighborhoods, checking up on the market and going through the dozens of homes from our parameters that were emailed to me daily.  I would send Dan my favorites and he’d say whether he thought we should go see them.  We were looking for the best house with the most potential in our price range in an area we liked.  I am so happy with what we were able to come up with.  We hunted for our house for about 6 months and I was persistent, never taking a holiday, just convinced that if I didn’t stay on top of it I’d miss “the deal.”  Which we feel really paid off.

basement bathroom

  

basement (play) main room

 

backyard

 

Sure, our house still needs a lot of work to reach the potential we see in it, but that was the plan and half of the fun right?