That Day We Bought A House

Eric and I will celebrate 10 years of marriage this summer. In all this time, we have never owned a home. We lived with my grandmother just after we were married until we finished our undergraduate degrees. We rented apartments and a townhome through graduate school. And we have been renting our first house as Eric begins his career.

Earlier this year, as soon as spring had sprung, I was browsing homes online. When the market started picking up and there were several homes in our search criteria available, I contacted a realtor. This home was the first one I walked through, but I fell in love with it when I first saw the listing photo of the outside.

I had just been telling a friend a day or two before how important a front porch was to me. I couldn't believe that this house went on the market right after that.

The inside was just as impressive as the outside. All three bathrooms had been updated, the kitchen cabinets were already painted white, and there was finished space in the basement for a playroom. We were looking for a home with four bedrooms, and this one only has three; but, there is a small space off the master bedroom that qualifies as its own room. After touring the home, I wasn't sure what to think--it was the first house I had seen! So I went back out, looking at different types of homes in different areas. I got discouraged as often as I was encouraged. I wasn't sure we were going to find what we were looking for.

Then I found another home that had a big addition built on it and provided so much more living space that I thought would work really well for our family. I wanted Eric to see it, so we scheduled a day to go, and our realtor, knowing that I still liked that first house, asked if we wanted to see that one as well since Eric hadn't seen it yet. We went ahead and scheduled to see it after seeing the other house.

As fate would have it, when we arrived at the house with the addition built on, we found a flood in the basement as a result of a huge storm we'd had the day before. It was a definite "no" on the home that I thought was going to be the favorite.

When we arrived at the other house, it was as if we all breathed a collective sigh when we walked in the front door. The sellers had left chocolate chip cookies on the table for us, which was a definite hit with the kids! And I reaffirmed my love for this house. The price had just been dropped, and I felt like the house had just been waiting for us to realize it was the one.

 

We closed on the house on Friday, and we will move in next month! We are so excited to finally be at this stage of life! And, yes, we have plans for this house....