I shouldn’t be trying to write this right now, as I have two dudes that didn’t sleep well last night (subsequently, I didn’t, either) who are cranky and having a hard time entertaining themselves today! But I’ve been wanting to update anyone who hasn’t been fully caught up on our journey as of late. Plus I have other things I want to start writing about (mental purging), but I don’t want to do so without updating the timeline here.
My last post was about the possibility of buying land, and building small. That’s still our dream. But we ended up being forced to wait for another year while we come out from under the restrictions from our previous short sale. And while we waited, we ended up changing the timeline. The land in the pictures in the past post ended up selling while we waited, and we just weren’t finding our dream land at a dream price. So, rather than forcing it, we decided to buy a small house without a lot of land, and work on improving it, while paying off debt.
My parents plan to move soon, so one reason we decided to wait to build was so that we could be more available to help them, and then make decisions for our long term placement after they are settled. And, speaking of long term, we didn’t want to settle with land or location we didn’t want to live on for a long time, just to make it happen NOW.
So we found a little house (1,000 square foot or less–we’ve seen a couple different estimates). And we have really lucked out with this little house! It’s in a little town just outside our metro area, that has its own long history. It feels like a small town in the country, but literally right next to everything we access on a regular basis. And the house? It’s 117 years old. It has so much charm!
Our little new-to-us old house! (That day I was painting new doors for the front, but currently they wait in the shed, because replacing them has been really challenging and had to be put aside for another day)
Front porch texture ❤
So the last several months have been super busy with doing some renovating and personalizing the inside to make it more “ours”. The house was actually mostly already renovated by the business that used to own it (we are basically downtown in an area that is “mixed use”, meaning homes could be businesses or private residences). Lots of new in this old house, before we even purchased it. But the kitchen wasn’t quite adequate, so we made that our primary contribution to increase the value of the house and make it work for a family of four.
New and improved kitchen! Floors will still need to be done at some point, and a few finishing details on some of the cabinetry. But it’s functional for us for now! (ready for a party in this pic)
We thought we were downsized enough for our small house….we have found that we should have downsized more! We are crammed in here, but we still have some stuff to sort through and assimilate or donate at my folks’ house! One challenge has been that this house has almost NO closet space. So we needed furniture to store EVERYthing. We’ve been to IKEA a million times, and I’m not exaggerating.
Play area in front room
Dining Area
Reading Nook in the Dining Room
The boys’ “Library” in their bedroom
We’ve been enjoying having a space of our own again. We have a lot to do, particularly in the back yard. We’ll have a few indoor improvements to do before we sell again, including the floors and the bathroom vanity. But we’re enjoying it as is for a while (especially because we just had to replace the air conditioner unexpectedly! That’s another long story!)
Stay tuned for more updates on other happenings in our lives recently, and news of upcoming plans!
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