one year later...
A year ago today we were loading boxes into moving containers and bidding farewell to our home. It was a late night. We were exhausted. I had tried my best to clean out our house before we even began moving with hopes that it would lighten the load, but it hardly made a dent. Somewhere along the way, we got it into our heads that it would be fun to take on a fixer upper. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was playing HGTV in the background all day since I was home with a baby. We had toyed with the idea of moving multiple times since we had been married. It would have made sense to take the plunge when we didn't have a baby and were operating on two incomes, but for some reason it seemed like now was the time because truth be told, there really is never a perfect time to move.
We called our realtor friend who listed our house and began lining up homes for us to see. Thinking our house would sell in a few days, we anxiously scoured the MLS listing looking for the perfect home. I found one that I fell in love with and jotted down the address so we could see it that weekend. We wrote down a few more and sent them to our realtor. He scheduled our viewings and told us that the house I had selected was under contract. I was so disappointed, but I figured there was surely another house that would catch my eye. Feeling like we had a short timeline, we found a home that was the runner up and made an offer. Long story short, the inspection came back with a lot of issues so we backed out. Weeks passed and I kept driving by that beloved house that was under contract, and every time I did the sale sign was still in the yard.
Not long after Aaron and I married we considered buying a home. We drove by one that really caught our eye, called the realtor listed on the sign, and we felt confident it would work out because the house had been on the market for a year. We placed an offer and then we prayed about it. We asked the Lord to clearly shut the door if it wasn't a wise decision. Go figure that the day we placed an offer, another offer came in. It was a full price, cash offer. The Lord answered that prayer loud and clear. And so we prayed the same prayer this time. And as it would happen, each house we liked went under contract before we could place an offer. Albeit, a little frustrating during the searching process, I knew that God was answering our prayers and would open the door at the right time. Our house had a ton of showings but no offers, and so we decided that we would stop looking at houses until ours sold. Weeks went by with showing after showing and no offers. The night of our anniversary, I received a call for a showing. The realtor said her daughter and son in law were interested and wanted to see the house as soon as possible. The next day, we got a call with an offer! They loved our house! We accepted and signed back on to the MLS website that night to begin the house hunt. Low and behold. the beloved house was back on the market! The contract had fallen through! We did a walk through that weekend, placed an offer, and 4 weeks later we moved in. God's timing, as always, was perfect.
The weeks prior to moving were spent researching DIY methods. This was going to be quick and easy. I mean Chip and Joanna can do a whole house in an hour. Surely we can get ours done in no time. But a few weeks in we realized that flipping a house is easier said than done, especially when you're not a professional and you don't have a whole team of professionals helping you. So I want to share a few things that I've learned during this process because I have learned a lot. And if you're thinking of buying a fixer upper, or in the middle of fixing up a house yourself, this might be of help to you.
1. Things take time.
This is true in all aspects of life. Work, marriage, child rearing, house flipping. Nothing ever goes according to plan or as quickly and smoothly as you expect it will. I no longer place a timeline on anything we do because that only leads to frustration. Rather, I have learned to just accept the process and keep chipping away. Aaron and I are both amateurs, and we have other things to do besides work on our house. He has a demanding job, and I do, too. And so house projects happen when we have time and energy. Early on, we learned that we could either power through this and spend the entire time fighting and exhausted, making it a miserable process, or we could work on it together, enjoying the fruits of our labor, and allowing it to be something that strengthened our marriage and made for great memories. We've had a lot of late nights. We're tired. And we could be further along but we've made sure to take time for ourselves. Truth be told, there are periods of time where we choose to spend our evenings together doing whatever we want rather than working. It will be there and we'll get to it when we get to it. After all, we plan to spend many years in this house. We want all of them to be good years!
2. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Ever. Nothing is ever as easy as it looks. This is another lesson we've learned. Just when we think we've found a quick and simple project, it quickly turns into more. Prime example: we are working on the sun room. This was supposed to be our easiest room. It doesn't have popcorn ceilings, the flooring has already been removed, so all we needed to do was paint and lay flooring. When Aaron took off the baseboards, we learned that the wall had water damage and mold. We also learned that the crown molding had been installed upside down. So, sheet rock had to be replaced and the outside of the house had to be repaired to prevent any further water damage. New baseboards and crown molding will have to be cut. We also learned that all of the Youtube videos demo-ing the removal of popcorn on the ceiling are lies! The only way it is easy is if the popcorn has never been painted over. The internet, and HGTV, are not a true representation of how difficult it is to flip a house. We've learned to take those things at face value and not allow ourselves to be discouraged. I almost wish we had a show so people could see what it's really like to flip a house when you're working, have a child, a small budget, and aren't a professional. If there's one thing we have gained from this process, it's pride. We appreciate and like this house even more because we're transforming it into our home.
3. It's a mess.
Living in the house you are flipping is a total mess. A mess like no other mess. Our house is disgusting most of the time, and I'll quickly admit that I don't do much to clean it. There's really no point. I just try to keep it decent because the moment I get the whole thing clean, it's time to start scraping more popcorn off the ceiling. It's a construction zone. And so rather than allowing this to bother me, I've just embraced it. The upside is that I feel less pressured to have a picture perfect house. It has also freed up time that I would spend cleaning. This has come in super handy with a toddler. Her mess, our mess - it doesn't matter! And so if you're a clean freak and perfectionist (which I was), you either need to learn to let it go, you need to hire professionals and move in after they finish, or you need to buy a new home that requires minimal work. Honestly, this has been very good for me. I have been forced to accept and navigate through chaos like never before. And you know what, I think my family may end up enjoying me all the better for it!
4. Just keep going.
Another lesson that we can apply to all areas of life. Don't stop. We ignorantly thought we could flip this house in a year. We were wrong. But in a year we've flipped 3 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, the living room, sun room, hallway, entry hall, yard, and addressed many issues along the way. We still have two bedrooms, the laundry room, kitchen, and dining room left to go plus all new flooring, but we're getting there. We've learned that the only way to keep going is to immediately tear something up so that you have to work on it. When we're almost finished with one room, we decide what the next room will be and we start doing some demolition. Because it would be easy to just give up and stop but what a shame it would be to flip just half of the house, right? That would be pointless, too. And so we just chip away here and there, making forward progress. We don't want to give up on our hard work and walk away before we see the finished product. There's too much potential, and there's so much invested.
But more than the house, we're trying to build a home. A place where we find comfort, peace, and solace. A place we all want to come to at the end of the day. And a home that is more than just walls and decor. It's the place where our family is together. The place where we make memories. The place where we learn and grow. Where we love and feel loved. A safe haven in this crazy, loud, noisy world. And that's what we really want to build here. And that will take time. It won't be easy. It will definitely get messy, but we must always keep going. Because this is our home. And a good home is worth all the effort.
We called our realtor friend who listed our house and began lining up homes for us to see. Thinking our house would sell in a few days, we anxiously scoured the MLS listing looking for the perfect home. I found one that I fell in love with and jotted down the address so we could see it that weekend. We wrote down a few more and sent them to our realtor. He scheduled our viewings and told us that the house I had selected was under contract. I was so disappointed, but I figured there was surely another house that would catch my eye. Feeling like we had a short timeline, we found a home that was the runner up and made an offer. Long story short, the inspection came back with a lot of issues so we backed out. Weeks passed and I kept driving by that beloved house that was under contract, and every time I did the sale sign was still in the yard.
Not long after Aaron and I married we considered buying a home. We drove by one that really caught our eye, called the realtor listed on the sign, and we felt confident it would work out because the house had been on the market for a year. We placed an offer and then we prayed about it. We asked the Lord to clearly shut the door if it wasn't a wise decision. Go figure that the day we placed an offer, another offer came in. It was a full price, cash offer. The Lord answered that prayer loud and clear. And so we prayed the same prayer this time. And as it would happen, each house we liked went under contract before we could place an offer. Albeit, a little frustrating during the searching process, I knew that God was answering our prayers and would open the door at the right time. Our house had a ton of showings but no offers, and so we decided that we would stop looking at houses until ours sold. Weeks went by with showing after showing and no offers. The night of our anniversary, I received a call for a showing. The realtor said her daughter and son in law were interested and wanted to see the house as soon as possible. The next day, we got a call with an offer! They loved our house! We accepted and signed back on to the MLS website that night to begin the house hunt. Low and behold. the beloved house was back on the market! The contract had fallen through! We did a walk through that weekend, placed an offer, and 4 weeks later we moved in. God's timing, as always, was perfect.
The weeks prior to moving were spent researching DIY methods. This was going to be quick and easy. I mean Chip and Joanna can do a whole house in an hour. Surely we can get ours done in no time. But a few weeks in we realized that flipping a house is easier said than done, especially when you're not a professional and you don't have a whole team of professionals helping you. So I want to share a few things that I've learned during this process because I have learned a lot. And if you're thinking of buying a fixer upper, or in the middle of fixing up a house yourself, this might be of help to you.
1. Things take time.
This is true in all aspects of life. Work, marriage, child rearing, house flipping. Nothing ever goes according to plan or as quickly and smoothly as you expect it will. I no longer place a timeline on anything we do because that only leads to frustration. Rather, I have learned to just accept the process and keep chipping away. Aaron and I are both amateurs, and we have other things to do besides work on our house. He has a demanding job, and I do, too. And so house projects happen when we have time and energy. Early on, we learned that we could either power through this and spend the entire time fighting and exhausted, making it a miserable process, or we could work on it together, enjoying the fruits of our labor, and allowing it to be something that strengthened our marriage and made for great memories. We've had a lot of late nights. We're tired. And we could be further along but we've made sure to take time for ourselves. Truth be told, there are periods of time where we choose to spend our evenings together doing whatever we want rather than working. It will be there and we'll get to it when we get to it. After all, we plan to spend many years in this house. We want all of them to be good years!
2. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Ever. Nothing is ever as easy as it looks. This is another lesson we've learned. Just when we think we've found a quick and simple project, it quickly turns into more. Prime example: we are working on the sun room. This was supposed to be our easiest room. It doesn't have popcorn ceilings, the flooring has already been removed, so all we needed to do was paint and lay flooring. When Aaron took off the baseboards, we learned that the wall had water damage and mold. We also learned that the crown molding had been installed upside down. So, sheet rock had to be replaced and the outside of the house had to be repaired to prevent any further water damage. New baseboards and crown molding will have to be cut. We also learned that all of the Youtube videos demo-ing the removal of popcorn on the ceiling are lies! The only way it is easy is if the popcorn has never been painted over. The internet, and HGTV, are not a true representation of how difficult it is to flip a house. We've learned to take those things at face value and not allow ourselves to be discouraged. I almost wish we had a show so people could see what it's really like to flip a house when you're working, have a child, a small budget, and aren't a professional. If there's one thing we have gained from this process, it's pride. We appreciate and like this house even more because we're transforming it into our home.
3. It's a mess.
Living in the house you are flipping is a total mess. A mess like no other mess. Our house is disgusting most of the time, and I'll quickly admit that I don't do much to clean it. There's really no point. I just try to keep it decent because the moment I get the whole thing clean, it's time to start scraping more popcorn off the ceiling. It's a construction zone. And so rather than allowing this to bother me, I've just embraced it. The upside is that I feel less pressured to have a picture perfect house. It has also freed up time that I would spend cleaning. This has come in super handy with a toddler. Her mess, our mess - it doesn't matter! And so if you're a clean freak and perfectionist (which I was), you either need to learn to let it go, you need to hire professionals and move in after they finish, or you need to buy a new home that requires minimal work. Honestly, this has been very good for me. I have been forced to accept and navigate through chaos like never before. And you know what, I think my family may end up enjoying me all the better for it!
4. Just keep going.
Another lesson that we can apply to all areas of life. Don't stop. We ignorantly thought we could flip this house in a year. We were wrong. But in a year we've flipped 3 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, the living room, sun room, hallway, entry hall, yard, and addressed many issues along the way. We still have two bedrooms, the laundry room, kitchen, and dining room left to go plus all new flooring, but we're getting there. We've learned that the only way to keep going is to immediately tear something up so that you have to work on it. When we're almost finished with one room, we decide what the next room will be and we start doing some demolition. Because it would be easy to just give up and stop but what a shame it would be to flip just half of the house, right? That would be pointless, too. And so we just chip away here and there, making forward progress. We don't want to give up on our hard work and walk away before we see the finished product. There's too much potential, and there's so much invested.
But more than the house, we're trying to build a home. A place where we find comfort, peace, and solace. A place we all want to come to at the end of the day. And a home that is more than just walls and decor. It's the place where our family is together. The place where we make memories. The place where we learn and grow. Where we love and feel loved. A safe haven in this crazy, loud, noisy world. And that's what we really want to build here. And that will take time. It won't be easy. It will definitely get messy, but we must always keep going. Because this is our home. And a good home is worth all the effort.
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