Never Would Have Thought....

This post is a long time coming...

Donny has always had a dream of home ownership. In fact, he has always talked about buying a fixer upper. My sweet husband can fix almost anything and he loves to work with his hands. I always thought buying a home would be a nice thing but I wouldn't say it was a dream of mine. And for sure not a fixer upper, more like my worst nightmare. I really don't care where we live as long as we have a roof over our heads and food to eat. And maybe some AC for the days that are over 100 degrees. ;) Donny, on the other hand, really cares about home ownership. I think this is just the difference between men and women. Honestly, I didn't know how much it meant to Donny until about May 2011 We were talking about the adoption and trying to figure out if we should start it while we live at my mom's or if we should go back to renting our own place and then start the adoption. Donny finally said that he really wanted to be in our own place before we have kids. Don't get me wrong, my mom's home is awesome and I loved living there but when Donny finally shared what he was feeling I just wanted to make it happen for him. I felt like if he's willing to work two jobs to get us out of debt and have me be a stay at home mom someday then I should be willing to move for him. It's the least I can do after all he does for me. The problem with the town we live in is that rent is really high so it's difficult to think about going back to renting in town. We have to have two bedrooms for the adoption, according to the law, and the cheapest two bedroom apartment I could find in town was $925 a month. Let me try and paint the picture a little better. This apartment was built in the 70's, is on the second floor, on a questionable street and didn't have laundry facilities. Um....move? I don't think so. I was pretty frustrated. Donny suggested we look into buying a home. I thought he was crazy, as per usual. We didn't have a down or closing costs saved up. But, he was right about getting out of debt so fast so I told him I would look into it but I didn't think that was going to be the answer.

So, I made an appointment with my families realtor, Steve Holmon. He's amazing by the way. Check out his website here. I gave Steve the run down of what we wanted. We wanted a three bedroom, 2 bath, with a mortgage under $1200. Steve kinda took a breath and said, "ok. It's going to be a bank owned, a short sale, its going to need work, probably a fixer." I told him that sounded fine to me, Donny can fix anything! :)  The first time I met with our loan lady I told her how much, or how little, we wanted to spend and she tilted her head a little and said, "ok, well lets see. There may not be much in that price bracket". I told her I had faith that something would come up. We also had all the time in the world since we weren't homeless or anything. We were qualified for an insane amount which was great for our ego but we knew it would be too high of a mortgage for us in the future. I asked her to tell us the range we would be looking in for a $1200 mortgage including property taxes and all that jazz. Armed with a solid range to be looking in the search was on! I was so excited!!! It was thrilling to actually be looking. I just couldn't believe that we were going to do this, that we were able to do this. Sadly, not much came up but I was determined to not raise our price range.  There is a reason we picked that mortgage amount. It was well thought out, planned on paper, budget done over and over, all other factors considered (fixing up the house, utilities, etc). We didn't want to risk losing the house we never thought we would own. (Dave Ramsey would be so proud!)

We extended our search out into Heritage Ranch, a small lake community located 20 minutes from our town. This place holds many dear memories to me as we used to vacation there at my grandparents place when we were kids. Also, my sister Jenny and her family live out there so we're out there a lot anyway. We looked at a house out there that had everything we were asking for. It was a short sale, we were the fifth offer, ours was accepted. And the waiting began. Donny really liked the house but I wasn't sold on it. A second house popped up out in Heritage around the corner from the house we already had an offer on. It was 200 sq. feet bigger and only had a neighbor on one side. Only problem was our realtor was on vaca. He's so awesome cus I emailed him in the morning asking to see the place and he called the listing agent and set it up for that afternoon. What a great guy to do that for us while he was on vacation. Anyway.... in this market and in this area homes are selling before they even get on the market. It's insane! So, if you see one you gotta jump on it or it will be gone. Most people are putting bids in on homes sight unseen. Seriously?! I could never do that.

Anyway....back to my already long story. So, Donny and I met the listing agent out at the house on our lunch break. I could see right away the potential this house had and was more excited about it than the first house we offered on. Donny on the other hand was not as enthused. It needed a lot of work, A LOT! It was a smokers home and smelled horrible. All the walls were yellow from nicotine. The carpet looked like some one had died on it. The tile was dark brown when it should have been tan. The deck was literally falling apart. But, it was in our price range which made me very happy. After walking through the house, asking many questions, taking pictures, we headed back into town. We had to make a decision, there were already 4 offers on the house and it was only noon! It had gone on the market that day. I told Donny that I thought we should put an offer on the house. He didn't think we should. He thought the other house was a better fit. I don't really know what came over me but I turned to my sweet, loving husband and very slowly said ,"I. Want. This. House." And BOOM! We made an offer. It was a mad dash to get our offer in that same day. Our realtor was so nice to work on his vacation faxing paper work here and there to get our offer in. It was a nerve racking few days but......OUR OFFER WAS ACCEPTED!!!! The days that followed are a total blur. Inspections, meetings, signing papers. In August we received the keys to our home. We worked on it for two months, Donny doing most of the work. Tons of cleaning, painting, and getting new carpet installed. Our friends came and helped, our family helped, and in October we moved in. There's still a TON to do. We continue to work on things in our free time. I'm hoping to get some pictures up soon of some before and after and will continue to share our progress as we make it.

God has truly blessed us! I can't even believe it. I can honestly say I never even asked for this but sadly it's because I didn't have faith that it would ever happen. The day we moved into our home after all the help had gone Donny, my mom, and I spent some time praying over the house together, giving it back to the Lord. I pray often that He uses this house to bless people, to help people, to glorify Him. I don't know what He will ask of us with this house but I know that He gave it to us for a reason. I can't wait to see what He does with it! :)