The Story of Our Home

In 2017, J and I decided that we wanted to start searching for a home. We had been dating almost two years, and had had several deep conversations concerning our future. We had seriously discussed marriage, but wanted to do things a bit backwards and buy a home first. There were a few reasons we decided on this. For starters, we were essentially in a long-distance relationship. I lived on the Southside and he lived on the Northside, so we only saw each other on the weekends. We loved our weekends together at his condo, but we are both very social and we were rarely alone. As much as we loved our time with others, there was always that lingering reality of “how would we be with just the two of us all the time”. Don’t get me wrong, I think that we both believed that we had a strong relationship, but we are both realists and I think that we wanted to work out any kinks necessary before deciding on forever (plot twist, we moved it together and have only fought like once ever so there were no kinks to work out. Joke’s on us).

A glimpse at J’s condo that we spent our first few years together in.

The second main reason was financial- we knew our wedding would be super important to us but we also knew what they cost. We wanted to have our home established so that we could have a better idea of what we could put into a wedding after the fact. I also knew that I would start looking for a job closer to our home once we knew where that would be. With all of this up in the air, it felt like it would be better to knock everything out and then focus on our wedding and starting a family.

The home search was long and grueling- we looked for almost a year. The more homes that we saw, the more confident we felt that we wanted a fixer upper. Even when we saw homes that were newly renovated at the top of our budget, they still weren’t exactly our style. AKA, we would still end up putting money into renovations, so what was the point of spending all of that money? On the other hand, some of the fixer uppers had issues that were too big to bother with, like sinking foundation. One day, J called me while I was at work and said that there was a house up for auction that he was going to go see. I couldn't leave work so he sent me the link to see the home….it was ROUGH looking. The home had been abandoned for about 3 years, had no flooring, and was crazy outdated (at least what was left of it). Nonetheless, I gave the nod- it did seem to had potential and I trusted his judgement (J used to work construction with his dad and was able to see things with a keen eye). Before I knew it, I was getting the call saying the house was ours…wait, what??? I hadn’t even seen it myself!! I was a mix of panicked and excited. The house was bank-owned and we still didn’t have the keys, so J drove me to the house to peek through the windows and walk around the yard to see it as best I could. I think that it actually worked out that this is the way I saw the house. I already had it in my head that this was our home, so I looked at it with love and potential, rather than disgust and disregard.

A view of the backyard at sunset.

A huge selling point for this house was location. I was of the mind that you can change any house to feel like home, but you can’t pick it up and move where it is if you don’t like the location. J and I both wanted plenty of land and space between us and our neighbors, while also not being off a main road. I also fell in love with the idea of having a house on the water after we had seen two homes with ponds in the backyard. On my first tour of the house, the backyard had me sold. The deck was in poor shape, but it was huge. The house was on an acre with a pond in the backyard, making for impeccable views. I could already picture us sitting on the back deck with a cocktail in the evenings watching the sun go down. I was excited to create a beautiful home, but nothing can replace the serenity of a view that God had already created.

Our first picture together in front of the new house

It took about a year of renovations before the house was ready for move-in. I always thought that the TLC channel was full of BS to sell the audience and keep them on their toes, but that stuff is REAL. The amount of times that we ran into hiccups during renovations was crazy. And then you throw in all of the planning/picking out paints and such. I always say, who needs pre-canna when you can make it though building a house together?! (Don’t worry, we are still doing pre-canna before the wedding). J and I have never really been argumentative, but we certainly got into a few tiffs regarding the house and what we wanted. We ultimately learned to meet in the middle and see each other’s visions, while also explaining the reasoning behind our choices. It started out rocky, but as the house started to come together…I can’t even explain the feeling of excitement and pride. My mom always joked that I could barely dress myself growing up, so being able to pick out coordinating wood stains and tiles was a great feeling. J moved into the house in March 2019 and I moved in in April. I actually moved the last day at my job at the construction company. I had found a new job in the music industry closer to the new house, so on the final day of my two-week notice, I showed up to work with my car packed up with all of my belongings. Come 5PM, I moved straight into the house. As renovations started to come to a close, we had been heading up to the house on Fridays after work to start bringing some of our stuff. I had a couple of bins with all of my old, college kitchenware that we started washing and putting away so that we would have the basics when we moved in. It was not uncommon for us to work a full day and then go do things at the house until almost midnight. This usually resulted in us finally going to grab a bite at Red Robin (pretty much all that was open at that hour between the house and condo) and sitting in pure, exhausted silence just trying to get some nutrients before going back to the condo to go to bed. When we moved in, we had a bed to sleep in and that was it. Let me tell you, that made for a super interesting beginning having nowhere to sit or eat. We spent the first few months furniture shopping and figuring out how we wanted to design the house. It was challenging and exciting to create a space that was our own.

We have been here for a year now, and the place has come along great! We are pretty much done with the inside, aside from a few small things (still need a mirror in the guest bathroom, dresser in the bedroom, etc). We are now looking to tackle the outside and see what else we can do with this place. Stay tuned!