New House

It's no secret that we've (I've) desired more space for awhile.  

I've written several posts about the ways that we've managed to make more storage space in our little home.

As much as we love our home, we always intended it to be our "starter" home.

We bought when the housing market was at its peak.  When it crashed, we became discouraged about being able to sell our home.  After waiting a few more years with no improvement in the market, we decided if we really wanted to get into a bigger house, we were going to have to refinance our home and rent it out.

Doing that this past year, we began the search for a bigger home.

We found a home we really liked at the end of June.

After a few offers and some drops in the price, we settled on a sale price at the end of July. 

And I began packing...

For the next month I packed (we went on vacation one of those weeks).

We lived among boxes for several weeks and I promised Stan that next time we moved, a moving company had better be doing it for us :-)

Let's just say after five years of living in our home and adding two kids and both Stan and I being pack rats, we had a lot of stuff to pack! 

We were nervous about becoming landlords, but after talking to different people (including a property manager), we decided to have a go at managing the property ourselves.  It didn't take us long to find renters which was such a blessing.  So after moving out all of our stuff, we cleaned and prepped the home for the renters:

It's amazing how much bigger it looks with no furniture in it.

Goodbye Sandrock Road. 

1335 sq feet

3 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms

It's bittersweet saying goodbye to our first home.  We are excited to have more space, but had really made this home our own and have made a lot of memories there.  

Unfortunately it wasn't a smooth transition moving into the new house.  To make a long story short, we had planned to have renters move in the week after we moved in the new house.  However, there was a problem with the title that needed to be resolved, so we couldn't close on August 25th like we had planned.  We had promised our home to the renters on the 29th, and since their situation was such that they were moving from the East Coast and couldn't be delayed, we made a compromise of sorts.  We rented a PODS and had it parked in the driveway.  There we stored boxes and such.  Then we FILLED half of the garage with the rest of our furniture and things.  And we left the piano in the house.  

My friend Renee and her family were out of town on vacation and graciously offered their home for us to stay in that week.  

It was really frustrating and exhausting to have do things that way, especially not knowing when things were going to be resolved so we could close on the new house.  It was Fannie Mae owned, so you never really knew the person you were dealing with.  Luckily the Lord blessed us to only have to wait until the following Tuesday to get news that the title had cleared and we could close on Thursday.  Our time being homeless only lasted a week.  

On August 30th we closed on the new home.

We spent the next day cleaning and getting the house ready.

Saturday, September 1st we moved in.

Welcome to Juniper Avenue:

2790 sq. feet

4 Bedrooms

4 Bathrooms

Office

Dining Room

Bonus Room

Walkout Attic Space

Corner lot

3 Car Garage

We had decided if we were going to go to the trouble to move out and get renters, we were going to get something big enough to make it all worth it.  

This was definitely bigger than we had thought we would be able to get, so we felt very fortunate.

Things are slowly coming together.  With a family still to take care of, I couldn't move as fast as I would have liked.  Luckily Stan has been so supportive, helping whenever he has the chance. 

  A few shots of some of the rooms:

We now have a designated music room/office.

Also a designated "playroom."

The living room.

And we now have a guest room too (hint, hint all you family members.  You can now have your own room when you come visit!)

I'm so excited to finally be in our new house!  There were some bumps in the road getting there, but we finally made it.  And now we get to spend the next however many years making this our home.