home owner to homeless to renter/home owner

Big day in the Henderson family today!

We became homeless.

Well, homeless for about 3 hours when we closed on our home of 6 years.

I guess, technically, we didn’t become “homeless”, we became “renters”.  Because we are now renters…for at least 1.5 months.

Then...we bought another house.  Yep, we are now paying rent and paying a mortgage.

You can tell we LIVE by Dave Ramsey (sarcasm…yeah).  (And, by the way, we do LOVE D.R.  It just works out that we are doing both.)

And remember, we have a fixer-upper as our home now.  (When we went back to the house after closing on it, Matthew had a bit of buyers remorse.  Hold on buddy…this is NOT a time to think “should we have?”…we just signed a TON of papers and this house is OURS.)

Let me show you a little bit of WHY he might be having buyers remorse.

Here is the outside.  Yes, in answer to  your question…it was built in the 70’s.  AND.  Parts of it have not been touched since the 70’s.  On the outside of the house, we will be painting the entire thing, replacing the shutters, getting a new roof and re-landscaping the flower beds.  What do you think…a weekend worth of work? (again, sarcasm)

Oh, I forgot to mention…we are getting all new windows.

 

Ahhhhhh, the staircase.  Aren’t those spindles awesome.  Any ideas on what we should do with them?  We are taking the huge ones down because they are not load-bearing at all.  But, what do you think we should do with the ones on the staircase?  Replacing is not an option because that is not in our budget.  What do you think about painting the spindles and leaving the banister wood colored?  Oh, yes, we are replacing the carpet.  It’s gross.

The bathrooms.  Oh, the bathrooms.  Remember, the 1/2 bath downstairs?  Well, obviously, we are renovating that one.  The upstairs bathrooms though, they are having to wait until we either grow a money tree or save up (that’s for you Dave Ramsey).  The hall bath is so outdated and in need of major cosmetic work.  Thankfully, everything is still functional, so we will make it work for now.  The master bath is AWFUL!  It’s barely wide enough for one person to walk through.  AND there is only one sink.  That should be fun for me and Matthew.  Our hope is to bust out the wall adjoining the bathroom and closet and make something more functional for us.  (Fingers crossed that happens much sooner than later!)

Yes, we have our work cut out for us.  These pictures do not show the MASSIVE renovation that is going to be happening downstairs before we can even move into the house.

The renovation process begins Friday afternoon.  So, if you are looking for something to do this weekend (or for the next few months) feel free to drop by, pick up a paint brush or a hammer and get busy.

The closing on our new house was bittersweet.  Sweet for us, bittersweet for the sellers.

The sellers grew up in this house.  They lived there at least 14 years (I’m assuming before they got married and had their own families).

Anyway, it was pretty obvious that they were emotional at the closing.  (I think their realtor leaving the closing room to retrieve a box of Kleenex, while we were waiting in the lobby, was a pretty big clue for us.)

We were really trying to be sensitive to their situation.  Having witnessed grandparents who have had to move from homes they had lived in for over 30 years, we knew how sad it was for this family.

THEN.

One of the family members walked through the lobby, obviously on the way out.  He/She (yes, I was able to tell if said person was IN FACT male or female, I’m just trying to throw my readers off.  Because I am very famous and am sure that this family reads my blog (sarcasm)) is about to leave and looks back to tell us that we are getting a great house.

Well thank you!  We are very excited about it and look forward to raising our children in it.

THEN.

He/She tells us that his/her family had considered purchasing the home and keeping it in the family, but there were just too many memories attached.

Guess which memory he/she chose to share with us?

This one.

The one about his/her dad working on the roof, having a heart attack, falling off the roof and DYING.

Seriously.

I sat there with my mouth wide open in disbelief that he/she just revealed that to us.  I don’t remember seeing that information in the disclosure statement we just signed.

And yes, that is tragic.  I am so sad for that family.  But really?  Was that completely necessary?  Absolutely not.

Despite the fact that we may or may not have a haunted house now, we are still very excited about our little fixer-upper.

Let the party begin!  (And note to self, if we ever move DO NOT tell above story to future owners…it will freak them out and that will be all they can talk about for the rest of the day.)