We’re Home, or How We Made Lemonade
Farewell to our home of 3.5 years.
For those of you just joining in, let’s do a quick recap.
We had less than 60 days to find a new home in the middle of winter in a high-priced, low-inventory rental market.
The day after Thanksgiving 2021: Surprise mail notice: Your home is being sold. Purchase or move by January 22. I immediately begin making plans to move.
December 2021: Secured a new place, but then had to decline the lease because the home wasn’t ready among other issues.
January 1, 2022: Search begins again. This is the date that my husband wanted to begin the search in the first place.
Mid-January, 2022: We find our home.
Want all the details? You can read Part I of this story here.
In the end, my husband was technically “right.” We could have waiting til January to start looking. Then again, it took him a month to realize we were entering a very different rental market. It was necessary to spend a lot more to get a nice home.
After a 10-day search our prayers were answered.
But, before we made it to that point, we visited a number of properties. Here are a few that were named in true Chip & Joanna Gaines style:
The Mouse house- named for the mouse trap in the first room.
The Glam house- a beautiful home with lots of custom features, but limited outdoor space for the kids
The House We Don’t Talk About- because the way that we were treated during the showing was that bad.
Finally, we found our house.
The day we decided to see it was the day we were ready to select the Glam house. But, before confirming, we took one final look through listings.
My husband asked, “Remind me. Why haven’t we looked at this one?”
There were many applications in on the home. I figured that they had just forgotten to take down the listing. Also, I thought it was too far from our daily routes. Ultimately, we realized we had nothing to lose and reached out to the owners.
They scheduled a viewing within minutes.
When we arrived at the home, they invited us to take off our shoes and make ourselves at home. They began to show us how things worked in the home as if we had already been approved. We felt like old friends. Then, they thanked us for coming and followed up with an email.
It was the one. It was the biggest of all of the homes that we visited and the first place where we knew we could make a home. It also wasn’t far at all. They fast-tracked our application and we began moving in three days later. We were the people they had been holding out for.
My new office. There’s still some unpacking to do, but we’re finding our way!
Our new home has what my kids call the 3Bs
Balcony
Basement
Backyard
They had hoped for two of the three Bs and were so happy to find that they get all 3! I’m happy for my office and to have the basement as a homeschooling space. My husband is happy to feel the extra 1000sq ft of space and privacy here.
What have we learned through the process?
We’ve learned patience.
We’ve learned gratitude.
And we’ve learned to focus higher.
We learned to be open to moving to the areas we [OK, I] thought were too far away.
I’m still digesting this experience so I’m sure that there is, even more, to take in.
I know that I’m going to do incredible work in this lovely space! If you’re ready to begin a new web design project, be sure to reach out to get your project scheduled.
Have you ever had a crazy or fast moving experience? Tell me about it in the comments.