A few things I thought I should address before the blog gets too far along. First of all, how did all of this happen? And second, why are we blogging about it?
How did we get here:
I guess you could say it all started a little over a year ago. My sister, Amy, and her husband, Jay, found a duplex in a nearby neighborhood that was being foreclosed. They decided to go for it and eventually got the house. They worked with a couple they know (we will be referring to them often as well - Ann and Arthur) who has experience renovating houses. Over a period of 4-5 months they gutted the house and completely renovated everything. We got to watch from the sidelines and think "Man, this is awesome." Along with "Man, that's a ton of work. Glad its them and not us." Ha.
Fast forward a good bit to a weekend in November. Kyle and I are relaxing at a mountain cabin when I get a call from Amy. She mentions that the (practically identical) duplex next door is on the market in case we were interested, and to spread the word to anyone else who might be interested. Normally a house like this would be under contract immediately with an investor who could pay in cash. But, thanks to a special Freddie Mac foreclosure program, we had a two week window before any investors could make offers. I casually mention this to Kyle, not expecting much of a reaction, but the more we talked about it, the more it made sense. Before we knew it we had called Ann, scheduled a time to meet her at the house after we got back on Sunday, and made on offer that next Tuesday!
Ann and Arthur are doing the renovations for us as well. We're very excited to be working with them, and it helps that they did the house next door already. It should take 4-5 months and we'll hopefully be moving in sometime this summer.
I could go on for awhile about why I'm so excited for this house - how much bigger it is, how its in a great neighborhood, how I get a laundry room finally, etc etc. But the most important thing is how incredibly blessed we feel to have this opportunity and how thankful we are. I pray that we will be good stewards of the house and will use it to bless others.
If you're wondering what the plan is for our current house - we intend to sell it as fast as we can! Our goal is to get it on the market in late February/early March and see how it goes. That will be an adventure I don't particularly look forward to, but I have faith we will survive the process.
Why start a blog?
The main reason we started this blog is for ourselves. We want to remember the whole process. When we bought our current house we did a complete renovation of the kitchen ourselves, but did a horrible job at chronicling the process. We have some great before and after pictures but that's pretty much all we have. We want to avoid that and are using the blog as a template to keep track of everything that happens.
Therefore, it might not always be the most interesting blog in the world. I don't expect anyone to come here for the superb writing or professional pictures. We're amateurs, so don't expect too much. However, I thought I would put the blog out there for a few reasons. One, its good accountability to keep updating it. And second, there might be some people out there who are interested in seeing the process. Granted, they all might be family (Hi Dad!). But anyone is welcome to follow the process. It might be slow at times, boring at times, but we'll still be here.
Thanks for joining us!
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