Today, we will close on the purchase of our third house. Eek! Super excited.
If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I started it while we were living in our first house. It was a great first house! We loved it. We lived there for three years before deciding to keep it as an income property and buy a new house for ourselves.
We searched for quite some time in a competitive real estate market before finding our current house, and we have lived here for six amazing years. We started our family here and it holds an incredible amount of memories.
We bought our new house under slightly different, more unexpected circumstances. We were really happy in this house, but we would daydream about having two things that this house doesn't have: a big yard for the kids to play, and a three-car garage for Scott's workshop. One of our best friends is a realtor, so we asked her to let us know whenever a house on an acre of property popped up. They would come up every now and then, but they were always out of our budget.
The first week of June, she emailed me a listing that looked really promising. It had both the yard and the garage and was the right amount of "fixer upper" that we like to tackle. I almost didn't ask her to show it to us because it was a two-story house, and one of my parameters was that I only wanted a one-story. But the listing photos were interesting, the bones looked good, the yard was amazing and most importantly, it was in our budget!
Long story short, we bought it! And shortly afterward, we sold our house. I promise to tell the longer version in my next post when I show you photos of the new place, but I want to wait until the keys are in hand before I show you.
As for our current house, we frantically readied it to go on the market in a little over a week (phew) and by the end of its first weekend on the market, we had 9 strong offers. We picked the best offer and sold it above asking price. it's really been an incredible whirlwind filled with blessing after blessing. It feels like God opened doors for us to feel good about moving into the new house, which is such a relief because this house is very hard to leave. To say I'm emotionally invested in this home is an understatement. But, now I am excited about the new house and also thrilled for the family who is moving here. (They wrote a sweet letter with their offer, and our realtor met them and got to see how much they wanted the house, so I feel like I know them a little bit.) It feels like our house will be in great hands, which is exactly the closure we needed to start a new chapter in a new home.
In honor of this house, I thought it would be fun to look back on our six years here by comparing the real estate photos from when we bought the house back in 2013 to the images we took a few weeks ago when we listed it. Much has changed! (And the quality of photos has gone way, way up. Ha!)
Let's start with the curb appeal. It was always an adorable house in a charming, tree-filled neighborhood. But we added the shutters, updated the paint and of course, put in that
glorious new front door that I'm so sad to leave!
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2019 |
And once inside the door, you see the formal living room. We did a lot of decorative touches in here, but the main improvements were refinishing the hardwood floors, added recessed lights and installing the new chandelier and sconces.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
In the dining room, our work was mostly cosmetic.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
The kitchen got fresh paint, some new glass-face cabinets, new backsplash, lighting. Can you believe they had three different shades of yellow in here at the same time?
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
The den became one of our favorite rooms. Goodbye, baby blue walls and original wood tones. We also ditched the smelly carpet for some travertine.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
They didn't even have photos of the third living space in the listing back in 2013, but this awesome room stayed mostly the same, minus some fresh paint, new windows and refinished floors. You may recall that we've been using this room as a playroom since the kids were born, but we staged it as an office for the showings.
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| 2019 |
Outside that door in the office, the deck has always been there. But we've upgraded the entire backyard to take it from a giant dirt pit to actual usable space. This part of the house has actually undergone the most transformation. Literally nothing was here when we moved in except the wooden deck and the wrought iron fence to the creek. We added the patio cover, the dog run, flower beds, turf, slate patio and most recently, that play set that we customized for our kids (and sadly, will be leaving here with the new owners).
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| 2019 |
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| 2019 |
Over in the master bedroom, we realized quickly that the master closet was way too small, so the husband built himself a custom closet around the windows.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
In the master bathroom, we just made aesthetic changes.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
The front bedroom used to be the twins' nursery, but it was converted to a guest room once we moved them into their own rooms.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
Fun fact: The previous owners had twins too! Their twin girls were sharing this room. Little did we know that three years later, we'd double our brood in one fell swoop just like they did.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
This TV makes this photo look even older than it is! Also, a lot of the "playroom" ended up in poor Evan's room once we converted the third living room from a playroom to an office.
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| 2013 |
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| 2019 |
And just for fun, here are some of the other great photos the real estate photographer captured for our listing that don't have any direct comparisons with the previous listing. Shout-out to my mom who helped me stage the house while I was working - she did a great job! This was a total team effort to pull this off with two destructive and messy toddlers around.
How did we keep it clean for showings? We moved out temporarily! The showings started on a Friday, so we stayed at my mom's house that weekend so they could show the house all day long for 3 straight days. BEST. DECISION. EVER. We could have never kept it shiny and fresh if we were actually living there!
It's really satisfying for us to look back at how far this house has come. It took all six years of living here to bring this house to its fullest potential, and I want to remember that so I can be patient with the improvements at the new house!
Speaking of the new house, please follow me on Instagram at @jordanG106 for live updates from our renovations. We'll be doing a decent amount of work these next two weeks before we officially move in, and I'll be documenting it there in real time. (Blog posts take way longer and will be fewer and farther apart than Instagram posts.)
Thanks for reading! Can't wait to show you the new space and start doing some major projects again!
