Our New House

Well we are getting all settled in to our new house. We are scared to mess anything up so we haven't hung any pictures on the wall yet (because that would put holes in our new wall) and don't even THINK about painting anything yet (it will be a few months/years before we get up the courage). But just like our apartment I have tons of decorating ideas and plans to make our house a home, up first is the living room and dining room so stay tuned. (but don't get too exited we are very short these days on time and money so it could be awhile before the big reveal)

But today I would like to document our journey to our first house. Our original plan was to wait a few years until we had a larger amount of money for the down payment and all of the other things that you have to buy with a house such as a lawn mower. I was ok with squeezing into our apartment with two (maybe three) children so we had a few years to save up. But like McKay's brother told/warned us when I told him of our plan he said that we would not wait that long. And lo and behold McKay started looking at houses about three months ago in the paper. When I asked him why he started looking he just said that he was bored and needed a project. I also started looking with him because I was curious at what type of house we could afford. So we started calculating and crunching numbers(well McKay did, I just wanted to know how much I could spend) and we realized that we did already have enough to buy a house if we wanted to. At this point it was still just a game, we weren't serious just bored I guess (man we need to find better things to do with our time). We really had no idea about what kind of house we were looking for so we just picked one that we might like. It was a house built in 1975, had been added on to, and updated. I went out for a run that morning and ran past it (and really liked it).

So we decided to go see it. It was HUGE. Like 5,600 sq ft. 12 foot ceilings in the basement and 7 bedrooms. It wasn't super fancy quite plain actually (blank canvas) but it was unique and I loved all of the decorating ideas that were already starting to flow. I could have decorated for 20 years and never finished it all. It was across from my favorite park and right by the mall. The realitor thought it was a crazy huge house and didn't think that we would have considered it, but we were. I was sold on it until my parents came and looked at it and they thought it was crazy too because it was so big we would have been lost in it with just the three of us. Also we learned that the utilities to heat the house in the winter would have been around 350+ dollars a month. Now that was nuts and not something that we wanted to spend. So I finally realized that it would have been fun, but not realistic. I tried to move on, but even though we didn't buy it I still love the idea of it (maybe someday when we have 10 kids it will still be on the market and we can buy it then lol).

So we kept looking but I just couldn't find one that I really liked they were all too much the same and not nearly as exciting as the huge house. So... our next idea was to buy a fixer upper. We *love* projects and since I couldn't find anything that I liked we thought that we would just create what we liked. So we looked at some houses in the 120K range of price so that we could have some extra money to fix it up. We found one that was old and needed updating, but I loved that floor plan and it was in the perfect neighborhood right by McKay's uncles house. So we almost made an offer on that one, but after much discussing and feeling a little bit nervous about the amount of projects that needed to be done to the house we decided against it.

When we asked our parents their opinion they both said that we should buy the newest house that we could afford and to not worry about not having enough projects because you would still have plenty even with a new house. So that is what we started looking for. We finally found the house that we are living in, the builder had just finished building it and we loved the location and the three car garage (those are what caught our attention first). It isn't too big and it is new which I love. It needs a yard and the basement finished but i am confident that McKay will do well with both of those projects. It took us a while to finalize the sale because it did not appraise for what the builder wanted to sell it for at first, but then we switched appraisers and banks and then we got the appraisal that we needed (the builder would not go down on the price). But even that small problem only slowed us down by a few weeks. This was a great time to buy and the house prices in Idaho were so good I was seriously amazed. We love living in it and feel so blessed that we are able to have such a comfortable place to live. So without further ado here is our new house...(from the outside, like I said the inside we are still working on) Oh and please come visit because we now have a guest room :)

Thanks for reading!