And just like that, we are no longer owners of our home and
are now renters. Let me tell you how we
got to this point…
The Deciding Point
In January, Aaron and I were contemplating if it was the
right time to upgrade to more space. We
love our cozy first house but it was obvious we were running out of space and
I’m not even someone who collects clutter.
We went to quite a few open houses to get a feel for what we
liked/didn’t like as we really didn’t have an exact idea of what we were even
looking for. Quickly, it was realized
our budget needed to be up’d to get what we wanted; it’s amazing how many homes
are outdated so we up’d our budget and narrowed our search to new builts. After walking thru many 2-stories and ranches,
we really loved the feel of a ranch. We
currently live in a split-level but it’s basically just a ‘raised’ ranch and I
do like having everything on one level.
We also loved how much space the ranch basements have over the 2
stories. We then started narrowing our
search to ranches specifically. This
dragged on for months.
Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch…
During this time, I started to notice how unsafe our current
house was becoming for a toddler. We
have large windows in our living room that start at about 6 inches off the
floor and span the height of the wall, which I’ve always loved because they
bring in some amazing natural light but they are so low, Annie has a tendency
to run full speed right into them and it scares me to death at the thought of
her flying thru a window and falling a ½ a story down. Not only that, but we can’t open those
windows like we use to because having just the screen is even more
dangerous.
Another danger I just can’t really baby proof is the ledge
over our stairs that overlook our entry way.
Annie likes to climb on the couch and then tries to climb up on that
ledge at times. Terrifying to think of
her falling over the top of those and again, basically down a ½ story flight of
stairs. Our living room isn’t big enough
to really better shuffle our furniture around to prevent this, regardless, some
piece of furniture will be on that wall in which she can climb up there. Totally unsafe.
Our deck is a very nice 400 square feet 2 level deck. The 2 steps down to the lower part of the
deck is just a nuisance! The 2 steps
span 20 feet across the entire deck so I can’t really baby proof it. Annie has actually gotten better about not
flying off those 2 stairs but she still does on occasion. One of our requirements when looking for a
new house is to have a flat lot so we don’t even have to have a deck, a patio
is a must have! Our deck looks terrible
constantly; the work needed to maintain our cherry red deck has been a
nightmare.
Another downfall to our current house is all the bedrooms
are clustered in the back of the house.
Charley is notorious for making a bunch of racket in the middle of the
night, which wakes up Annie. Or just us
even getting ready for bed sometimes wakes her up, we need more separation
between the bedrooms in the house. In
the house we will be moving to, the kid’s rooms are on the opposite side of the
house as the Master will be on. There
are downfalls to having them spaced that far apart but in my opinion there are
more pros than cons.
The Unfindable Perfect House
In late April, we were tired of searching for our house over
the last 4 months, it just wasn’t out there.
Everything we walked thru that was almost perfect there would have one
thing about it that would make it a deal breaker for us. The house for us that was nearly perfect we
got to talking to the home builder and thought what the heck, let’s build! We aren’t in any hurry to move, we have the
time to do it and we will get all those design aspects that we want. So we signed the papers, picked a lot out in Waukee
(which is about 10 minutes west from where we are now) and started the process!
Showings, Showings, and More Showings!
Once the framing started to go up, we decided it’s time to
sell our current house. Lots of
decluttering and moving stuff to a storage unit was necessary. We made a few home improvements but mostly
just did a lot of staging with our current furniture. We put it on the market and had a full week
of showings. What a pain to try to keep
a house spick and span, put Charley in daycare every day and a lot of eating
out in the evenings since we couldn’t be home during the showings. We even got kicked off of a restaurant patio
for having our dog with us. Finally on
the following Sunday, we got 2 offers in!
One of the offers was more enticing as they would let us stay in our
house until ours would be ready, so essentially letting us stay the extra month
that we needed. I liked the idea of not
having to move twice but we countered both and luckily the renter option was
the accepted offer.
After a bit of a stressful inspection with some additional
negotiating, we finally closed on our house this Friday. I couldn’t be happier about being homeless
right now (well… renters)! And now for
all the packing; trying to pack with a clingy toddler is practically
impossible. Aaron and I have been
trading off weekends taking her back to the Grandparent’s so that one of us can
stay behind and pack. It has been an efficient
solution and actually kinda nice to wake up to a quiet house and eat my
breakfast without little hands all over my plate.
Bittersweet Ending
I do love my current house and it’s filled of great
memories. It was our first house, we
moved into it just a week prior to our wedding.
We’ve had lots of dinner parties and good times here. We did a bathroom and laundry room renovation
that made us realize we never ever want a fixer upper. We brought our fur baby home here. We crafted a beautiful nursery here to bring
our baby girl home to. We watched Annie
take her first steps here and giggle thru the halls. As happy as we are to be moving on, it’s
still a bittersweet moment.
I’ll fill you in on the new house, for right now we are just
focusing on one step at a time. It’s
been a process, starting this in January and 10 months later we should finally
be in our new home! Wish us luck in the moving process!
Our First House...
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