The House I Have Now

About four and a half years ago, my husband and I were moving back from Alaska to Tennessee, buying our first house and expecting our second child. We flew down from Fairbanks on a whirlwind house hunting trip, found a house we really liked on the first day, made an offer, and closed on the deal within a month. It was easy. We loved our completely renovated "older" house. We loved our neighborhood. We swore we were never going to move again.



Over the course of those four years, everyone else in the city seemed to decide they loved our neighborhood too. Prices shot through the roof and we were now living in a house we could never have afforded to buy. And of course, everyone else's houses gained as much or more value. We couldn't afford any other house in the neighborhood either. But that was fine, because we were never moving.

Unfortunately, for that plan, over the course of four years we welcomed not only that child I was expecting when we bought the house, but two more children and a dog into the family. And the children didn't stay little. They kept growing bigger and bigger.

Suddenly those 1800 sq. ft. and three bedrooms were a tight squeeze. We weren't about to move, so we downloaded SketchUp and started playing around with plans for an addition. But nothing pleased us. Nothing seemed like it would do everything we wanted it to do.

And then my husband's siblings started house-hunting. It seemed like the thing to do and so I started casually browsing the listings. Our wishlist was very specific. The house had to be older. We prefered something Victorian. It had to be close to downtown. It had to be bigger and have a layout that would suit our family. It had to have some yard. It had to...well, you get the picture.

Nothing on our side of town met the first (and unmentioned above) criteria -- we had to be able to afford to buy it. So we started looking on the other side of the river. That side of town was, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the place to live. But it became very run down and though it has been coming up for a long time, still has cheaper houses than where I live now. One day we were tooling around and saw a FSBO house that looked promising.

We stopped and knocked on the door and they let us come in to look around. The first few rooms were really pretty, but hmmm...that bathroom leaves a lot to be desired. And there isn't a kitchen! And well, you say the electrical system isn't working right and half the lights won't turn on? Well, isn't that special?

Naturally, we came back and looked around again a few days later. We made an offer and got a contract. We had a certain number in mind for how much it would cost to finish up the place. Then we had an inspection and talked to some contractors and electricians. We cancelled the contract and the homeowner put the house on the market through an agent.

We looked at some other houses, but nothing worked out. We decided to stay put, but the house still felt cramped and crowded. We kept thinking about the big purple house and we kept watching the asking price steadily drop. Finally the asking price reached a point very close to the number in our heads for where could afford to buy the place and do the things it needed done.

We made an offer and after a lot of back and forth and refusals on our part to pay all the closing costs normally carried by the seller, we had a new contract. We knew, more or less what we were getting into this time around. We know upfront what many of our costs will be and we're fortunate that we can continue to live in our current house while the new house gets a complete electrical overhaul, some new plumbing and the kitchen gets more or less completed. I'm some what overwhelmed to be leaving my nice cozy, finished home for all the work the new place will need even after those big things are done, but I'm looking forward to the space and the more historical house. The rest remains to be seen.