Tour Our Home!

To give a not-so-brief history of how we came to own our home, we purchased from an old, close friend of Chelle’s. It almost seemed like fate because at the time when Chelle and Paul (the seller) were closest, he was knee-deep in this extensive home remodel. They were co-workers in their day jobs, and spent numerous lunch hours, breaks, and down times searching the web and local home improvement stores for tiling, flooring, fixtures, ect. In essence, Chelle got to give advice and help pick out many of the little elements of whatever project Paul was immersed in at the time. This was during the “single years” of her life, and she had no idea what lay ahead for her future with this home. Home ownership was the farthest thing from her mind.

It seemed almost ironic that on April fool’s day of 2011, we stepped foot together into the home that would become our first. We had been casually looking at homes throughout the latter part of March, not planning to start seriously digging in until later in the year. When Chelle saw the house on the MLS, she fell more in love with each picture she viewed. Slowly, she started to feel like the house looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place from where. All of a sudden, it dawned on her. She emailed the link to Kevin without relaying that this was Paul’s house. Kevin, always the skeptic, stayed semi-withdrawn from initial excitement, but agreed to go look at the home.

During the 4 years that Paul occupied this once run-down, foreclosed property, he took special care and consideration into every detail of the home’s complete makeover; from kitchen functionality to the white baseboards and trim, giving the walls and floors an impressive contrast. The quality of material and craftsmanship he put into this home has actually created a different career path for him, rightly so. It was no wonder then, that after doing a tour of the home, we walked back to the car in silence. The first words spoken were from Kevin as he said, “The whole time we were walking through that house, I tried to find something-one thing that I didn’t like. I cannot think of one single thing I didn’t love about that house”. From that point, we just knew. We knew it was our first home. It was the feeling we got when we walked through it.

We took our parents to the house two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, and made an offer on it the same day. This went against every fiber of our typical decision making habits, as we are generally the type to weigh every option, make no hasty decisions, carefully mull over the details; you know the type. We didn’t even discuss the fact that it had only been 2 days since we’d looked at the house, that it was only the 2^nd house we’d looked at in person, and that it was several months before we had planned to start looking. We just knew that this was the right decision for us to make, so we made it. Our loan was approved 30 days later on May 6^th, and from there, we announced to our friends and extended families that we had bought our first home.

We were scheduled to take possession of the home on June 2, a Friday, and we both took that day off so we could get in the home and do some painting before moving our things in the next day.  We were able to get the keys that Thursday night, and just like in the movies, we spent the first night in our house with nothing but our couch, which sat haphazardly in the middle of the room to be used as a make-shift bed for the night. We ordered Chinese food and ate it on the floor off of cardboard boxes and a big Rubbermaid tote lid, and stayed up WAY too late talking, planning, and doing some initial painting.  Ever since that first night, our home has been constantly buzzing with projects to make this home OUR own. As rooms slowly but surely get finishing touches put on them, we will be posting them here, comparing them with photos from before we purchased, and from before Paul renovated. We think the progression that these photos show is interesting to see, and we hope you enjoy browsing what has become an ongoing project that we wouldn’t have any other way.