The House

A house is made with walls and beams, a home is made with love and dreams.

I am beyond ecstatic to finally say that we have found our home.

It's been a long road to get here...6 years ago we moved from our first home in Albany, up here to Portland, excited for our new adventure. Brian had completed his MBA and found an amazing job at intel. Since then we have been very blessed to always have a roof over our heads and food on the table. We rented an apartment for 6 months, a house in Hillsboro for 3 years, a house in Portland for 1 year, and our current house for 1.5 years. Trying to buy a home has been challenging and we have attempted on and off since we moved up here.

Renting has advantages: if it breaks, not our money! No need to invest in decor or paint, it's not ours! But...it has disadvantages: we were told twice that we had to move because the owners were selling, and the biggest one for me: it always felt temporary.

But temporary no more, we found our house and we could not be more thrilled!

Here are some fun house facts:

Year built: 1967

4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths

2372 sq feet

In a culdesac (my dream!)

Has an in ground pool (whoa!)

In our current school district, hell yes!!

It was bank owned and has been sitting vacant for 3 years. The bank actually went in and replaced all the carpet (there's also original hard wood in the bedrooms) and painted everything so it looks good. Of course, Brian and I have a mile long list of projects we want to do, but all in good time. Right now, we are just enjoying the fact that we were able to make our dream of owning this home a reality.

We've had our eye on this house since about February. It was on Zillow as a preforeclosure so there was no price listed, we had to wait and wait until the bank finally listed it. We both checked multiple times a day for weeks. Finally one evening at 9 pm I refreshed my Zillow feed and bam, there was the price...100k over what we were thinking.

Ouch. We were deflated for sure. We went and saw the house and all it's potential glory, threw out a low ball offer, bank countered, we countered, but ultimately it was no deal. I was pretty heart broken but tried to move on.

The house would go pending for a total of 3 times over the next few months. We put an offer on another house, it was accepted, but fell threw because it needed a new roof and we couldn't agree on terms.

That brings us to August. The 3rd time our beloved house went back on the market after pending, they dropped the price substantially! I immediately notified Brian and we put an offer in. They countered, we countered back and they accepted!!!!!

I was in shock, denial, and ultimately bliss.

We were a little guarded and skeptical because we figured the inspection would turn up something since it had fallen through so many times, but it didn't. There are things we want to upgrade but no red flags that would prevent us from getting the house or being able to move in.

Once I started packing up our house it began to feel real.
Moving day came and our family helped so much. Considering how many times we moved, we couldn't blame them if they said, "This ones all you." But they didn't, they rearranged schedules and made it work. Beyond grateful for our village.
We have been in our house for a month now and I can honestly say I love it even more everyday. It is truly Home.

And now for the exciting part...pictures!

Isn't she cute?

Family Room (in the back of the house, office is through those doors)

Kitchen (and handsome hubby!)

Getting it ready for some paint

This is a landline that we ripped off because obviously we don't need it. I thought it was pretty cool there was a little bit of the original wallpaper left on :)

Ecstatic with the color, it's Pale Smoke by Benjamin Moore

My first decorative hangings :)

 And a little side by side comparison:

I have pictures of the girls rooms but need to retrieve them from Instagram as they got deleted from my phone. Will continue to post pics as we update and complete projects!