So there's this house...

We were living in Idaho ready to move to Maryland where my family lives. How do you buy a house on one side of the United States while living on the other side?

We looked online for houses and sent my parents out to check them out. We were looking for a fixer upper since my dad is handy and retired and we wanted some specific things in a house. Okay, and we wanted to save some money...not sure if that part is panning out the way we thought it would!

After months of looking and basically finding really gross houses, my dad found this house on Craigslist of all places and it seemed to have everything we wanted.



7 acres of land, a forest with a stream, enough square footage for us and storage (which our last house was lacking). It also had some fun extras like a horse pasture with horse tenants (which would stay and pay us rent), a big barn that we could turn into a wood shop and a 'secret' room that the boys want to call Narnia. Perfect!

Was it worth flying out to see it before we commit to buying? Nah, I trust my parents!

Yes, we are crazy. But the price was good, we were moving out in a few months and we wanted a permanent place to stay. We didn't want to bounce from my parent's house to rental house to our house.

This house has presented some interesting and 'adventurous' opportunities! We have torn out all the carpet, most of the walls (crumbling lath and plaster), cleared out all of the previous owners stuff (part of the contract) and have now, finally, started to put things back together!

The house started with a recently updated kitchen and guest bathroom. We have just finished a master bathroom and Rob's office (since he works from home) and are working on finishing the mudroom/pantry. It's a slow process but we are learning a lot. Mostly, that renovating a house while you still have 3 young children at home is VERY hard! But we have a lot of help from friends and family. My dad is our contractor. We pay him with Diet Coke and Cookies. The arrangement is working great so far ;o)

As slow as it can go, I hope to be able to update new progress each week. At least that will be a goal to work towards!

Look for the next post to be about our new, GORGEOUS bathroom...