Our house

(Our living room just after moving in)

We bought our house in May, 2008. It was, in all honesty, love at first sight. In fact, I fell in love with it before we even toured it, from pictures online that our realtor sent us. When we did the walk through, the smile on my face must have been apparent, because my husband commented on it. By the end of the night, we knew we were going to make an offer. The house had only been on the market for two days.

Of course, there was a lot of activity on the house, and by the time we had our offer in, three other offers were also on the table. The sellers were going to consider all offers and then make a decision. We offered 158,000 (the asking price was 155,000) with 10% down and no seller's assist (where the sellers contribute towards the closing cost). The offers were due on a Tuesday by 5:00 p.m. At 9:00 that Tuesday night, I got the offer that the house was ours! It was one of the happiest moments in my life (come on, we weren't married at that point!). We closed on May 1, 2008, but did a rent-back option for the sellers and moved in on June 18, 2008, the day we got back from our honeymoon.

The house is a 1700 square foot ranch, with two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a living room, kitchen, dining room, sunporch, and finished room in the basement, all sitting on .55 acres of land. We didn't do any painting before moving in (although that changed over the past summer), although we did have to purchase furniture and new appliances (fridge, washer, dryer). We have had a bit of a hectic year (getting married, new job for me, my parents moving to Georgia) so we are just starting to do some updates (new windows in our bedroom, floors being redone, putting up a new backyard fence, painting kitchen cabinets and a few rooms).

Over the past year and a half, I have fallen in love with our starter home. While I know that we won't be able to live in this home forever (the two bedrooms is the first reason, of many), I am perfectly content with where we have begun.

(Our backyard when we moved in)