We bought a house!
This house hunt has quietly consumed our lives for the past nine months, so Tyler and I are SO excited to start this new chapter.
But to back up–it all started last summer.
Tyler and I can’t quite get the hang of the “only one life change per year” rule, so we decided to put our house in Oceanside on the market when Emmie was five weeks old (btw, would wholeheartedly not recommend this). Read more here.
We knew we didn’t want to stay in Oceanside long term, so we decided to take advantage of the skyrocketing home prices in our neighborhood. We sold our first home with the intention of turning around and buying something in Carlsbad, our dream area. We moved down to a rental near my sister’s family by UTC and only planned to stay a couple of months while we house hunted.
This was right as the market was really going nuts, though, so our plan backfired a little bit. We ended up placing offers on nine (nine!) different homes over the course of the year. Each time, we’d lose out to offers for sometimes hundreds over asking. It was disheartening, to say the least.
By the spring, we had pretty much resigned ourselves to renting for a few years. We love our neighborhood, and although the rental itself leaves something to be desired, we have loved living within walking distance of my sister and her family. So we had made peace and tried to stay off Zillow.
THEN, about a month ago, a family we’ve gotten to know in the neighborhood connected us with a woman who was in charge of selling their next-door neighbor’s house. She was looking for a young family to take over the home and didn’t want to deal with listing the house, bidding wars, etc.
So we met with the woman and it all fell into place! It was seriously so special and amazing. A total “God thing,” if you know what I mean.
The house is small but totally cute and perfect for us. It’s actually the same exact layout as our rental which is convenient in that Tyler has been playing “what would we change about this house if we owned it” on repeat for the last nine months. So as soon as we saw the inside of the house, we knew exactly what we wanted to do to update it.
The house was built in the 70’s and hasn’t received any major updates since then, so we’re going to give it some love.
We are pretty much going to remodel the whole house, from flooring and paint to the kitchen and both bathrooms. We are going to give the backyard a makeover, too, and I have big big plans of a veggie and herb garden, WATCH OUT.
We made some simple but important updates to our Oceanside house (new paint, new hardware, cute fireplace facelift), but this reno project will be a whole new ball game.
I myself am interested in interiors in that I love to scroll through Becki Owens and Amber Lewis’ websites, but I do NOT have a design eye. Like, I know it when I see what I want but I could never dream it up, does that make sense?
So this will be a fun challenge. I’ve learned that one of my strengths is making quick decisions and then shutting the book, so to speak. I hope that will serve me because we don’t have a ton of time to dilly-dally. We’re trying to get this project done ASAP so we can move in!
I wrote on my newsletter this past week that I am not handy and the DIY lifestyle couldn’t be further from my reach. However, I do excel in the Costco pizza and La Croix drop-off game, so I’ll be the team mom, I suppose.
Fortunately my brother-in-law will be helping us because he has a ton of connections to contractors in the area. He and Tyler are already doing such an amazing job managing the project.
And Tyler is literally obsessed, lol, constantly updating one spreadsheet or another and whispering to me about dry wall as we fall asleep at night. He was BORN for this type of project.
I’m so excited to make this little house a home for our girls. I know they don’t care, but it matters to me and I can’t wait to make it our own and move in.
Just call us Chip and Joe, I guess.
