It may have
taken me six months to write this post.
But, hey, no time like the present.
So what is
the biggest news to hit the Life In the Big House Family this year?
We’ve
moved!
That’s
right, we left our 1908 Folk Victorian and moved….a whopping three miles away!
I know, I
know. You have so many questions! I will try to cover them all in as brief post
as possible. After all, you have
Christmas shopping, decorating…etc to do….
Why? We loved our old house (original photos here!). But that is
exactly one of the reasons why we moved.
It was old. I loved the charm,
the character, the history (I’ll do a full post on that one of these days), the
location was killer and our neighbors were amazing. So back to why if all that was so good?
Because it was old. And big…not just
big, but too big. It was 3600 square
feet of drafty, creaky, leaky, dusty, musty….you get the point. We had multiple rooms that we never used
(library, sunroom, mudroom…) The layout
was a bit odd (as it can be in most old homes).
The back yard was massive, and we want a pool…but our backyard included
a driveway that would prohibit us from getting exactly what we wanted. So with all these reasons, we decided to
look for a house. But, we told ourselves
that we wouldn’t move unless we found the perfect house for us.
How? We’ve
been randomly looking at houses for a couple of years now. But in March, we found an amazing
property. It had a nice large backyard,
four bedrooms, a garage and a carriage house, it was about 1000 square feet
smaller and it was brand new! Sadly, it
was already under contract….So the hunt continued.
Then one
foggy Christmas day…oops, too much Christmas music! All I remember is that our realtor was in Paris…not
Texas….(France) and called us. I looked
at Josh and said “if she is calling us from France, this must be big news” and
I was right! The first offer fell
through and thankfully we had submitted a back-up offer. The seller had accepted our offer and we were
under contract!
So now
what?? We hadn’t listed the big house yet.
We had met with listing agents and discussed when and how much we should
list for. We had begun to prep (again,
lots to do with an old house…). And so
we were ready to list. Amazingly, the
first weekend it was on the market we got a couple of offers right away. They didn’t pan out, but we did get a solid
offer about a week after it was listed.
When? We
closed on the new house the beginning of May and we sold the big house about a
month later. The timing couldn’t not
have been better. We slowly moved
throughout the month of May and officially moved Memorial Day Weekend. New house photos below! (spoiler - those are the listing photos...not our stuff...)
Dinning Room, we LOVE the massive door!! It is sooo tall!! And bonus! Our old dining room table we made fits! See our old dining room here |
Guest Bathroom |
Living Room |
Kitchen |
Butler's Pantry |
Master Bedroom with windows we can see out of! |
Master Bathroom |
Not a laundry closet anymore! |
Girls Bathroom |
I see lot's of fall parties here! Football games anyone?? |
We finally get to use our garage for cars! |
Future Gym Space and JD's office |
Selling the
big house was not easy. Not easy
mentally or physically. The big house is
where CJ and Soph grew up. It is where
we poured blood, sweat and tears (but mostly blood) into so many projects. When the new owners had an inspection done, I
was dreading the worst. I mean, the
house was over hundred years old. But I
thought she was solid. The floors didn’t
slope or sag. The walls were lath and
plaster. So much more solid than houses
built today….so what’s the worry? Well, according to the inspection, she was
almost falling down….we had to have main beams under the house replaced, porch
flooring replaced, siding and window seals, soffits too! It was so much and very overwhelming and we
spent over $20k on those issues! We
almost didn’t make it to the closing table.
But our amazing realtor kept it together for us (if you ever, EVER, need
a recommendation for Atlanta, let me know!)
And the big
question…costs…I know most everyone always wants to know the costs.
We bought
the big house in October of 2012 as a short sale, or maybe foreclosure…I can’t
remember. I do remember we were under
contract in May of 2012 and didn’t close until the end of October. It took F-O-R-E-V-E-R…, while we were
waiting, we lived in a basement and an apartment. The basement was fun…I was fat prego and had
to walk up a flight of stair every time I had to pee…and pregnant chicks pee a
lot….Back to the real story, we purchased the big house for $250,000. I know, a steal. Even in 2012, that price was so good. We sold it for $750,000…now, before you start
saying ‘Holy moly”, you should know how much we put into that house to make it
worth ¾ of a million dollars. {don’t
forget about that commission either…}.
Here is just the tip of the list:
New roof
New gutters
Refinish
hardwood floors
Kitchen
renovation (click here for that post)
New HVAC
New plumbing
Replace
beams & supports
New
fireplace (one of these years I'll do a post on those projects)
And those
are just the items that we had professionals do (I did do some of the fireplace projects). I don’t have a total number (sorry), but if I
were to estimate, I’d say we spent close to $150k on all the
repairs/changes. We also spent countless
hours ourselves on making the big house the amazing home and hopefully the new
homeowners will enjoy it as much as we did.
So back to
the why. We wanted to enjoy our weekends
with our kids. In the big house, we were
always working on something. And family
is more important than a house. So onto
new adventures in the new big {little} house.
To enjoy the
big house one last time, click here for the last post I wrote {Christmas Tour}.
0 comments:
Post a Comment