Our New Home

A few months ago I abandoned my blog due to the fact that I had nothing blog-worthy to write about. Everyone else seems to have such interesting lives, always having something to share.... but I always felt silly with whatever I posted. 

Well in the recent months Luke and I have gone through quite an adventure as San Marcos, CA's newest home owners. After a quick 28 day escrow process, we packed up and left our apartment home of 2 years and set out to experience home ownership for ourselves. In the rush of packing, and the delay in upacking I have yet to find my journal so I haven't recorded any of the experiences we've had in the last 2 months.... hence my return to blog world.

The home we bought was one of the first houses we ever walked through in our search for a house. We were not impressed and  pretty much wrote it off due to the amount of work that would have to go into it. We put in multiple offers on other homes and always got out bid. We found a few homes that we fell in love with, but didn't like the area. The home search was very emotional and stressful. Somehow we were guided back to the house we're in now. Upon walking through the house the second time, our eyes were opened to the possibilities of what we could do with it. We even wondered why we passed up on it the first time around. It suddenly seemed like it would fulfill all our needs-- it was a decent distant from both our jobs, we were still in the same general area that we were in before when we lived in our apartment, it was a decent size... not too big but something we could grow into. We were so excited and ready to place an offer. We were confident we would get this home, since it had been on the market for a while, but just to be safe we put in an offer a bit higher than the asking price. We had been burned many times by putting in an offer at asking price and then getting out bid, and we didn't want that to happen with this house.  To make a long story short, after what seemed like millions of signatures on millions of documents, on April 6 (28 days later) we had the keys in our hands and were ready to move in. 

Thanks to great friends and Luke's parents, moving out of our apartment and into our home was really not too bad. It was sad leaving our apartment for the last time. Camden Old Creek was our home for 2 years and we had enjoyed so many good times in that little one bedroom home. We knew it was time to move on, but it was difficult leaving the incredible ward we had grown to love, and the memories we had made in that apartment. Thanks, Camden for an awesome time!

Because of the amount of work we had planned to put into the house we kept most of our belongings in the garage for quite a while (in fact many of our boxes are still out there). For the first month we spent many nights watching TV in our family room with pillows propped behind our backs up against the wall. We ate breakfast and dinner on the stairs. Eventually we got real smart and brought in our blow up mattress and set up camp in front of our TV to watch shows and movies when we were ready to relax. It was real ghetto.

Little by little we have brought in our furniture as we have completed projects. So far we have painted most of the interior, placed crown molding and some base boards, installed new appliances, moved a half wall between the kitchen and dining area allowing for more eating space, installed surround sound system in family room, laid hard wood floor in family room, replaced old kitchen counters with new granite, installed kitchen backsplash, placed kitchen hardware,  installed new kitchen sink, and scraped up old vinyl kitchen flooring in preparation to lay new tile flooring. All except installing the kitchen counters we have done ourselves. I am so proud of us for completing all we have done. Luke and I have grown so much closer as we contemplate, make decisions, and carry through all of this together. It's been fun remodeling our home, but I am ready for it to be over so I can start with the actual fun part: decorating. I've done some here and there, but can't wait til everything is ready for me to decorate completely. 

Anyways, I plan on recording our progress and pictures little by little as our house becomes a home.  Enjoy!