We bought a house! (Part One)

How have I not blogged about this already? We have been living in our house since September and here it is December already. Unforgivable. Well, now I'll get to recap all the fun details of buying the house. It feels like all this just happened so it's still pretty fresh in my mind.

For about a year (well, longer now), Josh and I had been looking at houses casually. Josh wanted us to be in a pretty good financial position before we purchased a house, which I agreed with in theory but struggled with in practice. Having a work-from-home job means that I was stuck in my apartment all day long with two small children. I didn't venture outside much after work hours, so our tiny apartment's walls seemed to close in on me more and more tightly the longer I lived there. At one point we had my sister come live with us too, for about nine months in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment. While I loved having her there, it was certainly an experiment in bathroom courtesy. There aren't many places to hide in such a small space.

When we first looked at the second-bedroom apartment across from our one-bedroom apartment, I thought we were moving to a much bigger space. Our one-bedroom was just shy of 500 square feet, and it had all the space we needed when we were first married and when Scarlet was a tiny baby. We moved to the two-bedroom apartment after about three years, when Scarlet was roughly three months old, and it was definitely an upgrade. The landlords didn't list the square footage but by comparing it to our first apartment, I estimated it was about 700 square feet. It even had a tiny hallway, which felt like such luxury compared to our first place. We spent three happy years in the second apartment, saving up for a house.

Josh doesn't much care for change and while he wanted to move to a house with more space, he wasn't keen enough to look up houses obsessively, call realtors, and set up appointments to houses. Lucky for me I was utterly obsessed with doing those things, so I did them for the both of us. We'd spend a few Saturdays looking at potential homes but the real thing always ended up looking worse in real life than in carefully framed pictures. I learned that my original list of must-haves got shorter and shorter and also that things I at first imagined were non-starters turned into negotiables. Through trial and error, Josh and I whittled down our list of desirables to a tidy summary. We learned that there were only a handful of qualities that we cared about: at least two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a big backyard (or a large property in general), and NO homeowners association. Our realtor couldn't understand the HOA thing--it's a matter of principle. If Josh and I wanted to paint our house neon orange, we wanted the freedom to do that. It made us uneasy that certain HOA statues allowed the organization to fine you or ultimately take away your house in certain situations. My parents have experienced or witnessed horror stories with their HOA and Josh and I were just uncomfortable with the whole thing.

You guys--have you SEEN how many HOAs are in Utah? It's to the point that the only places worth living have HOAs. All the non-HOA houses were creepy and slapped together piecemeal. The neighborhoods were rundown or sketchy or literally right next to the freeway. And the HOA neighborhoods had terrible reviews online filled with unending horror stories. It seemed like we couldn't find a happy middle ground on that, so we eventually threw our hands up and stopped booking house showings with our realtor. For a few months I just looked at houses casually and occasionally showed Josh a potential one.

We also came to realize that our favorite place to live in was Murray. We looked at houses in Bountiful and Lehi and everything in between, but we couldn't find something that felt as comfortable to us as our own neighborhood. The problem was that everyone else in the world loves Murray too--it's conveniently close to downtown Salt Lake City and it has great shops and schools conveniently close. That means that all the houses are worth a billion dollars and well out of our budget. I'm not gonna lie, friends--I was thoroughly discouraged on more than one occasion.

Then we came across a little gem nestled in a very quiet, established neighborhood behind Murray High School. It was five minutes from our apartment, so I convinced Josh to drive us all out to take a peek at it. I wanted to see the neighborhood and decide if it was even worth calling the realtor to let us look inside.

Well, we drove out and I saw the front yard, complete with thirsty tree and dying grass and a really weird desert oasis landscape in the center. There was a bizarre sliding glass door installed where a picture window would normally be installed. It looked completely abandoned and sad. I felt a spark of excitement in my heart and knew that this house was special. The neighborhood was quiet but not creepy. You know how you can walk down a completely empty street and still feel creeped out? Well, this neighborhood wasn't like that at all. It felt homey. There were people drinking soda cans and sitting on lawn chairs on the front yard of one house, and a couple of kids across the street stared at me through their front window. It felt like a family-friendly place and I loved it.

Josh was really uneasy about the place, because we'd been burned by so many houses before. There was always *something* that made the house unlivable. He thought the roof looked iffy and the house listing revealed that the house was pretty shockingly tiny. I persuaded him to at least look at the place.

A week later, we were touring it with our realtor. He opened the front door and I just sighed in contentment. I literally was home. I have that same contented feeling when I walk through that same front door today. I saw the fireplace and the green accent wall and the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous original hardwood floors and I fell unalterably in love. The house was *just* big enough for us to even consider it. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Tiny kitchen, tiny bedrooms, tiny pantry/laundry room, no garage (originally a garage was on our must-haves but it eventually fell off after looking at our one billionth house). We just had to walk outside and view the perfect backyard and I was ready to sign papers right then and there.

I have this problem when I look at houses and it's entirely the fault of Netflix binge shows like Fixer-Upper and Property Brothers. When I see a room, I sort of dismiss the issues with the room and see in my head how I'm going to change the room. For example, the living room has a sliding glass door where a picture window used to exist. It makes no sense. My neighbors explained to me that the former owner was a little crazy in her old age and she had it installed for no good reason in her senility. I couldn't really see the sliding glass door, though, because in my mind's eye I saw the picture window I'd eventually replace it with. Josh, however, saw the sliding-glass door. And the sagging roof. And the uneven ceiling in the kitchen. And the cracked patio out back. He sees everything and it all went onto a mental list that made him more and more reluctant to consider this house.

The sliding glass door in question

I, however, saw those flaws and then immediately dismissed them for the much more appealing image in my head of what the house would look like when I was done with it. For example, I didn't really see the backyard for what it was: a place with no sprinkler system, holes and rot in most of the fencing around the entire yard, a spindly and rusty swing set, a lawn with tarp that needed to be dug up, gopher holes, and weeds, a dying tree, and a patio cover that might collapse on top of us. I saw a new, repaved patio, a sturdy patio cover, a gorgeous green lawn with a garden and a pergola and an automatic sprinkler system, a beautiful new privacy fence, and a brand-new swings set and maybe a play house. It was a beautiful image and I still see that image in my head because in a few years that's what it will look like. In fact, every room of the house looked like that to me, and it still does. I know there are flaws with this house because it's terribly old, but it has good bones and so, so much potential. I kept pointing out to Josh that the things we can't change about a house are the best qualities of this house: the location, and the size of the property.

Even without doing much to the backyard. I still think it's pretty spectacular.

We left our realtor and headed home, me bursting with excitement and Josh full of trepidation. The real negotiations between us had yet to begin...