Its really ours??

George and I have lived in so many different places in the past few years and really neither of us has lived in the same place for more than 18 months since leaving our parents' homes.  This dream of home ownership is something we've prayed for, cried over, dreamed of and talked about so much it still seems very surreal. In our first few months of marriage, while waiting to open the cafe and then even after for a year, George did a lot of side work on other people's homes (I helped when I wasn't working my part time job). It was so heart-breaking for him to know that he was working on other people's homes and had no idea when he'd ever be able to actually work on a home of his own. We'd done a lot to a few of the rentals we lived in, but it was always disheartening to walk away from his beautiful craftsminship just a few short months or year later.

However, thanks to series of unimaginable blessings, we unexpectedly were able to start looking for a place of our own. It didn't take too long in the grand scheme of things, though for us it was 2 and half grueling months.  We saw probably close to 50 places in that short time thanks to our amazing-realtors-now-dear-friend Craig and Tim.  We started off with condos/townhomes and quickly realized we could get a house for not much more.  We  put in 2 offers only to lose both bids. The first was the most heart-breaking as it was truely a diamond in the rough and a dream house we could've stayed in the rest of our lives. However, for whatever reason the Lord had, that was not to be our home.  On to the next- it was a shot in the dark at the last minute and wasn't to be ours either.

Finally we had it narrowed down to two homes. The night before we were to decide and put in a bid a condo, in one of the neighborhoods we loved, popped up for dirt cheap- $54,900 to be exact (all in this neighborhood had previously been closer to $80,000+).  We saw it the next day, put in our bid. It was a waiting game and we had to up our bid (Fannie Mae bidding as it was a foreclosure) but finally won the bid for $59,000.  It didn't need much work but was in good enough condition that we only needed to do the cosmetic fixes that we wanted to do.  We closed on the Dec. 30th and got Fannie Mae's incentives, which was a great help as well.  (Which was not easy to do thanks to several unnecessary delays on FM's part).

So here we are with a meager budget of $5,000 and over 1274 square feet to remodel.  This blog is a track record of our journey on how we're using this small budget to some mighty things.  In our efforts to be as transparent as possible and give tips and shoutouts to great buys we'll be posting our budget and how we're doing with it on here as well.  Please feel free to comment with your own tips, thoughts, ideas as well. Much love to you all and thanks for those of you who loved and supported us through this amazing journey!