Our Home--The Story, Part Three

So the anticipated Saturday came when we were going to get to look inside the house that we were hoping would become our new home. We met the realtor at the door and got the tour. To say it was exactly what we were looking for would be a lie. It did have 3 bedrooms and a den (which has a closet, so for our purposes would be a 4th bedroom) and it had 2 toilets. That was pretty much what we'd narrowed our search down to, just focusing on the absolute necessities and not the frills, trying to be good stewards of our money and not get into something we wouldn't be able to afford.

The "bones" of the house seemed solid, but to make the house our home, it was going to take quite a bit of updating. The living room had orange sponge-painted walls, a fireplace with some very 70's orange, brown, and yellow tile on the hearth and an ugly mantle.

But the wood ceilings were beautiful. We walked from the living room into the kitchen with walls covered in wallpaper with "lovely" vegetables all over it, including a matching border, and a hideous light fixture over the eat-in portion....oy vay!!

But, it did have two, that's right, TWO pantries, and I immediately could envision turning one into my "school closet" so all of our books and supplies could be hidden for the first time in our homeschooling life! Off of the kitchen was a large laundry room with a doggie door in the door leading to the back yard, which was plus.

In the laundry room was a three-quarters bath with a shower stall which boasted an interesting shade of yellow tile. Yikes!

Off of the laundry room was a large bedroom, the master, with beautiful wood ceilings and not-so-beautiful textured wallpaper. But the wallpaper was a light tan color, without any print on it, so I counted it a blessing.

We went through the other 3 bedrooms and the other bathroom, all of which, except one bedroom, had wallpaper galore. My oh my, would we have our work cut out for us. We walked outside to the backyard and were very pleased with what we saw....a nice concrete patio area including a porch swing and a nicely landscaped side yard with a big old tree. Now this was good! Our kids love playing outside and we could just see how perfect this yard was for our family.

Aron and I talked a little outside and despite all the things we'd have to work on to make it a home in our style, we realized that this house was really perfect for our family at this time in our lives. We walked back inside, asked the official asking price and told the realtor we'd take it! The house wasn't even officially on the market yet, but because of our friend Connie looking out for us, we were in a really good position to get the house before anyone else had a chance to see it! He met us a bit later back at our rental house and we signed paperwork to get the deal started. He did inform us that there was one other offer on the home that he'd just received that morning (an investor who'd also been at the estate sale), but that the owner who'd been there when we toured the house really liked us and she wanted her childhood home (can you believe we were going to be buying the home from the original owner??? You never hear of that anymore!) to be a home for a nice family, not turned into a rental property right away. However, she was going to think about both offers and we'd have to wait a few more days for her and her brother to decide what they wanted to do about selling the house for their mother. We waited anxiously, yet at peace, for the decision to be made....