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3. Keep in mind that 20% of the purchase price of the house is the traditional estimate for a down payment. That's the rule of thumb we've all heard, but I never knew why. I know now that not being able to put down 20% means you must get private mortgage insurance (or PMI). It is essentially your lender’s insurance against the risk they’re taking giving a loan to someone who doesn’t have the money for a down payment. It’s typically 0.5% - 1% of the balance of the loan per year, so depending upon the purchase price of your home,
Hey y'all! I have great news! The morning after I wrote last week's post, we got an offer on our home and it is now under contract! Thank you for all of your well wishes and encouragement. I truly appreciate it so much! If you've been following along, you know that things have been a little crazy, with us buying our next fixer upper and selling our current house all in just a few short weeks. After posting this picture and announcing our house was for sale last week, I got a lot of questions. Several of you asked why we would work so hard on this house and finally finish it, only to sell it a year later. Well, I never talked about any of our long term plans on the blog, simply because I didn't know how things would work out, and also because even though we always knew we would sell this home, we didn't have a strict timeline in mind. But, after Ava was born (and after we got through the 6 months of colic) and the house was finished, it just felt like the right time to move forward with our plan. A little backstory. When we first bought this house 6 years ago, we knew it wasn't our forever home. It was our first home. It was the only home we could afford at the time, unless we wanted something a lot smaller with no yard. It was straight from the 1970's and totally outdated, but we were able to purchase it for really cheap. And I mean REALLY cheap. It had so much potential and I knew that we could make it something special over time, really enjoy living in it for awhile, and then hopefully sell it for a profit. I'm not really sure why I thought that, as I had never done any sort of renovating before, and I knew nothing about real estate, but I'm glad I believed in us and this house. There were honestly times over the past 6 years where I felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew, but we persevered through it and eventually finished what I had envisioned for this home all along. So, earlier this year, Jesse and I began to feel like it was time to move on. We began actively looking for our next project, something with tons of potential that needed a lot of work. Basically, we were looking for another fixer upper in a different area of Knoxville, closer to my family. It took us almost 6 months of searching, but eventually we ended up finding one in our dream location (on 5 acres!!) and purchased it. As soon as we had our new house under contract, we listed our current house for sale. There was immediately a lot of interest in our home, and it was a crazy week with 2-3 showings a day, and by the end of the week, the house was under contract, for nearly double what we purchased it for 6 years ago. So, I know it seems like a crazy thing to do, to work so hard on your home only to sell it, but it just made sense for our family, both financially and emotionally, and we are really excited to move on to the next chapter of our story. Our next fixer upper needs a lot of work. I'll be doing things I've never done before, like kitchen and bathroom renovations, and I'm excited. It's probably going to be really ugly for awhile, and I can almost guarantee I'm going to screw things up on occasion, but I plan to take you guys along for the ride. Sometimes that's hard to do because people can be absolutely brutal when you share the ugly stuff, but screw the trolls, let's just enjoy the journey, ugly and all. Moving on with the story....I've never shared the exterior of our house before on the blog, mostly for privacy reasons, but we're moving soon, so feast your eyes on this terror. I think this picture is from 2010, the day we moved in. When we first bought the house back in 2010, it had been on the market for over a year and had sat in foreclosure for years prior to that. So, it probably hadn't been occupied for 3-5 years. And you could tell. We definitely had our work cut out for us. And here it is today, 2016, right before we listed it for sale a week ago. I'm pretty thrilled with how much better it looks. We didn't do a lot to the exterior, but we did just enough to freshen it up and make it look a little more updated (without having to spend tons of money). We gave the exterior a fresh coat of paint (Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray), painted the trim white, and painted the front door (Sherwin Williams Urbane Bronze). We updated all of the lighting, stained the deck to match the house, and replaced the garage doors (The old garage doors didn't work for the first 4.5 years we lived here, and let me just tell you, best money I ever spent on this house...the luxury of being able to push a button and drive your car into your car-room!!!! I had no idea!!! Is this what the fancy people are doing?!?! Why did no one tell me?!!?). The landscaping was in really bad shape when we first moved in, but over time Jesse obsessed over our grass until it became a beautiful cushiony grass pillow. Not sure he really nailed it with the bushes, but whatever, he gets a million man points for spending so much time out in the hot sun, loving on our little yard. So, that's the exterior. We've spent a lot of time in the yard with Ava recently, just crawling around in the grass and enjoying all of our hard work, and I will definitely miss spending time out here. I'm so excited to pass this beauty on to the next family. I hope they will enjoy it as much as we did. And now, I'll show you guys the pictures of the interior that we used for our house listing. The pictures turned out really well, and the photographer used a much wider lens than I have, so I think this makes for a great final house tour of this house. You'll probably get a better sense of what the house really looks like, much better than I was ever able to provide you with! Dining room: Entryway: Kitchen: I put out little bottles of sparkling water (I've never drank it in my life.), took all my bass fish magnets off the fridge (hehe), put a giant bowl of apples on the table, and opened a cookbook to a colorful page for the showings. I feel like the details make all the difference. Living room: I got rid of most of my pink for the showings (and I won't be going back...it's a new day) and opted for more blues and greens around the house. Guest bathroom: Since we moved Ava's crib back into our bedroom long, long ago, we staged her nursery as a bedroom (with two air mattresses and some extra bedding I had on hand), so that people could see this room set up as a bedroom. It took me about an hour, but I really think it helped the house show a lot better than if I had just left all of her baby junk and toys laying on the ground (like it is in real life). I mean, if they opened the closet, they still got to see the complete baby gear debauchery, but hey, a girl can only do so much. Office: I love how well the photographer captured the master bedroom. You guys have probably seen this bedroom a hundred times on this blog, but I've never been able to capture it this accurately. I will miss this room so much. Our new master bedroom is about 1/3 of this size, but you can't have everything, girl. I set up the little side room with a loveseat and styled it up with whatever I could find in the house, and I seriously got kinda mad at myself bc it turned into a cute, functional little space and I was like WHY did I never do this for the 6 years we lived here!? Such is life. There's the side room. First time it's ever been photographed well on my blog. This was the original master bedroom for this house, but they built on that huge addition back in the 80's. I never did get around to replacing that fan. A peek into Ava's 'room'. Turns out that little nook in our bedroom served a great purpose afterall! Master bathroom: Entryway down into the basement living room: Basement living room: Basement bathroom: Basement bedroom: And that, friends, is the final house tour of this house we've loved so much for the past 6 years. I'm pretty proud of our work here and I'm so thankful that I got to share it with all of y'all on this blog. It's been a really amazing part of my life. In other news, Ava turns one tomorrow!!! We will be taking her to do her favorite activity, swimming, and I bought her a little cake to smash her hands around in. :) Here are a couple pics from Father's day. Jesse wanted to spend the day at the lake, and so we did. We lasted about 30 minutes and ended up at a lakeside restaurant, but it was still an amazing day. Splashing around in the shallow end (and digging in the sand) with her dad by her side is Ava's favorite activity, and Jesse seems to enjoy it, too. :) Thanks for being here, y'all. We'll be closing on our new house early next week and hopefully closing the sale on our current house in just a few weeks. So, wish us luck! Time to find some movers. P.S. Because I can only fit so much in one post, if you want to see the before pics of the house, go to this post. 'Til next time. Follow my blog with Subscribe to LiveLoveDIY with email! Enter your email address:
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