The Club House

Well, the last time I blogged I was still talking about our current house. Soon that will change and it will be called our previous house. That still seems strange to me :)

Today, I would like to tell you about our new adventure and show you photos of our new home. So, the big news first, our current house is under contract and we should be moving at the end of the month! Yay for us! Our house was only on the market for a week before we got an offer. Praise the Lord, I know it was His handiwork! The inspections have been done and everything is moving right along. In the mean time, the house is getting emptier and emptier. Why, you may ask, if we haven’t moved yet? Let me tell you…

I have been feeling for quite some time the need to downsize. At first even I thought it was a crazy idea. We LOVE our house. Why would we want to move? There are actually many other factors that were a part of our decision but it would make for a really long blog post so that is just the basic idea. We want to downsize and have less to take care of. Less maintenance, less cleaning. So, for this whole year I have been praying about it. And along the way, Jason caught the vision too. At first, we were really thinking that it would happen sometime next year. After we finished some of the projects we started (like my windows) and after we fixed some things that needed to be fixed. But then, the right house came along and it put everything onto the fast track.

We found our new house on a whim. But it struck a chord with us and even though we were nowhere near ready to move we decided to go look at it. We found out that it was a HUD home and there was only a week to place a bid on it. A week. Crazy. But we prayed about it. And we really felt like we were supposed to do all that we could to get this house. Let me tell you, it seriously was a miracle that we even got the bid! We closed on the house quickly and have already owned it for about a month. Miracle number one, placing a bid on the new home… done. Miracle number two, having our bid accepted because we put in a low offer… done. Miracle number three, putting our house on the market and selling it… done. Isn’t God amazing?!

So that accounts for all the frenzy of crazy work to put our house on the market. We had already bought the new house and we still needed to list ours. Remember how I said we were giving ourselves a year to get everything done before we even thought of selling? Ya, well, we ended up doing it all in less than two weeks. Two weeks of waking up at 6 am and working until midnight every day. But it was worth it!

Okay, so now is where it really gets crazy. At least I’m pretty sure most of you will think we are just a bit crazy. But first I would like to say that we are super thrilled and we can’t wait to see how God will use this new home in our lives. Remember I said we are downsizing? Our current home is about 2100 square feet plus an unfinished basement plus a two car garage. We have 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and office, yada, yada, yada. We have some space. Our new home is 800 square feet (794 to be exact). For reals. Two bedrooms, one bath, no garage. At first I wasn’t sure I could do it. I mean, that’s pretty small. But it was confirmed to us in so many ways that now I can’t imagine continuing to live where we currently do. Not that there is anything wrong with living how we do now, it’s just that this is the next step for us and it feels right. I know there will be challenges, but we are ready to take them on!

Well, are you ready for a tour?! Let’s go!!

I actually forgot to take a photo of the outside so I had to snag this one off the internet. It’s a super cute little cottage. A little spiffing up and the outside will be just peachy. I will be doing some painting outside and we will be adding some grass and some more landscaping :)

When you walk in the front door, you enter into the living room. This is the right side of the room. There are so many things I’m going to do to this little house. I can’t wait!!

This is still in the living room, facing the left side. You can see the kitchen, dining room, and living room all flow together. Because the house is so small, I like it that way. It feels larger than it would if there were walls everywhere.

The kitchen. Again, lots of plans for this space! And do you see all of the windows? I am in love! I took these photos before we had even placed a bid on the house. My parents and our realtor were there with us.

This is just off the kitchen (where my Dad, in the red shirt, was standing in the previous photo). The refrigerator is in this little space and we are going to get a counter depth fridge so it doesn’t stick out. I love this little mud room. Tiny but oh, so cute!

Standing in the kitchen, facing the living room. I love the floors.

Off to the bedrooms. More wood floors that I love. Both bedrooms are exactly the same size. We have decided to use the bedroom on the right for us because of the closet…

This closet has bi-fold doors. It’s a tiny closet, I want as much access to it as I can get!

In the second bedroom, there is just a standard door which makes the closet harder to use. Someday we would really like to have built in closets to maximize our space.

This is the tiny little hallway. I’m standing in the first bedroom, looking toward the second. The bathroom is on the right.

The bathroom. Again, big plans for this space, I can’t wait to see it come together!

Behind the door in the other photo is the bath cabinet. Not too convenient. Don’t worry, we have big plans here too :)

The only other part you didn’t get to see is there is an unfinished basement. It’s really tiny, pretty much the cutest little basement ever :) It has hookups for a washer and dryer and some space for storage. But, there was no power on when we took these photos and it’s pretty hard to take a photo in a basement with no light.

That completes our tour! What do you think? We love our little Club house :) Why do we call it our Club house? Because it’s on Club drive and because it’s about the size of a club house. Haha!

Renovations have already started and now it looks a lot worse than when we bought it. But soon, it will look much better. We are thrilled.

Because our new home is so small, I am letting go of over half of what we own. Seriously. At first I thought it would be really hard (like when I threw away almost all of my scrapbooks) but actually, it’s been very freeing. To get rid of stuff and not have so much has been good for me. I’m very thankful!

Tomorrow and Saturday I am having a garage sale to finish purging our big house. I’m not kidding, when you see what is actually left in the house you would be amazed. Most of the things you have seen in my house are going, going, gone. If you live in the area and want to come to the sale, let me know. Send me an email and I will be happy to send you our address.

There are a few more posts I have to show you to finish up things at the big house and then we will move on to the Club house. A little scary? Yes. But also good :)