Let's Raise the Roof......

In our very own house.  Almost a year ago, after having Drew, Michelle and I started to think we needed to look into a bigger place since our one bedroom most likely wouldn't work forever having a baby thrown into the mix.  We first thought about just moving into a bigger apartment, but soon realized that we hate moving so we should find a place that we can grow into.  We didn't anticipate the process taking so long, but we are very happy with the end result.  We had gone back and forth between buying a pre-built home and building our own and even started the design of a home and found some land that we liked, but in the end it was becoming more than we wanted to spend and not in the location we wanted to be.  We had seen and put offers on two different houses before we found this one and it turned out that we lost the first two before we heard anything back on this one.  All three of them were short sales.  We first saw the house at the end of September.  It was in a great, well established neighborhood and was minutes away from the freeway and even closer to the Jordan River Temple and it had a good sized backyard with a swing set for Drew.

After a counter offer from the bank we were set to close at the end of December, but because of some pricing issues and how slow the bank works we had to extend it to the middle of January.  We were disappointed, but didn't have any restraints with our apartment since we were on month to month with our landlord.  While we were in Arizona for my grandmother's funeral we got a call from our realtor giving us some bad news.  The owner of the house for some reason had the gas turned off to the house, thinking that the house had been winterized or something, but it wasn't so.  I bet you could tell where this is going.  A pipe froze and burst above the main level kitchen.  Most of the main floor and all of the basement had flooded.  We couldn't believe it.  After all of this searching this had to happen.  It was hard to visualize what the damage was without seeing it in person.  By the next day we were told that the owner's insurance would pay to have it restored.  When we returned to Utah and were able to see the damage, after most of it was cleaned up, it looked worse than I had thought.

Michelle and I had to think long and hard about whether or not to pursue it any further, but in the end, regardless of what opinions people gave, we had to go with what we felt was right and we decided to push forward.  With the owners wanting to make us happy we were able to choose paint colors, flooring, and even add a few things here and there and make some changes to the layout of the basement which we think makes it a lot better (Thanks for the idea Ben/Tina).

After over a month and a half of remodeling to get the house ready to move in and working to get a loan we finally signed all the papers on Thursday night and everything was locked in with the state and mortgage company by Friday afternoon.

On February 26th we moved in with the help of a lot of Michelle's family, a little of mine, and a few ward members.  We couldn't be happier with the end result.  Within the first few days we already had neighbors giving us cookies and even bringing us dinner.  I think we made a really good choice.  We still have some work to do around the house, and plenty of yard work to take care of in the next few months, but we would love to have people come and visit now that we have a lot more room.