Hey guys! Today is the day for a long overdue update about our family home. I mentioned on Instagram in December that we were going to be selling our house. And now, three months later, we have officially sold our beautiful little ranch house and moved into our new home.

Even though I’ve been ITCHING to spill the beans on all the details of our home sale and move, I did my best to keep things under wraps until all of the dotted lines were signed and the bows were tied. This process hasn’t been as smooth as we hoped, and there were several times we thought the deal would all fall through, but now we’ve crossed the finish line and I can finally share all the details and show you photos of our new fixer upper! God has been SO faithful through this whole process and I’m so grateful to be here.

So, here’s the skinny.

Why did we want to move? Didn’t we JUST finish renovating the other house?

Well yes, in fact. We did just finish renovating. And honestly, we didn’t have plans to move this soon. We’ve known for quite a while that our last house was not our forever house…for a number of reasons. We absolutely loved it for the season we were in, and we learned so much and grew so much at that home (I want to do a whole blog post on the things we learned about life and renovation from living in that house…to come soon), but there were a few factors that made it not ideal for the long haul.

For years, I’ve had my eyes on a particular neighborhood as my ideal, dream location. I didn’t know if we could ever actually live there, but I’ve told Jeremy before that if I could pick anywhere in Nashville to live, THAT would be it.

Around November of last year, we were scrolling through the homes for sale in our area (as we so often do), and we came across a house for sale in our dream neighborhood. As we drove down to visit family for Thanksgiving, we looked at photos online and began to dream. What if we went to see it? What if we moved? Could right now be the right time to do that? Honestly, it had not been on either of our radar before that road trip, but something about this particular house just got our wheels turning.

We had nothing to lose, so we scheduled a time to see the house with our AMAZING realtor (shout out to Kate Webster for being our biggest advocate and working so hard for us) the weekend after we got back from the holiday. As soon as we walked in that house, I was sold. In fact, I left that day feeling like the Lord had spoken to me and told me “this is your house. You are going to raise your family here.”

There have been very few times in my life when I’ve felt the Lord promise me something specific. In fact, I can’t really recall any other times when I heard him that clearly. I wondered: Is that really the Lord or is this just wishful thinking?

I told Jeremy what I was feeling. He loved the house, too, and was totally on board to go for it, but he didn’t have as much clarity as I did. He knew, however, that if the Lord spoke to me like that, it was real. I don’t typically over spiritualize things, but this just felt like God was doing something bigger than us. So, despite some doubt and a lot of nervousness, we decided to go for it.

This decision, however, wasn’t particularly practical. We loved our current house. We weren’t prepared to move. And there were a few little roadblocks…

1. We couldn’t pay full price for the new house.

2. Houses in this neighborhood tend to be in VERY high demand, so we figured our chances of actually getting it were slim.

3. We would have to make an offer with a contingency to sell our other house.

4. Our other house wasn’t even on the market.

So how did it go?

I will spare you all the nitty gritty details. Here’s a bullet point version.

• We put together a very thorough offer (complete with renovation renderings and budgets and a nice letter) and made an offer on the new house. They rejected it.

• I drove through the new neighborhood EVERY SINGLE DAY until we had a contract on the house and prayed over it. God taught me so much in that season of waiting. And I’ve never prayed so much over a decision in my life.

• We rushed to get our old house on the market. It was tough because there aren’t really any comps to compare it to (it’s in an unusual area), so we did our best to price correctly and priced quite a bit higher than our realtor recommended. It was risky, but we wanted to take the risk because we’ve worked SO hard on that house.

• We put it on the market the Friday before Christmas.

• We had a buyer with a full price offer and were under contract on Christmas Eve.

• We made another offer on the new house. We found out they had rejected offers from 3 other buyers. But by the grace of GOD, and with a little bit of negotiation, we were under contract on the new house on New Years Eve and scheduled to close on Feb 7.

• The buyers of our old house backed out in early January. We were devastated and confused and thought everything might fall apart. I was SO disappointed to say the least.

• We went BACK on the market knowing we HAD to have a new buyer by end of January.

• We had 36 total showings in less than 3 weeks and it was EXHAUSTING with a baby and a dog and running a business out of our house. Such a test of our stamina and our faith.

• We got another offer! And we were under contract by the end of January. Scheduled to close on both houses February 21.

• Our new buyer had some delays, so we moved closing to February 28. Unfortunately, that meant that Jeremy was going to be out of town for our closing and for the move! But we knew we had to make it work. So, I closed by myself and he supported me from afar (he really is the best at long distance cheerleading. We were still in it together).

AND HERE WE ARE! WE MADE IT!

Honestly, God has been SO faithful. Faithful to teach me to trust Him. Faithful to whisper a promise to me and keep it. Faithful to give us the stamina to keep going in the busiest month we’ve ever had for our business and the hardest month we’ve maybe ever had as a family. This new house feels like such a picture of God’s faithfulness to us and we are so grateful.

Why THIS house?

Here are some of the reasons this house feels perfect for us:

1. The Location.

   It’s hard to convey location online, but suffice to say that the location of this house is perfect for our
   family.

2. The Yard

   It’s one acre of flat land with beautiful, mature trees. We’ve lived here less than a week, and we’ve spent more time playing outside with Judah than we did in the entire time we lived at our old house. We had a great 4 acre lot at the last house, but the land was really hilly and the layout wasn’t really built for easy playtime.

3. The Floorplan

   I am willing to change a LOT of things about a house. We love renovation; it’s no secret. But, I really didn’t want to have to change a floorplan. Other than wanting to open up a wall in the kitchen, we really love the existing layout of this house. It feels so right for our family. Just the right amount of space. And so many little details that we love.

4. The amount of renovation needed

   One of the things that drew us to this house is that it needs some definite updating (hello, bright yellow countertops and original 1965 bathrooms), but it has been really well maintained and is in good condition to start living and enjoying immediately. We have a LOT of plans for this place, but we really were not interested in a place that required immediate overhaul in order to be functional. This house was recently painted and all new hardwoods were installed. So while we have a lot of projects to tackle overtime, we can also enjoy it in the meantime.

5. Community

   Our last house was on a busy country road, and there were no kids for Judah to play with. The new neighborhood is filled with kiddos and neighbors who want to be involved in each other’s lives, and we are so excited to be in a place where we can be friends with people who live closeby!

Why are you telling us all of this? Just show us pictures of the house.

You’re right. I’ll stop talking and show you the photos!

Welcome to our home…

We will have lots more photos to come and details to share! But we just wanted to give you the story of how we got here and introduce you to this new spot.

We will be renovating and taking you along for the ride, but we will be doing things a little bit slower this time! We have to save our pennies for a kitchen renovation, so that will come several months down the road. In the mean time, we are doing a few small updates here and there to the den and the master bedroom. And, as I type this, we have a fence being installed in the backyard!

Thanks for being along for the ride!