Our family has lived in 6 different homes over the course of our 13-year marriage. We are currently in the process of building the seventh home we will live in. We lived in our first two homes overseas while Mister was active duty. We then moved back to the states and rented a home for a bit until we bought our first home in 2009. We then felt we needed a bit more space and sold that house and bought another house in the same town. In 2015 Mister landed a job in Maine and it was a dream come true so we sold the home we were in and moved up north. We lived with my parents for a time while we finished the sale of the house and tried to find a home in Maine. The search wasn’t easy. Mister was working an hour and a half from my parent’s house so he stayed with some friends for a bit but overall, we really needed to find a place to live quickly. Not a great situation to be in when your family is adjusting to a new job, new living situation, new pay, and all with an infant. Though it was wonderful to be near family more than we ever had been, to say it was stressful was an understatement. I had locations I thought would be perfect but there was nothing in our price range. Truth be told, we didn’t even truly know what our price range was so it was even harder to look for a home. We saw lots and lots and finally found a place we liked, thought we could afford, had some land, and was a reasonable distance to Misters work. We closed on the house in July, removed some wallpaper, painted some walls and moved in. We loved the house, the quiet road it was on, our neighbors, location to things including the church we had just found and decided to become a part of.
As a year or two went on we reviewed our finances and realized we simply were cutting our monthly bills to close by living in this home that we had grown to love. The home had one full bathroom and a couple of other things that we would have loved to change in the future but we realized we would never have the budget to make those changes. Another major issue was that the taxes were very high in this town. A couple of months after Mr.4 was born our neighbor sold their home for a very good price in a very short time. I told Mister and he semi jokingly said, “maybe we should sell ours?” We came back to that discussion a short time after and decided to talk to an agent. He gave us some great numbers for what he thought we could sell for and gave us some things we could do to help sell and decided to list it. The grandparents took the three big boys and Mister and I put in two solid days of work while Mr. 4 supervised. We cleaned, painted, landscaped, repaired, and made the house showing ready. We listed in July of 2017 and had several showings right off. We got an offer fairly quickly and though it was quite a bit lower than we had wanted we accepted and were very excited. We got right to work putting things in storage. We had some hiccups with inspections and the buyer’s specific needs and they terminated the contract. Ok, back to square one. We dropped the price, we had some more showings, by this time it was back in the school year so I was trying to school the big boys, entertain Mr.3 and nurse and take care of Mr.4 . We got another showing that led to another offer, about the same as the first one. Again, we were excited and put more stuff in storage. We got to the inspection time and our agent was there for this inspection. He said everything went well and nothing major came up so we were ready to really move forward towards discussions and hopefully closing. Mister was gone for the night hunting and I was up late and figured I’d check my email one more time before bed. That’s always the best thing to do right? Our agent emailed and said they decided the inspection had too many things on it, though nothing major, and they were out of the contract. Oh wow, we were blindsided! A few weeks later and our agent met a couple who had seen the house at a prior showing and was interested and wanted to buy the house independently. They wanted to meet us in person. We met them and enjoyed quite a nice evening and they left saying they’d be making an offer in a couple of days. Well two weeks later they still hadn’t contacted our agent and he finally heard back and they said they wouldn’t be moving forward with an offer.
Just one hit after another and we were exhausted. We decided to take the house off the market at the start of December. Though I loved having my house cleaned from top to bottom for the showings I was very tired. Mr. 3 and Mr. 4 were not sleeping and I was started to really feel the effects of the lack of sleep and the stress. We figured it’d be best for us to take some time off of the showings and relax a bit for the holiday season. We also decided to repaint the bathroom as it seemed to have been catching folks up when we got the feedback from each showing. Mister repaired the sheetrock, and we painted it a nice neutral gray. Come the first week of December and our agent calls with a showing for a couple who had been eyeing the house the entire time it was on the market. We said, “seriously? We take it off the market and you want a showing now?” They wanted the showing for just after Christmas. I asked our agent to please relay that we were happy to have a showing but it would be very apparent that we had just celebrated Christmas with four children. He said they were fine with it so we got the house ready. We must have done something right because they made an offer that was for asking price! The couple wanted to close in June but we asked to move it closer so we settled on March. We filled up the storage unit and found another one fill to the tip top. Closing went well, we met the couple and they were super nice and then we found ourselves at my parent’s house. Mister would stay at my sisters during the week as it was much closer to his work than to my parent’s house.
We decided to just lay low for a bit. We explored some options with building and looked at a few homes and we saw some land we liked. We made many calls and emails to a builder we knew and had great references on. We needed some time to let our finances settle down and save a bit. It felt good to catch our breath and relax with our family.
May comes around and we decide to build on a really nice spot not far from the house we sold. We made countless calls and emails to the builder to make sure the house we built would be in our budget. We closed on the construction loan in July and work began. Land cleared and we started to see our home take shape! Our final plans will be a 3-bedroom, 2.5 bath cape. An open floor plan with a finished basement (to be finished eventually) would be just what we need to have the space we need with more bathrooms (Yayyy!! I don’t have to share a bathroom with my boys!) and have a home that works within our budget.
As I am writing this, we are currently just starting to paint the walls. The floors are slotted to go in at the end of the week and the kitchen will go in after that. We have so enjoyed the process of going to see the house every so often and showing the boys how it, all works. Mister and I have enjoyed several day dates going to clear trees, run electrical, and prep for painting. Building a home has been a dream of mine for a long time so I am so excited to see it continue to take shape. Make sure to join me here to see us move in and make it a home!
