For the past several years, we've been talking about building a house at my in-laws. Calvin's always over there working on something and we knew that someday we wanted to be over there so Calvin can help more with the farming. I always thought about it as a someday thing, not any time in the near future. Well, back in the beginning of March we had a realtor (actually the grandma of the little boy I babysit) come over and give us her opinion of what work we could do to our house that we would be able to get our money back out of. We had no interest in selling - just doing some fixing like redoing the main floor bathroom, possibly new flooring in the kitchen, and tearing down two of the chicken houses that were falling apart. She came and walked through everything and gave us her opinion - don't do anything. It was fine how it was. A week later she called and said that she had a couple who was interested in our house and wondered if she could show it to them. I was in shock - I had had no thought of selling our house. But we both agreed that it wouldn't hurt anything to have them look at it. So she showed it to them and then showed it to them again a week later. A few days after that, they made an offer to which we countered. They countered again and we countered again before they made an offer we accepted. It was so crazy to me that all this happened in a few short weeks - I went from having no thought of selling to actually selling my house. I'm not going to lie, it was really hard. While there were many things that drove me crazy about our house, there were so many memories that made it difficult to leave. That's the house I brought my babies home to and the house that they had grown up in. We couldn't take the pool, so that was very sad too. I managed to get the house all packed up in less than eight weeks. Thankfully there was a house for rent right down the road from my in-laws (about 7/8 of a mile from them). It was only about a mile from our house, so we didn't have to move far. There were plenty of tears (mostly from me - the kids were pretty good about the whole thing), but we did our final moving of big furniture and things May 17th. We had so much help from family that it didn't take long to get everything unpacked. Plus I had started moving things weeks before we actually moved since it was so close. I'd drop the girls off at school and then stop at the rental house on the way home to carry in as many boxes as I could fit in the van. So it wasn't long before all of the boxes were gone which made it feel like home.
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| Our first meal in the new house |
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| They rode in the cattle trailer from the old house to the new house. |
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| Last picture of the girls in front of our old house |
We knew we wanted to get started building right away this fall, but we hadn't found house plans that we really liked yet. After about a month of looking and looking for plans, we finally found one that we both liked. It took forever! There were changes that we wanted made though so we worked with a local architect to get the plans drawn up. We worked with him for about a month making changes here and there before we finalized them last week. It's such a relief to have that part done. I know it's only the first decision in an incredibly long line of decisions, but it's a pretty big one. Here's the plan that we chose. We love it and it's going to be perfect for our family!
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| Front and rear views of the house |
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| Side views |
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| Main floor |
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| Second story |
And yes. We will be putting it on a basement. :)
