Our current home is our 3rd house together. We lived in our starter home right at 3 years, then moved to what we thought would possibly be a ten+ year house for us, at the very least a “get our kids through elementary school” house. We had one baby when we moved in and it was in our preferred neighborhood with the sweetest neighborhood school. While there were things we hoped to change as the years went on, we loved this 2nd house and saw ourselves there for a very long time. It was spring 2013.
Shepherd was born in 2014, I was at the height of my wedding photography business, and Joe made a career change from teaching middle school to Real Estate. After having 2 kids(and wanting more), shooting 30 weddings a year was not going to be sustainable long term so we started shifting our time and energies around to make more space for me to be home- not no weddings a year, just not 30. Not to get into our life story, but setting the scene that we had 2 kids at 2 years apart and were just really maxed out. We had a home we loved, but some of the pain points of our home were becoming more obvious in how we were living and operating in our home. While I had moved my photography business to a studio, Joe was now doing most of his work from home when not on the road. Our laundry room was downstairs and at the back door, all of the bedrooms were upstairs and on the other end of the house….and all this to say we had started dreaming of what it would look like to fix some of those things in this home. Be that an addition, adding a patio, upgrading our bathrooms. Making our large walk in closet into a laundry room- everything was on the table. We were gathering ideas and quotes and really getting into what it would take to solve some of those pain points to love it even more. We had even started to budget for some large scale renovations- primarily a larger “family room” and an upstairs laundry.
(These are some of the photos from our listing when we went to sell because posts are more fun with photos)
I loved the traditional vibe of this home and played my decorating to those types of vibes. I would say my style at the time was still transitional, but with a more traditional bend. Man do I miss those 10 foot ceilings! The biggest thing we did to this home besides decorate was paint before moving in. We did not really do any large capital improvements on this house aside from the retaining walls and landscaping out front. It was 95% a paint. Oh, and built ins in the bonus room. But really, that was about it. We didn’t even change the carpet, it was in such great shape upon move in. This house had GREAT BONES from the beginning.
Late 2015 and early 2016 Joe had been showing some interesting properties to a client and they were set to close an amazing property. It really got our wheels turning about our hopes and dreams for our “forever home”. While originally we thought that might be more than a few years out from that, he said he had recently shown a property that I might like. We went and looked at it on March 1st, 2016. To my surprise, it was less than 2 miles away, still in downtown Concord- an area we really didn’t want to leave.
You guessed it…..it was indeed our current home! I even took photos the first time we saw it because I JUST KNEW this was going to be our home. Here was the problem, we weren’t REALLY in the market. This looksie loo was more of a showing to appease me and to get to work on the upgrades we wanted to do at our current home. I don’t think even Joe saw coming the attachment I would IMMEDIATELY have to this property. But again, we weren’t ready. We were at the start of wedding season, we hadn’t filed our taxes, we hadn’t talked to a lender…..the list goes on! Also, the ENTIRE PROPERTY needed to be gutted/redone/fixed/modernized. We had my parents out immediately and they loved it, too, but Joe was like WE ARE NOT IN A PLACE TO MOVE RIGHT NOW. Irregardless, we made an offer. Ha! After a little bit of back and forth, we couldn’t come together on a price. Or at least a price that Joe and I felt comfortable with knowing the amount of work it needed. Oh! And I failed to mention the property had been listed for the better part of a DECADE. With the real estate market going a little crazy these days, it’s hard to think back to a time when a house sat FOR YEARS. But alas, those days did happen! The price had finally just gotten low enough to be in our price range after multiple reductions over the course of years.
Alas, I was in love. But agreed we couldn’t make our most competitive offer until all of our ducks were in a row. What could we get for our house? What lending could we qualify for?? Would this house pass inspection after sitting empty for all of these years? We needed to file our taxes……so, we agreed to take a step back….afterall, the house had been sitting this long, it’s not going ANYWHERE.
I can’t remember the exact number of days that passed…..but not many when we found out THE HOUSE HAD GONE UNDER CONTRACT. When I say I was heartsick, I was truly gutted. Heartsick is the only word that makes sense for how I felt. I had known so deeply in my soul (Hi, enneagram 8 here) that this house was going to be ours. It’s cliche, but now is a good time to mention that every house we have ever bought I have known on the spot and we have bought it. We’ve never second guessed a purchase that I felt right about on the first visit. This also happened with my parents new house. Basically my house radar is dead on. I either know YES or I know NO and I never think twice. So, the fact that this house was going to be sold to someone else, I was legitimately weepy. Weepy for days, weeks, so just unsettled by the whole thing. Genuinely knew it was weird I was crying over this property, but just holding on to hope that it would work out. I was still Pinteresting things for this property….thinking of it all the time. Trying not to, trying to be a rational human being and knowing it just a material item, but also not able to shake the overwhelming feeling that we were supposed to have bought it. Also, I really took the whole thing out on Joe, that sweet man, because of course it was his fault we hadn’t gotten it. Again, I know this was crazy town thoughts, but I was unwell.
Alright, you’ve been reading a while and I promise to get to the point. After the house went under contract to not us, ugh- we decided to be full steam ahead on doing our renovations to make our current home function better for our family. We had a contractor come out that we really liked and I was completely sold on using him…..and it was time to put money down on this work and an architect. After a few days of talking it out again AD NAUSEUM because THAT’S WHAT I DO, I told Joe that I couldn’t put any money down until I saw that the house had officially closed. Yes, it has been 30-45 days, but I had to see it CLOSE. And if it closed, I would let it go and know it wasn’t meant to be and get over myself and get on with the beautiful home that I was acting seemingly ungrateful for(I wasn’t ungrateful for it, but I was trying to get my mind right of off of this other property). So, that was March-ish that it went under contract- we are now in the June-ish territory. Every day I would check to see if it had closed. Still pending. Check again….pending. Finally I told Joe that I really think something is up. 60 days isn’t crazy in that market to be under contract, but my gut is telling me something is up. It’s going to fall through. We decided to send the agent an email just saying “Hey, we see that the property is still pending. Lindsey is acting like a straight up crazy person crying every day for months over this house. Please let me know if it falls through, we will jump right back into negotiations”. But really, this is basically what the email said.
I was thankful we sent the email. I was trying to get myself right with the Lord to let this go. I really can’t describe how overwhelming though the whole situation was to me! I am as stable as they come, it’s truly my gift in this life, but this had me so out of sorts! Poor Joe! We go to the beach for July 4th week and on July 3rd we get an email saying, “The contract has fallen through, would you jump back in and we can make a deal”. When that email came through I was shaking! We got in the car almost immediately, left the beach and came right home to get our act together. And by act, I mean we still hadn’t filed our taxes. Ya’ll, don’t be like us. I’m telling you! It went pending so quick we never acted on our tax extension! So, we were still in the same boat! But at this point we had done more due diligence with lenders and knew what our current home was worth and knew we could make it work. We had an agreement almost right away because at this point Joe wasn’t going to let it get away and have to deal with me for the rest of his life!!!! The man is owed all the stars in heaven for being married to me!
Whew! A few details to note- in our initial offer, we had offered to buy “As is, where is”- meaning we weren’t going to ask for any repairs. We later learned that many things had come up on inspection on the previous contract (and contracts that had fallen through before), which is likely what made the contract fall through. We made the same offer again of As is, where is and didn’t even have our home inspected. This shocks so many people, but at the time of it being back available we knew we would fix any problem that arose, and there was no point in arguing repairs. And since we would fix whatever happened, we just decided to save the inspection fee- on a large property that fee can be rather high so we just decided to keep the money. We were willing to take it on. There was going to be no stopping this contract from happening- and I’m just so thankful!
Thank you for hanging in there on this roller coaster ride that was how we came to buy our house! I am so lucky to steward this place, and grateful it came back our way but have no doubt God knew what he was doing the entire time! Thank you for being here and being on this journey with us!