Month: September 2015

So we have been in the new house for 11 days! feels like way longer, probably looks like way less! Shout out to my hubs…Dee has spent every waking, non career hour at the rental getting it ready for our guy to move in. Seriously, hes been getting home after midnight each night from working so hard over there. As of Saturday, its paid off! Lease signed, security deposit in hand, keys in his hands, done, fineto. Exceeeept..our tenant is going out of town for a few days so Dee will go over there probably tomorrow to touch up one tiny bit of paint and make the dryer turn off when you open the door. Then we’ll really be done.

From my perspective–totally worth the chaos to now be getting rental income. Ask Dee in a few days when hes had some sleep if he thinks it was worth it thus far. Of course I cant really say its worth it since we don’t know if he will be a good tenant but all arrows are pointing to yes!

In my short stay at the new house I have learned a few things. Its funny the things you don’t realize make your life SO much easier until they are gone and vise versa.

1. I miss my mail slot. Its so nice having mail delivered to your living room. Dee and I REALLY miss it. He may put one in.
2. I miss having a door that automatically locks behind me. It really saves a ton of time when you have two littles.
3. I miss overhead lighting–self explanatory.
4. Most importantly I miss a garbage disposal. I can deal with a lot of “yuck” with two babes in diapers but having to dispose of scraps of food that are water logged and stuck in the drain for a few days is just foul. I just gagged typing that sentence. I’m really having trouble. I may be using some of my “funny money” to buy one because I CANNOT. Dee is having a field day watching my daily interactions with the kitchen sink. Bleh.
5. I LOVE having a finished attic with a light switch. It is so nice.
6. I Love having a shed. Its unreal.
7. I love the extra square footage. Our house feels like double the size.
8. I am terrified to clean it. We are still finding homes for everything so there are still boxes and random crap I want to get rid of littering the house. Once that is all sorted through the realization will certainly hit that I do not want to be scrubbing this house but its all part of what I signed up for. The good news is, Elle loves to vacuum so I’m hoping to put her to work.

Ive been lacking in the “Raising” portion of our “rentals, renovations, and raising…”. Lets just say that Jay is in a FUNK. He is my sweet baby. He smiles and sleeps and coos and hes awesome until about five days ago when something has gone horribly wrong in his personality and he is just angry. He can’t be soothed, wants to cry, barely wants to eat (I’m serious, he’s essentially wasting away in his nine month clothes at a mere four months of age!). If you pray, please pray! He is so sad and pitiful and it is no fun for anyone involved. Elle has been a total dream, though. She hasn’t watched a tv show since we moved (except for when I was at a conference and forgot to tell Dee how she hadn’t watched any) and I think it really was making her an irritable toddler. Anyway, I think the kids are overall adjusting well to the new house. Elle is obsessed with her “sunny room” and I couldn’t be happier about it.

On to the conference. I went to a simulcast of the If:Gathering last weekend. Holy Canoli it was just SO good. I have a small obsession with Jen Hatmaker and she was one of the speakers. She did not disappoint! The whole conference walked through answering the question “what would our lives look like if we really believed God”. Not just believed in God, but believed Him and what he says especially as it pertains to us. It was so good. It had a huge personal takeaway:

‘What are my kids seeing me passionate about? Do they see me light about about things and if not, why?’ At this point I’d say not a whole lot but a friend was there and named a few things she saw in me that helped a bit. (Thanks, M!)

Anyway, it was an awesome conference and I highly recommend it.

I think that’s all for now. I’m scheming for inexpensive kitchen updates and just bought dirt cheap end tables and a coffee table. I may be trying my hand (for the second and hopefully more successful time) with chalk paint. Posts coming soon…

Feeling behind? Check this out.

So the surroundings are a bit different! We settled, we packed, I cried, we packed, then about 15 friends came over to move us!

First of all, settlement was a breeze. The whole process was actually a breeze because apparently in the last five years everything real estate related has moved to the interwebs and its glorious. The Dailey Group handled the purchase and it was really very painless! Our home buying process was probably a little bit different because we weren’t looking. The house showed up in my email, we called The Dailey Grouo, they showed it to us and then we put an offer in. This was not months of browsing, thankfully!

Anywho, like I said…15 saints showed up at our door early Saturday morning and they moved us in the rain. We were blown away. My sister parked herself in my kitchen and unpacked everything because everyone needs an organizer in their life. Especially with two littles–I cannot imagine searching through boxes for bottles and formula and THE Elmo spoon.

The last several days, Dee has been sleeping pretty much zero hours to get the rental ready. He’ll be finishing up the stinking smoke detectors tonight for our rental inspection tomorrow. A very persuasive friend of mine worked her magic on Dee so we are paying someone to clean the rental top to bottom on Wednesday. (Thank goodness! It ain’t pretty after 15 people trudge through a house in the rain).

We are signing the lease in the next 24 hours for the rental. A miracle of a tenant showed up in my email and we can’t wait for him to love our house! God has been so faithful during this whole process, it’s unreal.

So hopefully on Friday we will all take a deep sigh of relief, have a glass of wine, and sleep til noon (a girl can dream!).

in case you’re wondering–babies still need baths. The mundane doesn’t change in the midst of packing, moving, renting, unpacking. It seems like ‘good grief you have to eat again? You ate four hours ago!’ But they do. They all want to eat and be clean and they want me to stop unpacking to play. So there’s that. In a couple months every box will be away and small renovations will have begun but my babies will be older so I’m really glad they ask me to stop and play. And feed and bathe…

Come on Friday!

Need to catch up? Start here!

So tomorrow we settle. It’s been a weepy week. I’ve noticed some pride (who me??) issues creeping in this week. Thoughts like ‘I don’t want to move from a beautiful house to a less beautiful house’ have been following me around. An extra wipe down of the pretty granite, looking at Jays cute room, patting myself on the back for a bathroom with pretty finishes. It’s ugly in my heart sometimes.

Its just a little hard to leave. I brought my babies home to this house, Dee and I had some of our best fights over the renovations of his house, we learned how to be married, how to be parents, how to be a team (on our best days) all in this tiny home. We’ve laughed and cried and loved well here and this house is full of sweet memories. I can only pray that it will be a wonderful place for our tenants. That they will encounter love in incredible ways and that while they’re enjoying it, they’ll know that our blood, sweat, and tears went into this house and it was all worth a lot to us.

Enough tears. As a friend told me last weekend, we’re moving into our new home and this house is now a business. I like blunt, I do well with blunt. So onward and upward (in square footage, not necessarily style hehe…there’s that pride again!) so I’m excited to settle and move all our stuff. We’ve got a house to rent out!

This week I fielded 3.4 million calls and emails, several showings, and we’re down to a few potential tenants. Dee prepared our house for our lead inspection that also happens tomorrow. He had to sand down any chipped paint and paint over it. It was quite a job. Several windows, two doors, and the corner of our living room ceiling. The good thing is that everything looks crisp. I hope we pass tomorrow!

Dee also started the wiring for the smoke detectors, win! He’s on a roll. It’s Labor Day weekend so the extra day off work couldn’t have come at a better time.

Today was our final walk through of the renovation house. The seller did a great job making the sun room look lovely after removing two huge skylights. It really looks flawless! It’s so fun to see Elle running and enjoying so much more space. This is why we’re moving!

On the docket for this week:

Dee- finish wiring the smoke detectors, paint the railing, odds and ends

Me-schedule the rental inspection, finalize our lease, finish packing.

Luckily we have great friends willing to help so we are renting a Uhaul and moving in five short days!

I have had the most bizarre week. We officially listed the rental last week and I could not have been prepared for the response we’ve gotten. First just let me say, we started by simply putting a rent sign in the front yard with my phone number on it. I frequently have my wood door open with our storm door locked so Elle can see outside and the great people of Baltimore took this as a personal invitation to knock on my door and ask for a tour.

WHAT?

My immediate thoughts:

‘I have two children, you may not come into my home on a random Thursday at 11am. Why are you not working? How will you afford rent?’

It was bizarre. I’m someone who goes through life counting things (OCD, I know) and seven people have done this in three days. Totally ignored the sign with the phone number and decided they’d just knock instead.

I’ve also realized that all of the people that I’d want to rent to at first glance (you know, have jobs, called instead of barged in, are polite, basically are breathing and seem to be functioning members of society) well they all have pets.

We do not want pets. All of the fur and the smells AND THE PEE is just a bit too much for our baby of a home. I am not a pet person (gasp) in life so I’m definitely not a pet person when it comes to renting out our home.

Today we officially listed the house on the interwebs. Here’s to hoping we find a petless, smokeless, socially aware human.

 In other news, Dee put up the railing in the rental and started the wiring for the smoke detectors. We have an appointment set for the lead test and packing is “going”. It’s really not going. I try my hardest to practice minimalism so we use almost everything we have, I see myself packing the day before we move. With that being said we have about twenty boxes packed and sitting in the basement. They’ve been sitting down there for a few weeks and I’ve missed exactly two things:ziplock bags and razors(oops). I’m begging Dee to not move those boxes and have a yard sale in the basement once we move but I’m not holding my breath.

As far as the new house goes, our appraisal came in right around the price we are buying the house for. In my opinion the appraisal system is flawed-they should not be able to see what we’re paying! Don’t get me started on the who home buying process, that’s a rant for another day.

Ok. I think that’s it. We have three showings tonight. Wish us luck!