First Post

A lot has happened since we purchased the house. I want to start by first giving a time line leading up to this first photo

In the fall of 2007, I proposed to my wife. During the Spring of 2008 while planning the wedding we realized we would need a place to live together. Phillip came up with the suggestion of asking his mother if they could live in one of her rental houses to save up money to purchase a house. The only caveat is that we would need to repair the house. The house was named Farrow.

Summer of 2008, Before we moved in we had to replace a number of broken and stolen items. Thieves had broken in and stole the carpet, light fixtures, furnace, even the kitchen faucet! Gloria and I start doing simple things such as cleaning, painting and replacing the stolen items. Shortly there after Farrow was broken into while we were attending a family member's wedding. The police took almost 6 hours to show up. The burglars had kicked in the back door and went through the items that was in the house. However we had not moved in yet and the house was pretty much empty. Gloria no longer wanted to live there. I convinced Gloria that these are only opportuist thieves and once we start living there they will not break in. So I start sleeping at Farrow every night on the floor, with no water, no electricity so that no one would break in. I eventually got a mattress to sleep on sometime in July or August. We also beefed up the security by adding motion sensor lights and removing the stairs that led to the backdoor. We decided not to do a secruity system since we did not have a landline phone also because the cops respond slowly.

This is a picture of my fraternity brother helping me teardown the steps leading to my backdoor.

Fall of 2008, We get married and move into the house. We still do not have the gas turned on because we are broke. We were living off of only Gloria's income since I was still finishing up my last year of school. Since we didn't have gas that means we did not have hot water. Our bath time was chilly. We finally get the gas turned on only to realize our galvanized pipe have corroded so badly that the hot water comes out as a trickle. So we continue taking cold water baths. Phillip vows to never live in a house with galvanized water piping again.

One day Gloria is sad, and so am I cause I feel like I put her in this position. So I use our 5 qt Stock pot to boil some water on the stove and I drew my wife a hot bath. She was in heaven. It was the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. During this season we also purchased our furnace. Before we had our furnace gloria would go into her office at the house, and use her little sunbeam heater to heat the room to 90 degrees F! I always said it was hot she said it wasn't LOL. Needless to say once the furnace was installed there was some "discussion" concerning why we needed to lower the temperature in the house to 60 degrees at night. Our first gas bill stopped all discussions. And gloria wore plenty of clothing while walking around the house.

Winter 2008 We replaced all the galvanized piping with CPVC. We did not have water for a few days but we made due. We also installed a cheap shower enclosure and put in a shower. Hot Showers baby thats where it is :D.  Gloria managed to get stuck at the end of the driveway and says she wants an actual driveway and not this dirt path we have now. And a garage!

Spring 2009  I convinced Gloria that we can continue living in Farrow until we are completely debt free. As such we should just take the money we saved for our first house and use it to pay down debt to save on interest.  Then our first emergency repair happened. Gloria noticed all the drains were moving slow. She calls her dad who had a friend who used a machine to enter the drain system where the toilet is to unclogged the drain. Everything appears to be fine. Shortly thereafter the same thing happened. This time I decided to check it out. I disconnected the main drain lined and got COVERED in raw sewage. I did discover the line was clogged in the house but outside in the yard. We eventually called Roto-Rooter to have the line cleared. I graduated from school. My father in law donated a lawn mower to use. We still have it today :). I renew my feelings towards dirty water.

Summer 2009 We do not have Central  A/C. We currently only have a window A/C unit in our bedroom that we turn on at night before we go to bed otherwise we open all the doors and windows to keep the house cool. We both agree central A/C is a must in our next house. We also discovered that there are a lot of mosquitoes and Gloria is a mosquito magnet. Gloria does not want to live close to a place that may harbor mosquitoes! So, we start looking for our first home. We continue making repairs as needed to the house. Our estimated budget is $150,000

Winter 2009 Still looking at first but we give up.

Spring 2010 We decided now is a good time to start on that baby thing. Also with our tax refund in hand we renew our search

Summer 2010 Still looking, we lower our budget since Gloria will not be working after baby is born

Fall 2010 Son is born 3 months early, all housing search stops for a bit, but then we get back on it hot and heavy. Our budget now is only $50,000.


Winter 2010, We found it!

It had 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, lots of space and multiple acres! and it was in our price range. We give the asking price. However upon receiving the title work we realized that it did not have multiple acres and we gave up on the house :(

Spring 2011
I meet with our Realtor to view a house and decided to buy it. Thankfully everything panned out and we had our first home!

There were many other houses before this that we put our offer in but they always seem to fall through. And now you are up to date on our current house.