We Can Almost See The Finish Line.

So…we close on our new house today! It’s 1,500 sq ft which – if you include the differences in garages between the two houses – is about 1/3rd smaller than our old house. We have definitely achieved “downsizing” at a much more extreme level than we anticipated. We accepted a smaller house for a perfect location. If you’ve ever moved house, you’ll understand how stressful the whole process it can be. Saying this though, with the assistance of professional realtors similar to Eddie Yan, knowing that you have a helping hand during these times could help ease the stress, as they’d be able to guide you on the right path to finally getting the home you’ve always wanted.

I mean, wouldn’t you accept one less bedroom to be next door to a Krispy Kreme?

KIDDING. We are not moving next door to a Krispy Kreme.

(But I would have accepted 1 less bedroom to do so, if it had been an option.)

The house we are buying is a 3-bedroom, was built in the 60s, and has had minimal work done to it since. We’re in a good enough situation with how we worked the sale to be able to get a 15-year mortgage and still put some money into upgrading it before we move in. So, while we close today, we won’t move in until later this summer.

The un-fun things: We have to re-do tons of electrical and almost all of the plumbing. And it’s not really “un-fun” because, you know, we’d like to avoid floods, leaks, and fires. If you’re like us and you want to avoid having floods and plumbing leaks, then I would definitely suggest bringing in professionals to do all of this work for you instead of doing it yourself. But…you know…doesn’t do much to change the look of the house, so we won’t be able to tell much of a difference after spending tons of money to do that.

But we do like being able to sleep at night, so we’ll do it.

The fun thing? We’re remodeling the kitchen.

There’s other stuff we’ll want to do eventually…expand the master bathroom to overtake a hall closet, close in a carport to build a laundry room, etc. But the kitchen remodel will get us feeling like we’re living in a better house than before, which will be a good feeling. It’s sucky to downsize AND downgrade, so the new kitchen will make us feel like we traded up in some ways.

Most importantly though – the house is in a completely different part of town. It’s only 200 yards – as the crow flies – to the trails we run. Since we can’t fly like crows and have to respect property boundaries, it’s about 1/4 mile away. But that’s going to be great. It’s also really close to Donnie’s office and a little closer to mine. It’s just 2 miles from downtown where we end up going for a lot of functions anyway and there’s a pool and a playground one block away. We accepted the burden of a “fixer-upper” and a house a little smaller than we wanted, just because the location was ideal.

Once we get out of the apartment and the storage unit and into this new place the entire “Let’s Downsize!” adventure will finally be over.

And – it looks like – I will have survived it.

This house will have more challenges though, it’s got a backyard in disarray and it’s just – you know – old, but we’re excited about the neighborhood and the part of town and we really feel good about this step in our lives.

Let’s do this thing…