Ahh can you believe it?! We bought a freaking house!! After three years of looking on and off we finally found something we fell in love with and we’ll be moving into it when it’s ready in September! Yay!
How It All Went Down…
As some of you know we had been looking for quite some time. We’ve lived in our current house for about eight years now that Ita and I purchased shortly after we got married. We love it and it’s been a wonderful house and area for us but we have always kind of been keeping an eye out to see if there was another home out there for us.
Once we found out I was pregnant the house hunting got much more serious. We knew we wanted more space and the idea of moving before the baby arrived sounded much more appealing than moving with a newborn. I feel like I was on Zillow nonstop looking at homes going cross-eyed every night and rarely found something I thought could work for us. I was completely open to renovating but every house we thought could work was already so expensive then add major renovations on top of that… it just wasn’t worth it.
Ita and I both have worked really hard to be smart with our money, save, invest, etc. over the years and it was important to us to be financially responsible when buying a new home. I remember how excited we were when we bought our first house together after getting married. It was so nerve-wracking but so exciting because it was something we did completely on our own from hard work we put in. We both come from extremely hard-working families but neither were ever in a place to provide financial assistance to us (and we never asked for it).
When we bought our first house I had only been in my corporate sales job for a short time and Ita was working crazy long hours for another company. Shortly after that he quit to become a soccer agent and started his own agency from the ground up (which is what he still does now) and I continued in my Sales Executive role for almost nine years until I quit to blog full-time last year. It’s crazy to see how much has changed in our lives and how far we’ve come. The fact that we’re both self-employed running our own businesses and able to buy a new home has been really rewarding for us. Not from a materialistic standpoint, but from a place of understanding that it is possible to pursue the things in life you are most passionate about, make a career out of them and be able to provide for your family and have a life you’re excited to wake up to each day.
What We Were Looking For…
The main things we were looking for in a house were: an open floorplan (ideally kitchen opening to living room), double the square footage, a good-sized backyard with a pool (or one we could put a pool in), 4+ bedrooms and a space for me to have an office and Mila (and baby girl on the way) to have a playroom.
I know everyone’s home checklist is different, but since Ita and I are both self-employed and work from home, more space and a dedicated area for us to work was a must. Just to give you an idea, for the last 6-7 years I’ve been working from our dining room table or our bed (writing this in bed right now lol) so I’m definitely excited to have an area in the new house that’s my own! And same goes for Mila and baby girl on the way… our living room right now is pretty much a playroom for her so while I know in the back of my head we’ll probably have toys and baby stuff everywhere regardless, I’m really looking forward to having a dedicated playroom where the majority of the toys will be.
To Build or Not to Build…
Since we struggled to find the “right” house for so long, we played with the idea of building our own house for about a year. We looked at purchasing a lot… we looked at countless areas we could potentially build… but again, none of it was working out or felt right for us. Fast forward to about three months ago when we decided we’d look “a little further out”. Like I mentioned Ita and I are self-employed so we could technically live anywhere, and really the particular areas we had been focused on to look for a house (there were SEVERAL we were open to) were within 30 or so minutes from my parents. We had talked about visiting a couple of areas that were quite a bit further away on and off but always ruled it out because it was “just too far”. Well, one afternoon during quarantine we decided, “let’s just drive out there and look around so we can rule it out” (I mean there wasn’t much else we were up to during quarantine so why not go for a drive). We quickly realized the area we had ruled out that was “so far away” really wasn’t that far and also that it was pretty amazing…
We Found the House!
After a month or so of research, checking out different neighborhoods, builders, debating whether we should build or buy a spec house, etc., we found one we fell in love with that we think will be perfect for our growing family!
We found a spec home that was only in the beginning stages of being built so therefore we would get to have a say on design decisions and go through the building process experience. The house was the floorpan we wanted with the additions we wanted and on a really good-sized lot. It seemed to check all of our boxes so after a lot of back and forth and long talks, we signed the contract on it! Yay!
I cannot wait to share more with you and take you along this journey with us! I’ll do my best to share updates here on the blog and will definitely be sharing videos and pictures along the way on Instagram. This is our first time building a home so if you have any tips, advice, questions or things you want to see, please leave it in a comment below!
I’ve been on Pinterest nonstop for home decor and design inspo and cannot wait to move in and start decorating! There’s still a lot to be done in the next couple months so I hope you’ll hang on for the ride because I have a feeling it will be an eventful one doing all of this in my third trimester! 🤪
Thanks for reading!
