New House: Before

So then there was this one time we decided to buy a new house....

We were not looking.  But then our neighbors decided to buy the house 7 houses down from their current house because it had a pool.  We were excited, now we had a pool to use! Yay!  Then we (brian) got the bug and I know he is always looking at real estate and somewhere around the end of february he really started looking.

One night he told me he wanted me to look at this listing he had found online.  Yeah yeah, fine.  So I looked.  And it looked great.  But I thought, there is no way we would seriously do this.  The next day he had made arrangements to go see it in person with our real estate agent.  Still I'm thinking, sure, whatever babe, its never gonna happen.  

We went to see this house and before we walked in I made it clear that if the house was a POS or needed really any major remodeling inside I was OUT!  We've remodeled houses, I'm done with that. So we walked in....and what do you know it looked pretty good.  I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.  We had to bring the boys with us to see the house that night and they loved it too.  Scott even offered to give us his $10 birthday monday if we could buy the house with the pool. 

We left excited but still knowing there was probably no way.  We would have to sell our house first and could we do that? for what we needed to? in the time frame we had?  Probably not.  We made an offer anyways, contingent on the sale of our Westlake house.  We had 21 days to sell the house.  So then that craziness began.  We cleaned, took pictures, listed and waited....about 2 days.  We had an offer for full asking price.  The stars had aligned and we were moving.  Of course we had to go through all the negotiation headaches, but I'll spare you the details.  It all worked out and about 6 weeks after seeing the house we were moving in.  With the help of some of the most incredible friends in all the land we got everything moved out in about 24 hours - it was a whirlwind made all the more exciting by a bridal shower we were hosting that weekend and the school book fair (that I run) happening the same week!  But now looking back it all worked out great and we love our house more everyday!

Since these pictures were taken we have painted every room in the house, excluding the half bath off the kitchen. Everything was beautifully painted, just not remotely in our color palette.  So I give you the before with the after coming soon (hopefully)

Kitchen

Dining

Family room

Playroom, boys room looks about the same but my picture came out too dark

Master (if you think it looks bright that's because it was the color of the SUN)

Backyard 

Since moving in I think the boys have gone for a swim nearly everyday (until this week when we started construction on our back yard to replace the concrete, more on that later).  We love everything about the house and look forward to the memories we will make here for years to come!

And that's where we've been!!!