A Busy Year

Today is the one year anniversary of the first time that Lisa and I set foot in our current home. I know this because Lisa keeps a family calendar (a paper one, no less! Next thing you know we're going to be breaking out the abacus!) and written on Friday, October 17, 2008 is "4:30--See" followed by our current address.

A lot has changed in that year. I think our house was the third house we'd visited with a Realtor, and we were only half serious in our house hunting efforts. At least, I was only half serious. I figured we'd look at a few houses, see what was out there, and then save money and maybe talk about REALLY buying a house about a year later, about now.

But when we saw what was available, how much home prices had fallen due to the economy, and how low interest rates were, we got a little more serious. But I didn't have that certainty on October 17 of last year. We just walked through the house and talked about its plusses (Lots of space, very close proximity to the kids' school, in fairly good shape) and its minuses (Close to the interstate, it didn't LOOK big, many rooms needing repainting).

We've done a lot to the house in a year:

• I've painted 9 of the 13 rooms.
• We replaced the garage door.
• I painted the outside shutters and trim.
• We bricked in a window.
• We replaced the roof.
• We did some tuck pointing.
• We replaced every major appliance in the house.

I'm sure we've done more than that, but off the top of my head that's what I remember. And okay, a lot of the "we" stuff was actually done by a contractor, but still, we had the mess and the inconvenience of the work.

I guess my whole point, though, is not to brag about all we've done, but just to say that a year ago today I would NOT have guessed that this is where we'd be today. And a year and a month ago I absolutely would not have guessed that this is where we'd be today as we hadn't even talked about looking at houses yet.

It's been a busy year.
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You can read all about it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.