Our First Home

We purchased our home back in 2021, at the height of the housing market, after a brutal year long search for "the one." We were getting to the point in my pregnancy that we were going to pause the search, and pick up again after the twins arrived and we had settled into things a bit. But sure enough, after months and months of declined offers, we actually had two offers accepted the same day. We had looked at a nice home in Meadow Vista, a community I always thought I'd love to call home in the foothills. And another, in Granite Bay in a neighborhood that seemed great and had wonderful schools. Both were the same price. Meadow Vista was a nicer, updated home with a pool. But with fire insurance in that area, as well as location, it seemed like a risk for being at the top of our budget. Where as Granite Bay felt like a safe investment, and seemed like the better choice for our family. As much as I would love to be 15 minutes from my parents, I know we made the right choice in Granite Bay. 

It was but of a crazy situation, typically in that market we would have never gotten the house for asking price, but the circumstances with the sellers worked in our favor. We officially closed July 6, 2021. Just 9 days before we welcomed Jack & Charlie. Since we knew the twins were arriving soon, and we had to make some updates to the house since it wasn't in the best condition (it was worse than we realized) we planned to move at the end of August so we had a month to get the work done. 

A good, deep clean, removing a couple pony walls, removing glass block details, new carpets, all new interior paint, replacing carpet for tile in the primary bathroom, adding recessed lighting, and we were ready to move in. The list is long for things I'd like to do to make this home more updated and feel like us, but those changes made a huge impact and really helped freshen it up and make it feel like ours. 

Since we've been here a year and a half now, we've made a fair amount of changes, but I wanted to document an official "before" post of our home. These are the listing photos so the quality isn't great, but you get the idea. 

Here are the updates we did prior to moving in. Not too many changes, but enough to make a big difference and give us a blank slate. And most importantly, a CLEAN home since we'd having babies spending a lot of time on the floor that first year. 

Once we were living here, the top priorities were exterior paint and landscaping. In our first year we managed to update the paint and front yard landscape. Our neighbors would often stop and tell us how they loved the changes we were making and how nice it looked. (As you can imagine, now that you know where we started). Landscaping is shockingly expensive. As is everything these days, but I had no idea! So we were only able to do the front yard and very minor updates in the back while we save money. Hopefully this year we can do more DIY projects and continue to improve the backyard. Here is a little peek at those exterior changes, but I plan to share a full blog post soon. 

Eventually, I'll share a list of my dreams for each space and some inspiration photos. But for now, we save money and do small projects with a tiny budget and some elbow grease.