Back in 2000, when we were first married, no, just kidding! That would take all day. Fast forward to 2005. We just had our first daughter, Eli. Sandy had been deploying on a regular basis for the last few years and had finally decided he'd had enough and wanted to be around more to watch his little girl's "firsts". It was convenient that at that same time a job offer was extended to him with L-3 Communications...in Greenville, Texas. He accepted the offer, deployed one "last" time, I sold the house, packed up everything and moved to Idaho until he returned for the big move South. That move has been one of my favorite moves to date! We planned on being there 10+ years, if not permanently, so we bought a home we were mostly happy with and started remodeling to make it ours.
This home, in our humble opinion, was gorgeous outside and we loved having a little land, too. It sat on a little over 3 acres, small potatoes to some but quite adequate for us. The interior, however, lacked. Severely. Among other things, it had wallpaper. Lots of wallpaper. UGLY wallpaper! It had 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that needed some help, new paint, the carpet was disgusting since the previous owner had dogs, and they all needed updated fixtures and I won't even start on the kitchen! But we had big plans and spent the next 2 years doing home improvements. It was within the end of those 2 years we had our second little girl, Livi. It was also when Sandy received another job offer. Initially, he told them no, that is until they told him it would be back in Idaho, back where we both grew up, back near family. That got our attention; we found ourselves missing so much being so far from family and really wanted our girls to grow up closer to family. With that enticement coupled with my simply knowing Texas was not where our girls would be attending school (it just never felt right), we decided to accept the offer. So the remodeling was set into high gear since we had so many unfinished projects and while we didn't get to all we had planned for the home, the result we did end up with is one I find myself missing quite a bit. But there's that stupid saying that says, "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."
-Lesson learned-Don't buy a home until you know with certainty you will be staying at that location a while.
We moved back to Idaho, living in Sandy's parent's basement while trying to sell our home in Texas and looking for land to build our "dream home" on once that sale took place. This process was daunting. We found nothing and still had a mortgage payment. The home we ended up purchasing in Texas was built in a small college town (home to a small branch of Texas A&M), and to make the matter worse, it's one of the nicer homes in the town (and I'm seriously being nothing but honest here!). That means the majority of the population has limited housing funds, won't be there long, and only wants to rent. We have hopes that someday a college professor, or a family like us, will move to the area and fall in love with the house we called home. We were set on trying to be patient, though, and persisted with our search for some acres we could see ourselves living on for what we hoped to be quite a while.
-Lesson learned-Everything has a season.
After a year and a half of living in the basement (dun dun dun-I imagine evil music here, haha!) we were informed the Idaho Falls/Blackfoot area was not to be our permanent place of residence. Had we sold our house we would have been in the process of building another home and would now be facing another move with an incomplete house on our hands. So things work out for the best, whether we like the process or not.
Last week, just a month shy of our 2 year mark moving from Texas, I packed up all our stuff and got it all loaded with the help of some awesome brother's in law, my dad, and father-in-law. Once Sandy got a little down time from work we hauled everything 2 hours west and now find ourselves living in a house in Twin Falls. Our house is still for sale in Texas. Talk about frustrating! But there are obviously lessons learned/to be learned. [I'm really getting tired of learning patience, however, so I seriously hope that isn't one to learn (yet again)!!]
Well, there's part one-we've been pretty busy packing, loading, unpacking, and sorting through all the stuff we haven't seen for a while. At least moving is a good way to clean out the junk!
Here's a small photo tour of 3 of our homes, the first is the cute little home we built in Utah:
Our home in Texas
This is the dining/music room. I did a Venetian plaster finish which I LOVED! Sandy tore out the carpet and put down hardwood.
Here's the kitchen and part of the dining nook. We wanted to do more in here; the walls were a horrible straw yellow with a disgusting texture and we planned to completely gut it, rip down one wall and square it off to make it larger. Due to the time constraint this is what we managed: new tile, new paint, we had to do a wallpaper border due to the nasty texture and wallpaper border the previous owner put up. We updated the fixtures as well (ignore the swiffers!).
This is looking into the family room. Sandy replaced the carpet with hardwood in here, too, as well as updated the light fixture and new paint. The fireplace was something else we had hopes of renovating, oh well.
The guest bathroom is the room that got most of the work. Initially, it was actually 2 rooms, with a door separating the shower from the toilet and vanity. We thought it felt too small and closed in so we took out the wall and door completely and added a smaller partial wall. We put in a marble surrounded tub/shower combo, laid new tile, painted, and updated the fixtures. We wanted to change out the vanity, too...no time.
And last (for now) is our current, but not permanent, place of residence. It's our first time in a two-story home and that's been kinda fun!
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