We’re buying a house! Ten years of marriage and we’re finally buying a house.
It’s a tiny little thing at 800 sq ft. The yard is about 3500 sq ft. The house has a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. It also has an unfinished basement, so the potential for other rooms also exists. The garage is too small for our Windstar, but that means I will finally have a workshop.
One of the exciting things is that there is a lot of potential for improvements to the property. As well, it looks like we will be saving roughly 200 dollars on housing and utility costs with this move. This move will also mean I won’t have to transfer buses to get to work anymore.
We are very excited about this new stage in our life together.
Congrats! What area of town did you buy in? Staying on the south side?
Yep, still on the south side. We’re much closer to downtown now though. Just south of 6 Avenue.
Congratulations. I hope your family loves your first home. I’m sure you’ll have wonderful times there.
Houses are both good and evil. All of your free time will now be consumed by repair and maintenance of house. Failure to do so will only make things worse. But, in the long run, its one of the best investments you can make. Hope youre a DIY kinda guy, because if youre not, things will get real expensive real fast.
Oh, I am Kurt. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.
Congrats man. It will be a lot of work but very satisfying.
That’s awesome. I doubt we’ll ever be able to buy a house, with the median home here being something around $700K. But maybe we can buy an old library and renovate it.
That’s the price you pay for living in Huntington Beach. But that’s the sacrifice you make. Either enjoy skating and surfing, or buy a house.
We are very excited for you Kim and Mary!! Can’t wait to take a look at it or at least the outside next weekend :) I bet the children are thrilled to get their own rooms now as an adventure huh? Does that mean you want tools for your workshop for Christmas now? :-D
The children are still sharing a room, but they are disappointed they won’t be sharing our room. But then again, our room is quite an anomaly with the expansion. We had to explain that our new bedroom is half the size and there is no way we could fit a queen sized bed, a bunk bed a bookshelf, a wardrobe and three dressers in it.
I would love tools for Christmas. There are very few hand tools I need, so I would love power tools. The one I want the most is a table saw (particularly with mitre options), but I’d settle for a circular saw and a pair of sawhorses.
Congratulations! Home ownership is the best! 3500 sq ft lot. I see a garden in your future!
Definitely a garden. We haven’t had much choice lately, so it will be nice to finally have something.
Congrats Mary & Kim, and Welcome to being a Home Owner.. I know you will love it.
Sure, there’s a lot of work to it, but so rewarding…
All the Best now at Christmas and in 2006
Maxine
Hello Mary,
Congradulations on your new home. Indeed homes do require a great deal of maintenance. But if a family loves to spend most of their fre time at home anyway, fixing up can be fun. And for fathers who aren’t handymen, they can at least do the basics and hope that some of their sons will eventually take up some of the slack!
I just finished reading your posts at the LDS site in the public vs. private breastfeeding thread and came looking for you to say hello. I want to thank you again for allowing me, as a non LDS member to join the LDS uc birth list for a time. I enjoyed corresponding with you. And meeting Susana Baig there -the timing and all(just days before delivering and when I was feeling such a need for support) was surely the leading of the Holy Ghost. Though she and her family have moved to Missouri, we’re still in touch.
Sincerely I pray,
Lori Ann in L.A.
Congrats! Yo man WAD UP? Got home from church and was just serfing the PROVO mission page and came across this. It’ll be a FUN change. Email me or something! AGAIN CoNGatS!
Hey, Ofa!
Welcome to Our Thoughts. I hope you stop by some more.
Is 800 sq feet a normal size home were you live? Same for the 3500 feet of lot size.
I have a friend who lived in LA for a number of years in an 800 sq foot home and sold it for a small fortune and moved to Texas and bought a 3,000 sq foot home for the same amount as his 800 sq foot one. In other words, are home expensive were you live?
Were I live a new 3,000 sq foot home cost about $250,000 us.
No, it’s a small house. Right now the prices are rising. But this was all we could afford.
Average is between 1250 and 1750 sq ft. The lot is a standard size for our neighbourhood.
Sounds like you are enjoying owning a home. That is great.
When purchasing a home one thing to keep in mind is that it is just that a house. Do not get attached and sell it as soon as the price is right. In your neighbourhood the best you can hope for is multi-family dwelling developments to buy up the block, and you to make a financial killing.
By the way, one of my vehicles is a ’03 Windstar too. Good Choice for a family man!
We will sell it when we are near the end of our term.
Well, my hat is off to you, that is truly suffering for the cause. Not just your self-sacrifice either, but that of your wife and children as well. I know I could not bear to have my family live in such small quarters.
Good for you, sir!
After 12 years and 7 children later, our family of nine is currently getting ready to move out of 750 sq’ and downsize to an RV or a BUS. The plan is for it to be temporary. But truly space can be overated I think.
Well it is the “final Frontier”, yet unlike land – space continues to increase.
Lori
Well, I feel better. I feel crowded in our small house, and a bit self concious about it, but I don’t think I should be, when I see places where people live in WAY smaller places (but oh I would love a school room!) You have good points and I would love to pick your brain on how it has been with that number of children in your small home. We currently have three children and of course plan on increasing our family size to as many as will come, though I have my doubts we will have too many more due to my PCOS, but either way, I know we will have more and at least one more will be in this home, so that will be 4 children in a small 2 bedroom home (although if we ate able, we will expand that by finishing our basement).
Our family consists of 6 children, my wife and myself, and our cat. Our family home has 1350 sq feet of living space on each of it’s two floors. We have 6 bedrooms and 2 full baths. All of those children, and I’m not even a Mormon (rofling).
I am extremely thankful to the Lord for supplying me with all the space our family needs to grow comfortably. He has blessed us in great measure, in His preparation for the mighty work prepared for each one of us.