The Red Carpet

 We are so thankful to call this beauty our own and restore all of it's treasures.  The family who built it did so with love and we are thankful for their hard work.

We've been searching the internet and driving country roads for months to find the perfect house with land. A creek with a bridge would be a dream! As time went by we shifted our thinking to long term gains and financial changes.  So we determined to sell our current house and move into something older to set ourselves up to be able to buy our dream land and house in a few years.  Of course, we wanted to do all of this without changing our 4^th grader’s school and this proved to be a huge challenge. Life gets busy, soccer takes over, then summer, and then soccer again…we looked. We quit looking. We looked again.  It was a long cycle of the same, but the boys were happy. They usually got a milkshake when we would tour the same neighborhoods time and again oohing at climbing trees and ornate front porches. They would even chime in at times demonstrating expanded knowledge about house intricacies.  A farm house directly outside our neighborhood came on the market during that expansive search, but we dismissed it when the price was out of reach.  Finally the day came when we had paid school loans and childcare too many times and we decided we were done.  We called our realtor (Melody Bell, the greatest and best- http://melodybell.yourkwagent.com/ ) and got that ball rolling. 

 Here is a link to see our current house on the market: http://www.trulia.com/property/3220929194-1014-Carlisle-Pl-Anderson-SC-29621

Back to the internet we begrudgingly went forced to choose from the limited options.  In God's perfect way, the farm house outside our neighborhood dropped right into our price range THAT VERY DAY!  By the next day we placed an offer and got that baby under contract! Can I add a few exclamation marks there?  I’ll save them for my next sentence where I tell you our current house was under contract by the following week.  Hello Lord!!!!!

Not only did the farm house meet our dream budget, it sits upon our dream acreage, and I can hear the water in our creek from the back porch. Did I mention the climbing trees because they are beyond…just goodness SO great! I am blown away how God carefully gave each person in our family a gift.  Our boys can continue to play with their neighborhood friends because our yard backs up to the neighborhood and we stayed in the same school zone. The driveway is flat so we won’t have to chase balls down the driveway or our daredevil 2 year old, for that matter!  

When Joshua and I met we both had just purchased fixer uppers! We were just remembering the time I was showing him my back porch which also acted like a garage, if you dared to park your car under it.  I was leaning against the rail when it broke and he had to catch me! I guess he caught my heart then too, because it was happily ever after.   Once we exhausted ourselves completing those major overhauls we decided to build a new house..for some rest.  Well we got bored with that decision so we were on the hunt for some fun projects and oh boy we got them!!!

We used to have so much fun! I'm just kidding..we still got it!  I mean, look at those earrings!

 I found one pic of our Dunn Road house!  This is when we used a truck and some chains to pull the deck off, country style! Man, we are somethin'. 

Introducing The Stinkbug Reno

God certainly laid out the red carpet for this story! Can I please tell you every detail?  God is in each. One. Of. Them! You know how you sometimes grow envious of other’s God adventures? You think, “wow! He loves them a lot..He sure is doing cool things in their life!” and there could be an addendum to that thought like, “why isn’t He using me that way?”  You probably don’t think like that, but I do sometimes and I honestly have that thought right now about some life obstacles, but in an altogether special way, just for me, He did this and I noticed! BIG TIME! I don’t share it to make you have that feeling of longing.  I want you to know that for one person it could be a job, another a baby, and another a house, but God cares about the dreams of your heart.  He hears you. Each phase of your life sets you up for the next thing. He is always doing a new thing and that’s a great promise. Ok, moving on. I could get a little side tracked about that subject. 

Oh yes! The red carpet…here it is!

We are calling this the Stinkbug Reno and it is "more than we could have imagined".  It was built in 2002 and is approximately 2200 square feet and it came with some bonuses, including stinkbugs and such.  It has two bedrooms with a loft upstairs and a bonus room with its own set of stairs!

The family who owned and built on this property still have a farm and their family lives along much of this road. They sold the land for our current neighborhood to be developed.  It must be so hard to let go of something so precious as your farm land.  I’m sure it was beautiful.  I’m thankful they kept some because we really enjoy seeing the cows. 

The first few days of reno were spent cleaning out the old. It was really exciting because we were able to share so much of the stuff and put it to good use! That was really fun and I am honestly thankful for the opportunity to do that.  Even the tanning bed went to a really good home. 

   

There were a few moments where we got a little carried away!  You have to laugh...

Building some character in this fast growing boy. He was such a good sport and hard worker on this 5+ hour project.  His daddy jumped in and saved the day. 

I just had to include a moment of fun! and slight delirium. We had the most precious friends to help and I wouldn't trade the time spent.  

There will be more to come as this #stinkbugreno takes on a new look.