After sharing a small tour of our trailer (Cabin on Wheels) I had to follow up with our home or places we have called “Home”.
My husband and I grew up in 2 completely different places we called home. My childhood home is almost 100 years old today and without a doubt a true “Farmhouse” or “Country Home”. Lots of memories with the wood stove and old windows and creaky floors. Anyways the flip side of that would be growing up in a newly built home, which is what my husband grew up in. His parents built 2 new homes when he was a kid.
Today my husband and I have bought a great home in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. It took a lot of work and sacrifice to get where we are today.
We started renting when we got married. By the way we got married in 2008 and learned after the market crashed that we were over paying for our suite and living in the current city we were living in wasn’t going to get us to our goal of owning a home.
We moved cities to another rental suite and we could live off one income and saved my income and we had a decent down payment rather quickly.
Our first home was going to be a “fixer upper”. I still remember meeting up with the bank and they were shocked at how low we bought and kept informing us we were approved for more. Anyways – I’ll share more about that in a future finances post.
Our first home was a townhouse. I’ll share the before and after of the 3-year reno flip we did. It is a risk to do a reno “flip” for a townhouse but we made it work and all those crazy late nights and camping in our living room during our kitchen reno was worth it.
Today we are in our 4th year of our current home. Just like our townhouse – this place needs work. My kitchen cabinets are original and so is the sticky tile floor in our basement. We had an insane year over a year ago. Buying a fixer upper has it’s risks too. First off, I found a few things here and there with the plumbing that could have caused major water leaks. BUT, nothing hits hard like the year that we had to purchase a roof -hot water tank – furnace – dishwasher – freezer – wash machine – dryer and a fence. I’m thankful for the financial steps we made long before buying our townhouse that helped us get through that year.
You will be seeing us do our reno’s on this home and what we did with our townhouse coming up.
My husband and I love to make our home to be inviting and want to be able to entertain more. Every place we have called home we have always have had a great response from company. Our landlords happy that our “homey” suite or renovated townhouse was easy to show. For the townhouse we had a realtor walk through 2 years before our 5-year plan was up to flip it, he gave us an estimate $10,000 more then what we thought it would list for. I’m glad we listed right away. Living in the area we live we went ahead and listed right away. Today with the current house market – we couldn’t even afford the home we purchased after the townhouse, let alone what the townhouse is worth today.
I’ll be putting up a small house tour of the living spaces in our home, stay tuned.
Notefull Living 