Our new home is a fixer-upper but, despite its dated design, we could tell it was well taken care of by its previous owner and something about that resonated with us. This spot was the 5th one we had seen in our home search and by this time, Charles and I had our routine down.
(Insert harp music that takes you back to the moment right before we entered our future home)
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Your girl walks in the door. Takes a deep breath, processes the smells and assesses how much natural light there currently is.
I pull out my phone and select the compass app to figure out if the condo is south facing… South facing because since we’re at work all day, having good natural light in the evening is really important because that’s when we’re actually home.
Then I take in my surroundings and get into the details – the walls, the floors, the kitchen, bedrooms, closets, and bathrooms. I check in with the energy of the space and calibrate. Does it FEEL good?
Then I visually confirm there’s a laundry in unit because no laundry, no buying.
The walkthrough is repeated 2-3 more times and, all the while, I’m trying to come up with a score out of 10 in my head. Eventually, I touch base with Charles to see what his score is so we can average them out.
—
(harp music – exit scene)
For this home, my final score was 8.5/10 and, crazily enough, Charles’s score was also 8.5/10. The highest score we had come up with for our home search so far. It checked off all the basic needs on our home wish list. The only thing holding us back from giving it a perfect score was the fact that we would need to do a bit of reno work before we moved in.
But still – 8.5/10 was good and the price was right considering it was located 20 minutes outside of DC and walking distance to the metro. Other spots that were fully renovated in the same area were selling for more and we could see the investment potential in buying a fixer-upper.
All these things considered, we decided right then and there to put in an offer.
Fast forward to today… After 3 1/2 weeks of renovations, we are officially moved into our condo as of this past weekend and couldn’t be more excited!
Below are “before the renovation photos” that I took on our closing day – day where ownership of the property is officially transferred from the seller to the buyer. The final step in a real estate transaction.
Charles and I went to work for a half day, then met with our realtor Sam to do the final walkthrough, signed a whole bunch of very legally binding documents (hellooooo 30 year mortgage) and were finally given the keys.
We had initially planned to eat out but, instead, decided to celebrate with pizza and champagne in our new home. It was a surreal day filled with heart palpitations, laughter and unexpected teary eyes.
Entry :: Dining :: Living Room
^^ Wallpaper #1.
^^ The most charming off center ceiling fan.
A “We Just Bought Our First Home” Dance. <3
Kitchen :: Hallway
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^^Wallpaper #2
Master Bedroom
^^ Wallpaper #3 [pipdig_left]
^^ Another off center ceiling fan… [/pipdig_left] [pipdig_right]
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A No Braces Smile :D
^^ This one’s for you Disa. Also, I totally forgot to take photos of the two bathrooms we have. (my bad)
I repeat two bathrooms which means that now Charles and I won’t have to take turns trying to hold it in when the both of us have to go number two. I know, I know – TMI. But it’s the truth… A side effect of living together for 5 years is that our metabolisms are in sync.
Moving on.
Bedroom #2
^^ Wallpaper #4
Celebratory Bubbles
For the past couple of weeks, we worked with a contractor to make 3 major changes to our home:
1) Getting rid of the popcorn ceiling.
2) Taking all of the wallpaper down in the common living spaces and bedrooms.
3) Replacing the carpet with wood floors.
As for the bathrooms and kitchen – those renovations will instead happen sometime in the next 4-5 years because we’d rather save first and do the work when we can pay for it in full as opposed to using credit.
The focus for this first round of renovations was to simply establish a blank interior slate to work with and, while the process of renovating wasn’t exactly the smoothest (more on that later), we are soooo looking forward to creating a cozy sanctuary that reflects the essence of who we are and the things/people we love.
^^ This photo pretty much sums up how we felt after everything was said and done: emotionally exhausted but fulfilled.
Post-renovation, these next couple of weeks will be spent unboxing and settling into our new home. In the meantime, I’ll be playing catch up and churning out posts recapping a few happenings from this past summer that I never got around to sharing.
Plus there’s photos from our trip to Maine last year that haven’t been shared and also few photoshoots I did… As always, the backlog of posts continues to grow but all for a good reason because f I’m not living life then what would there be to blog about? <- rhetorical question ;)
Onward and upward.
xo, Setarra
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