Never say never, you don’t know what’s gonna happen – but whatever the future may bring, we are very very hopeful that this new crib of ours will be our forever home.

The plan had always been that our first house was a “starter home”, something to get us used to homeownership, that was low maintenance for while the kids were little, and that could build up some equity for our forever house. And it did all of that. After seven years the time had come to part with our first house. Thanks to the rising housing market and all the upgrades we installed, we were able to sell it quickly and at a good profit.

Our dream had for the past five years had been to buy this old historic farmhouse called “Linden Grove” behind our first house. It was pretty neglected and needed a home renovating family to take care of it. With a little bit of detective work, we were able to find the owner, contact him, and he was even willing to sell it. However, after taking a real close look at its condition on the inside, we determined that it would take pretty much a gut job to bring that house up to living standards and we sadly had to part with the idea of living in this glamorous house with lake view:

Check out this fun story from its historic documentation:

So then we went over to plan B – house hunting in an extremely heated and competitive market. Houses were sold left and right for ridiculous prices and we lost two houses we really liked to faster and higher bidders. But eventually, we were ready to move fast too and when we found this smaller and newer version of Linden Grove with tons of character and in a great location, we jumped on it:

We really love its charm, the great grown-in yard, and the neighborhood is right where we wanted to be. I’m totally ready to highlight its traditional character with our more modern style in decorating. Below are the photos from the listing with all of the previous owner’s old fashioned stuff and you can bet that we are totally gonna de-clutter it, lighten it up, and update all its features.

Before we moved in we had the black paint sanded off of the wood floors and everything looked much better already.

Now we only have a super long list of other upgrades and repairs we are already planning. We have to slow down and pace ourselves, since we have forever to do them all.