Our New Home!

It happened! We finally purchased our first home. It was quite the adventure from start to finish, and it's worth the time to tell. 

We met with our friend and realtor, Jake, on June 13th early in the morning. We went in to just start talking about looking at homes. Our current rental lease is up at the end of September, so we knew we needed to start the process at least in July. We were trying to be proactive!

We went into the coffee shop with the plan to just chat about the process and look at the few homes currently available in downtown Sumner. Now, Sumner is the place to be; our church and community live mostly within the Sumner city limits, the downtown reflects Edmonds where I grew up, and it's your standard small PNW town -- the perfect next place for our family. We knew that we wanted to be in Sumner, but we also knew we didn't want to just jump in too quickly. Our constant prayer for that morning was to feel peace about the process and about the home we were meant to have.

We looked at a couple homes, neither feeling "just right." It didn't stop me from figuring out how to make each house better, figuring out what I could do to make it "perfect." The dreams that I have had for years about opening up rooms, change the walls, painting murals, and building gazebos started running through my head again.

Then we started to head to the third house on our list. This little house is only two doors down from our friends that just purchased their own home. We were a little early, so we went to their house first to see all the changes they had made and to tour their house for the first time. Again, I was pointing out and asking about potential changes they could make, excited that our journey was soon to reflect theirs. When the time came to view the home, we invited our friends to also join us -- the more the merrier!

Immediately walking into the house, I felt the peace I had been praying for. I passed it off as just excitement, but the feeling didn't change while we were walking through. Every piece of the house fit my list: the focus of the house from the front is the front door, not the garage; there are two living rooms, allowing the TV to be hidden away; there's a great backyard for hosting and our dog; there's plenty to work on to make the home our own.

I still had my feeling of peace and overwhelming excitement when our friends decided to head back to their house. As they were leaving, Hannah pointed out the inside door handle. The handle sealed the deal. 

I knew that this was meant to be our house. To have a little dog permanently affixed as a piece of character in this house just told me it was ours.

We left shortly after to look at another house, but 1619 Voight was stuck in our heads. We knew that we needed to make an offer that day. The market (as many in this area well know) is extremely competitive. The house had only been listed for one day, and I knew it was going to go fast. Jake set to work with our offer and we headed home to write our letter to the seller.

I wrote her a note telling her how we love Sumner, how we appreciate and have fallen in love with her house, and how the dog on the doorknob told me that this is our home-to-be. Sent it off to Jake, and the wait began. And it wasn't a long wait. We met Jake at nine in the morning and he called us at seven that night with our answer.

He started out by telling us that this has never happened to him before and how it has never happened to the seller before (who is also a real estate agent), but she said that once she read our letter, she just knew that the house should go to us. She had several offers, several strong ones, but that she felt that we would be the family to love this home and care for it -- the doorknob told her it was for us.

God's hand was so obviously in this. We only spent 10 hours looking for a home, and we ended up closing in 27 days. In the middle of all of this, we're in a pandemic, Tom and I both changed jobs, I was in a car accident that totaled my car, my sister got married, getting the closing funds straightened out took a couple days, just general chaos. But through it all, it has felt perfect and divinely protected.

I want to keep a record of not only this crazy story, but also of our remodel of this house. We're excited to make it our own and I have SO many plans! So follow along if you'd like .. we'll be posting each project we tackle, start to finish.