Our home

J and I bought our first home from his family, and the sale was rather bitter sweet.

J's grandmother had been getting a bit foggy. For a while, the family all took care of her in her home where she had lived for the last 50 years, and, for a while, that worked just fine. After that while, however, it stopped working. She was leaving the front door open through the night. She would wander across the street to the church and ask someone to call her grandson. She stopped eating because she couldn't see the food in front of her anymore. The family decided that the safest option for her would be to move her into an assisted living facility where she could be cared for and watched over. As many of you know from first hand experience, this was hard on everyone. Financially and emotionally, everyone was tired and worried - about everything. So, grandmother was feeling confused and wondering why she was no longer in her home - the home she had raised J's father and aunts in, the home built for her and her husband before he passed. J's father and sister began to realize that the house now sat empty, and they would have to sell it.

The house had not been updated in the last 50 years since grandmother was not much of a decorator, and the kids were all grown and had their own homes to worry about. This left them with the choices of going into the house and renovating/redecorating or just to sell the house exactly as it was and take the hit on the price. They decided to sell the home without any repairs because with jobs, homes, and families of their own, they simply didn't have the time. Once I heard details of the plan, I nudged J. We wandered through the house, and my mind absolutely raced with everything I envisioned us doing with it. So, we sat down with J's father and told him what we wanted. We wanted to buy the house exactly as it was and fix it up ourselves, and he loved it. The family was relieved that the home would stay in the family and that it would get the attention it needed without them having to give up all of their extra time.

Overall, we knew going in that we had a shit-ton of work ahead of us, but that it would be worth it. We also knew that we had finally found our first real home.