Our New Home
We have made a big change. Time for us to start our new fixer-upper story!
This is the story of why we moved and how we found our new home.
Renovation Pictures Coming Soon…
It took me a while to write this post because this move was not easy. But let’s start at the beginning…
My husband is a teacher, which as you may know like many service positions, has great challenges and stresses, with some very high rewards (if you love what you do!) He has always taught in public school and enjoyed his work very much, but he always wondered what it would be like to teach at an independent school. I’m not here to get into a debate about what type of education is best, I think it all boils down to individual schools, the student, and your individual family. We have been heavily involved with public and private schools now, and we even homeschooled for a year (I’ll get to that) so I think it’s safe to say we have some varied educational experiences under our belts at this point. What I feel we have learned after all of these experiences is, that there is no right or wrong way to educate your kids as long as they are getting a full education. Whatever way your family is able to accomplish that is what’s best for your family!
ANYWAY…
In the spring of 2020 Jarred was offered a job at an independent school in Virginia. The more we learned about the school and the job, the more we knew this sounded like a dream position for him. So we made the extremely hard decision to shake up our life, move further away from family, and move back to Virginia. We had lived in NOVA for 5 years when we were first married and we had several amazing friends in the area as well as a church we were excited to go back to. So at the very beginning of the pandemic, we took on selling our current home, a move across state lines, homeschooling, a new job, and battling the DC housing market in 2020.
It was a long and all-consuming process that was full of heartbreaks. We put offers on so many houses and were beat out by cash offers way over the asking price almost every time. Every Thursday we would painstakingly look to see if there were any houses in our price range that even looked like what we might want, as housing prices continued to climb and offers continued to be 10’s of thousands over the asking price. Then most weekends we would drive 5 hours to tour the houses that looked possible, put in an offer on the best one, drive 5 hours back, and wait for the outcome. Week after week we were outbid or we didn’t even want to put any offers in because the houses just weren’t right or a disaster.
In July 2020, about 1 1/2 months after serious house shopping a house came on the market in our price range that we couldn’t believe. A beautiful property, an adorable house (that needed some work), a great school district, and a location that was a dream. The only downside was it was located on a busier street, but in our price range sacrifices need to be made! Jarred toured it, and said it was just what we were looking for and we immediately put in the best offer we could but left the inspection contingency. That Sunday night our offer was accepted! We were over the moon! We scheduled an inspection for the next Wednesday and started planning our trip. My parents kept the boys so we could drive down and focus on the new house. We went to the inspection, it all looked good (just old and worn) and I loved the house! I started measuring windows for blinds, planning how I would organize the kitchen, and what paint colors I wanted. One hour after we arrived at the house I received a phone call from my dad. When I saw him calling my stomach sank. I knew he wouldn’t interrupt the inspection unless it was urgent. I heard his shaking voice on the other end of the phone telling me that my mom was suffering from a heart attack and was life-flighted to a hospital in Pittsburgh. At that moment I felt like the world was spinning and I couldn’t make it stop. I walked back into the house, asked Jarred to come outside with me, and through tears told him the bad news. He put his arm around me and we prayed on the back deck of that house for a few minutes until I could compose myself enough to walk back into the house. We quickly wrapped up the inspection and made it back to PA as fast as we could.
We drove back to our town where two wonderful friends took our boys in for the day so that my dad could be with my mom. We picked them up, and when they saw us they both were immediately teary and so was I. To say it was a day of mixed emotions would be an understatement. In the next few days, we found out my mom needed to be scheduled for quadruple bypass surgery. Because of Covid, we weren’t allowed to visit her. When someone you love is sick and you can not be with them, it is beyond terrible. The night before my mom’s surgery we prayed for a long time with our boys. They thanked God for our new house, for our old house, and prayed for Grandma’s surgery the next day. As we were praying a text came in from our realtor to our phones. Our realtor was a very even-tempered guy who didn’t get riled up very easily. This text was different and seemed a bit more frantic. After the boys were in bed, we called him. He told us we had roughly 6 hours left on our contingency agreement and that we might want to reconsider the house. “Why??” I asked. He went on to tell us that he had been doing research and had discovered something about the house next door that might be a dealbreaker for us. I am hesitant to discuss the reason here, but I will say it was a dealbreaker for us. We made the heart-wrenching decision to give the house up. A house that felt perfect at that moment and a house where our offer was FINALLY accepted. All of the worry for my mom and all of the heartbreak over losing the house came out in lots of tears that night.
A few days after her surgery my mom was able to come home. It was so wonderful to (gently) hug her and to see her. We visited her almost every day and ate dinner together a lot, as she began the long road to recovery. 2022 UPDATE: She is back to her old pace, back to work, and full of energy!
After the heartbreak of losing the first house we kept looking, but soon Jarred had to start work. He moved to Virginia and stayed with our wonderful and generous friends to begin teaching. I was back in PA with the boys packing up our house and beginning our year of homeschool.
We decided to homeschool for the 20/21 school year for various reasons. We knew we would be moving at some point during the year, so we didn’t want our kids to change schools mid-year. We did not do well with remote/online learning in our household. We wanted to have a more hands-on education with fewer screens. Also as we were moving, we were hoping to apply to the independent school where Jarred works for the 21/22 school year. With that unknown, we knew we did not want to put our kids in a new public school when we moved and then possibly move schools again the next year. I saw homeschooling as the one way I could provide consistency and security for my kids during a time when we were completely shaking up their lives in almost every other way. In the spring of 2021, we found out that our kids got accepted to Jarred’s school and we were so excited! We finished homeschooling in May of 2021 and we were so proud that we committed to it for the entire school year. Although it was challenging we made so many memories that we will all carry with us for the rest of our lives.
As far as the house search went, we reached a point where I had to fully commit to homeschooling and packing our house alone, and Jarred started looking at houses on his own. I would look online, send him possibilities, and he would set up the in-person showings. This was HARD. I can be a bit of a control freak, and the amount of trust and patience I had to have was incredible. I NEVER thought I could get to a point where I would let someone else decide where I would live. God was working hard on my heart, teaching me one almost unbearable lesson after another while still clearly showing me his faithfulness. There were so many tears, and exhaustion in a different way than I had ever felt before in my life.
At the beginning of October 2020, I had a restless night’s sleep. I was stressed. At 4 am I was awake and jumped on Redfin to see if they had listed anything new for the week. A new house appeared in one of our very favorite neighborhoods. I couldn’t believe there was something listed there in our price range! I assumed it was probably so run down that someone would pay cash, knock it down, and build a mansion on the property. I checked out the listing and it was just what we wanted. A house that was a little rundown, a little quirky (so that we could compete), and a beautiful yard in a beautiful neighborhood. I waited until 6 am when I knew Jarred would be awake and I texted him immediately. “I found a house! Can you go today?”
Before his work day, he drove past the property and fell in love with the big trees out front, quiet street, and stone walls lining the property. In one day, he toured the property, had it inspected, and took photos and videos for me. We knew we had to put in an offer that day to compete because the market had been so competitive and fast. We pulled our offer together in one day and waived all contingencies (another thing I said I would NEVER do!) and prepared ourselves to wait for an answer. The answer came quickly! The very next morning our offer was accepted! The whole experience had been so stressful I almost couldn’t feel the joy of the moment, but the joy eventually came. We closed on the house in October of 2020 and my husband got to work with some renovations every day after work. The boys and I moved in a week before Thanksgiving and we have continued to work on making this house our home ever since.
A few months after we closed I found a piece of paper in our files and written on it was a list. When we first started house hunting, and we were not worn down by the process yet, we had listed our wants and hopes for the house we would find. Through the process of searching, we had to accept compromising on every one of those wants because of the nature of the housing market in the summer of 2020 in this area. The list of hopes and dreams started to feel like a joke, and by the end of our search, we just wanted to live together again under one roof that hopefully wasn’t leaking! When I found the list in the spring of 2021, I immediately started to cry. We had been blessed with EVERY SINGLE ITEM on that list with this house.
- Lots of Trees
- A Big Flat Yard
- Master Bath
- A Safe Street
- A Beautiful Neighborhood
- Good Schools
- Basement
- Garage and Driveway(not always a given near a city)
- A Cosmetic Fixer-upper With Good Bones
- Hardwood Floors
- Fireplace
- Mudroom