Project 525

 Early in November we finaly closed on 525 Atkins Drive. I say finally but considering we weren't even looking for a home on September 25th it has actually gone pretty quick.  As excited as we were to get in the house and start the remodeling it was pretty nerve racking to think that we now owned TWO homes and starting January 1st had TWO mortgage payments.  (Random fact, since we had to postpone our closing it actually happened on the same day as our closing on our current home, 4 Mechanic St.) But fears have been laid aside and God has provided, we are in the process of closing a Lease to Own and they will be moving in Jan 1st and purchasing in September!! YAY no double mortgage payment. 

Since the home is a foreclosure and has sat empty for over a year there are many things that need "help" before we can move in.  The carpets need to be ripped out, a rotten joist replaced, and the 12+ months of grime need to be cleaned up. The biggest pre-move in project is to create bedrooms, the house is currently a one bedroom, however there is a 32x18 rec room on the second floor. We plan to divide it into three rooms; two bedrooms, and an office. The rest of the projects are cosmetic and can be done once we are in the home.  Below are the current floor plans and proposed floor plans

Current 1st Floor 

Proposed 1st Floor - tear down wall between kitchen and famly room 

Current 2nd floor- Master and Large Rec Room

Proposed 2nd Foor-  Create 3 bedrooms, and add a 2nd Up-Stairs bathroom

Before we move in we will have built out the three bedrooms, the next project will be to replace all the windows, then to tear down the wall on the first floor, we will have to replace the roof and the HVAC at some point after all that is done we will add the second bathroom upstairs.   Also at some point we will be creating an entrance from the greenhouse into the main house, not sure if we will use it as an office or a garage.

When God Moves He MOVES!

I haven't blogged in along time, thought about it but never did.  But God's working in our lives this past week just couldn't be kept quite. 

About 6 weeks ago I just had a burden to pray for a new house, it was weird. I love our current house it is in a great location it is more than big enough. Joey was not aware that I had been praying this.

Part 1:  That God would provide a home.  I decided to pray specifically about what I wanted in a home since I was pretty sure this was just a far-fetched idea.

                1) in town but felt like the country 

                2) plenty built in of character  

                3) needed some work so we could make it our own 

                4) It would be cheap

                5) I wouldn't look for it, if it was really his will it would just happen.

Part 2: God would provide someone to buy or rent our current home for what we would need to get out of it.

Last week started like any other week, Sunday we went to church, Monday  Joey went to work, Bryce and I chilled and Tuesday was a little different Joey worked in DC. But that was still pretty normal, 90% of the time Joey works from home or rather coffee shops and McDonald's but the other 10% of the time he travels between Boston, New York, and DC. 

Tuesday:

I digress so back to the story, on his way home from DC Joey texts "Let's go look at this house".  Now for a while we have been looking at houses up for auction to purchase as a rental, something cheap enough we could pay cash. My response was " if you think it's the right place and its less than 35K I trust your judgment."  I figured it was over.

Joey arrived home and asked again about seeing a home, my response was the same.  Joey replied, "I really want you to see it" Again I responded I trust you.  His response  "I saw this place last night and couldn't sleep so around 2am I drove out to look at it. I really want you to look at it." 

Ok I figured what does it hurt. So we drove up and walked around the house, WOW. But Joey's self employed, I'm unemployed and we already have a house (mortgage). My thought was I love it but there is just no way we'd be able to get a loan.  As we left Joey said "this is like the man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything he had".  So we prayed.

Wednesday:

Joey called the Realtor and set up a walk through for Wednesday.  We meet at the house at 11:30 am and the Realtor sure didn't try to sell the house, she made sure we knew every possible thing wrong with the house, and we would have to make some improvement (roof, windows, H-Vac).  Plus the house only had one bedroom, but the 2nd floor contained a 32x18 foot room that would need to be split into bedrooms.  We left with mixed feelings, things could get expensive quick.  So we prayed and prayed some more.  The house had been inspected in June and it included estimates for many of the repairs.   It turns out that with the exception of one issue everything else could wait a few years.  We prayed some more.

Thursday:

We decided that it wouldn't hurt to go to the bank and see if there was any possibility we would qualify for a loan.  After about 15 minutes the bank had given us pre-approval for the list price of the home (146k).

We prayed some more and contacted the Realtor that evening to make an offer, now we figured they would be willing to settle between 132K and 136K so we offered well below that in hopes that a counter would be somewhere in that range.  So at 9pm that night we made an offer on 525 Atkins Dr. (link to photos)

Friday:

Around 1pm just over 48 hrs after we first saw the house, we got a call that our offer was accepted. No counter just accepted.  The As-Is assessed value is 220K and we purchased it for nearly 100K less than that.

Remember my prayer,  part one had been more than answered.

Still don't know what we are going to do with our current house, but I'm not worried about it God is the God of the impossible.