Right in the midst of the end of the world, David and I decided to sell our first home. I mean, what else do you do when you’re home all day every day because of a world-wide pandemic?
We bought our first house a few months before we got married, in March of 2018. It was a true blank slate. Built in 2000, it didn’t have any structural or other scary issues. It was just very…beige. Builder-grade carpeting, linoleum, and lots of beige paint. As a (slightly obsessive) planner, I got to work making mood boards for the various rooms almost as soon as we started house shopping. Once we closed on the house, we got right down to business giving the house some personality.
That much beige on the walls offends my design sensibilities so it was one of the first things to go. We (along with most of our friends and family) moved everything in and started painting the walls in the main areas a clean, light, grey-blue. It really felt like a breath of fresh air and made the space feel much bigger.
Over the next 2 years we (mostly David) redid flooring in the main areas, painted more rooms, painted kitchen cabinetry, installed a custom island, installed butcher block countertops and tiled a backsplash in the kitchen. And I did my best to make those initial mood boards come to life in each room.
We were able to learn a lot about homeownership and home projects in the 2 years we lived in our first house. We had started talking about buying a new house in order to be in a better school district and to get some of the things that we couldn’t reasonably add to our first house. (Like a garage and central AC…) When the market became sort of ideal for selling a house during the Covid-19 related lockdown, we decided it was sort of the perfect time.
We were able to do the last few projects we wanted to do to get our house ready to sell, and once we figured out our next steps, we listed the house. It was a whirlwind few weeks while we cleaned the house, had it photographed, had it listed and shown, and accepted in offer just 5 days after listing. It’s bittersweet, but I’m excited that someone else will get to build their life there, and make more great memories in such a wonderful little house.
Buying and selling (and living in!) our first house was an amazing opportunity to learn and grow. We got our second puppy in that house, got ready for our wedding, and came home to it after so many days in our lives.
Here are some before-and-afters from the day we toured the house to the listing photos when we put it up for sale. What do you think of the transformation?
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