A Trip Down Memory Lane

Last Wednesday we headed to Nashville to kick off Thanksgiving. We dropped Jack and Sophie off at Nanna's house and Daniel and I headed to Brentwood for a date. As we drove, I searched for a place to eat and was surprised to discover a Brixx Wood Fired Pizza in the area. I looked it up to see if it was our Brixx, the one that is based out of Charlotte, NC. And sure enough, it was. Evidently they have really expanded and have quite a few locations outside of Charlotte these days.

Once our decision was made, we hurried into the restaurant to escape the rain. As we waited for our food – we always split a Chicken Florentine Pizza – we reminisced about Charlotte...

The very first time we ate at a Brixx restaurant was 10 years ago. We had gone to Charlotte for Daniel's final interview with LandDesign and we were exploring the city. We were young and had no idea what the future held. We had been married for almost 2 years and were trying to determine what would be the best direction for our lives after Daniel graduated. 

We liked Charlotte, it's a beautiful city. We liked the thought of living downtown, within walking distance of Daniel's work. It was a point in our lives where we thought moving away would strengthen and grow our marriage. We didn't know a soul, which was intimidating but also exhilarating. In the end, Daniel accepted the position and we made the move over the mountains.

This meant I had to leave a good position working in the marketing Department of U.S. Stamp and Sign. It meant Daniel went without me to move all of our belongings into storage and pick out an apartment so I could wrap up my job. It meant saying goodbye to so many we loved. But it also meant a fresh start on our own, to figure out our own way in life.

Charlotte had its ups and downs for us. We found a church and small group that we grew to love, but we spent several years feeling lonely. The loneliness helped our marriage to grow as we mostly had each other to rely on, but it was hard.

It's been 10 years since that interview. We have since moved 4 times, purchased 3 houses (Charlotte, Hollywood, Signal Mountain), lived in a camper, lived in hotels, got a dog, had a child, and had many adventures along the way. We lived in Charlotte for 5 years, that's a record for us!

Thank you for the trip down Memory Lane, Brixx!

In the Details

We are one step closer to closing on our new house. Yesterday was our inspection and today the seller approved our requests for things to be done before closing.

Several people have requested to see more pictures since my initial post only had exterior shots. Since we do not own the house yet and I want to respect the seller's privacy, I am only including thumbnails of some of the details in the house.

This house has had some really great updates on the main floors. As I previously mentioned, we love the kitchen and many of the details and thought that was put into the updates. We also love the feeling of living in the woods, even though we are in town.

There are some things that need to be changed. Two of the three bedrooms upstairs are obviously for little girls. Since there are no little girls in our family, painting those rooms will be among the first projects we tackle. The master bathroom is partially redone and the entire basement needs work. Did I mention that there is a bathroom straight of the 1970s in the basement? Also, the garage needs Daniel's touch. I know he will be busy in the coming months getting things set up like he wants them. We are excited about tackling these projects down the road when we have time.

 
Probably the biggest charm of this property (for us anyways) is the terrain the house is built on. Also, as seen by the image in the bottom right corner of the grouping above, we seem to like really tall houses.

I will post more pics whenever we start making major changes to the house (a long time from now though!).

Chasing Unicorns

Our house hunting experience has been quite an arduous process. We looked at a ridiculous number of properties in person (not to mention the ones we drove by and crossed off of our list or the ones we perused on Trulia), and didn't feel like we had a good fit with anything.

It was starting to feel like we were chasing some magical unicorn that didn't exist. It didn't help that we were feeling antsy about needing to make a decision about where to live, while simultaneously being worried that we would miss out on the "perfect" house.

This week, we agreed that after our Tuesday house viewings, we would buckle down, make a list, check it twice, and choose a house to buy. If you know Daniel, this involved Excel spreadsheets and comparing numbers and assigning values to commute time, size of garage, property value, etc.

Late on Monday night (around midnight), I happened to check my email and saw a new listing from our realtor. Daniel was already asleep, so on a whim, I made the decision that we should view the new listing. I sent an email to our realtor and hoped she would be able to schedule the additional house for the next afternoon.

Fingers crossed, I went to bed around 1am.

After lunch, we met up with our realtor and took our upteenth tour of the Chattanooga housing market. Thankfully our realtor managed to schedule my last minute pick... it was the very last house we looked at.

That last house... the one I asked to add at midnight the night before? The brand new listing, that had just gone on the market? Well, it's our unicorn.

We walked in and I think we both knew. I was a little skeptical because it didn't have a usable yard (it's built into the side of a gorge with lots of rocks and trees). There are giant boulders and a deck and screened porch, but no real area for playing. On the flip side, it does have a playground and community park across the street.

It is an 1970s house that has been partially renovated. It has an amazing kitchen and fantastic trim work that we love. The basement still needs to be updated, but the garage offers a ton of storage, and we already have experience with renovating. The house feels like a cabin in the woods and just generally feels like us. It was the first house in the Chattanooga area that we really felt like we had a connection with.

It seems like it was worth waiting and dragging our realtor to close to 60 houses! As with most things that work out for the best in our lives, we are thankful for God's timing in this house hunt and that we waited for the right house to come along. If all goes well, we will be moving in the last week in February.

You had me at 700 sf garage...

with 12-ft high ceilings.

That is all it took to sell Daniel on the house we decided to purchase. That and the fact that it is a 4-minute drive to the Bellefonte plant.

Daniel has always dreamed of owning a house with a garage that he could install a auto lift so that it would be easier to work on our cars. Now he has the space {and ceiling height} to install one. This is not in our immediate future, but he is excited to know that it is possible.

We are pretty excited about our new house. It has a huge covered porch on the front and back.

It has 3 acres with views of the mountains. 

It has the bonus room we wanted and a lot of extra storage. The bedrooms are big. And the master bathroom has a garden tub for soaking.

We are really excited about our new home. As long as inspections go well, we will be closing on October 29.

We will post more pics after we get moved in and decorated with our stuff.

Project 52 Date Nights: Dinner and a House Hunt

This is the week that we {hopefully} make an offer on a house. With that in mind, date night took the shape of meeting our realtor, Amber, on Monday night for the first time. She is the type of person that I immediately felt like I could be friends with {a good trait for a real estate agent}. 

She did a good job of making the idea of moving to a small town bearable. Which is a good thing since Daniel and I have been a bit apprehensive of our pending move to Alabama... it is just so darn rural.

After viewing four houses and asking a moderate amount of questions, Amber dropped us off and we headed to dinner where we proceeded to discuss the houses over nachos and fajita quesadillas.

The first house we flat out disliked – mostly because it needed a lot of work {after spending the last 5 years of our lives renovating a house, we are ready for a break}.

The second house was well decorated, but not to our tastes. It had a nice screened-in porch and a deck, but the bedrooms and closets were small. 

The third house was really cute, but smaller than our last house in Charlotte. It did have a great fenced back yard, but no trees. *No image of the front of the house because it is not actually on the market yet.

The fourth house had a lot that appealed to us – large lot, large covered porches, large everything. The biggest negative was that it is a lot bigger than what we had initially planned on purchasing.

Tonight we went back to house #4 a second time. Afterwards we went to Ruby Tuesdays to try to make up our minds about what we want.

Daniel has been making excel sheets that provide different scenarios of our budget and home costs and what the house is worth. Tomorrow I will have the update on what we officially decide.

Looking for houses is a nice way to date – it gives us opportunities to dream about the future.

Locked Out

Last night {after viewing houses} we returned to the hotel and decided to be as quiet as possible when opening the door to our room in order to surprise Sophie. 

Daniel put the key card in the door, the green light turned on and he turned the handle. But it wouldn't open. He tried again. Same problem. He tried a third time and we wondered aloud if this was the right room. 

By then Sophie knew we were outside and had started to whine. We tried yet again and still a no go so Daniel went downstairs to get help while I stayed in the hallway and tried to calm Sophie down {she was starting to go into melt down mode}. 

Daniel finally came back with the guy from the front desk who tried his master card – which didn't work either. Then he pulled out a master key to unlock the door.

We went in first to grab our very upset dog. Daniel took her outside to walk and calm down while I stayed in the room so that the hotel guy could tried to fix the lock. He tried several different things but nothing worked. In the end he had us move across the hall to another room. 

That was a bit of an unexpected to way to end our evening.

House Hunting Update:

We viewed four homes last night. We liked three out of the four. Tonight we have one new one to view and we plan to look at one of the homes from last night again. Our goal is to make an offer on a house by the end of the week...

House Hunting: Alabama Edition

"Living" in a hotel has its perks... I don't have to cook. Breakfast is free. I have a big screen TV a king-size bed in my bedroom. It is bigger than the camper. But it is also a pain in that there isn't a great place to walk Sophie and trying to get her in and out without disturbing other guests is a bit of a hassle. Plus I miss having a house.

We spent the last two days looking at various houses in the Scottsboro area. It reminds me a lot of Searcy. In the early 90s. Except smaller. And no university. 

Actually it is probably more like Heber Springs. Especially since the Tennessee River and its various lakes border the entire area. The bodies of water that border Scottsboro create various inlets and most neighborhoods are on some type of peninsula and with some type of lake access. But nothing is really connected... as in you have to get back on the highway to get to anywhere. Sometimes you go to look at a house with "lake access" thinking that the house is on the water, but what this really means is that the house is within a quarter mile of the water. 

I drove over 100 miles yesterday looking at various houses we had found on the internet. It is so spread out that a lot of areas feel very rural. And even if it is a 10-mile drive to wherever you are going, it feels much farther because you may be driving through endless farmland. I nixed several houses because they were too rural.

It is beautiful country but it feels very isolated. 

We officially meet with our realtor on Monday. We will be spending most of next week here... in the hotel again. We have a list of several houses we are interested in and hopefully our realtor can give us a better feel for the area. We would love to be on the water, but that costs $$$ and the frugalistas in us would need to come across a good deal to commit to a lake house.

This one is in Hollywood, less than 10 miles from TVA. It has 3 acres and is on the upper end of what we want to spend. A bonus is that one of Daniel's co-workers just made an offer on another house in the neighborhood, so we would know someone...

This house would be a great investment. It is on an island with actual waterfront. It has 5 acres that backs up to a cove. It also has a separate shop and garage and an in-ground pool. There is no water view from the house, but there is a boat house and pier. It is a 30-minute drive from the plant.

This house has water access. The big plus for this one is a 4-car garage (Daniel's dream). Plus a screened in porch with a hot tub. This one is about a 15-minute drive from the plant.

These are our preliminary houses that we plan to look at. We have a few others that made our initial short list. Next week I will have more in-depth updates on what we look at and what we decide about these three properties.

Is Daniel a Hippy?

Tuesday night Daniel and I met several of his co-workers at Buenavista, a local Mexican restaurant in Scottsboro, AL. A few other significant others were along, so it was a good chance for a lot of us to meet for the first time. Dinner was great and I feel like I have made some new friends. It helps to know that there are people we can hang out with if we end up moving to Alabama.

Anyways, yesterday, Daniel's co-worker told him that after we all left the restaurant, his wife asked if Daniel was a hippy – her reasoning was that we drive a Subaru! If you know Daniel, this is a very funny question because he is southern boy who is more redneck than anything else. Daniel and I had a good chuckle over that :)

I did a lot of driving around yesterday to try to get a feel for the area. Scottsboro is rural but more livable than I originally thought {especially if we have friends from Daniel's work that will be living here as well}. There is a Walmart, a Home Depot, a good Mexican restaurant and most of the usual fast food joints as well as a handful of local places.

The neighborhoods we visited were varying. Some were very nice. Others were full of singlewides and run-down homes. We found one house on the lake that was in our price range but it is a 45 minute drive south of Bellefonte and we decided if we are going to live that far away, we might as well live in Chattanooga.

It is somewhat comforting to know that there are other couples that are feeling the same stress of trying to decide where to live and to talk about the pros and cons of the process with people that understand what we are going through.

After driving around last night, we stopped to eat dinner at The Docks at Goose Pond Colony. The view of the lake at sunset was amazing. The service of the restaurant was so so, but it was nice to enjoy the views.

Update: It looks like they will be officially restationing everyone to Bellefonte on October 1 {right now they are stationed out of Chattanooga}. With the restationing will come new moving packages but we can't start any house purchases {or anything of that nature} BEFORE Oct 1.

Where Do You Blog?

Centsational Girl posed the question: Where Do You Blog? 

Most of my blogging {and freelance work} happens at the kitchen table {in our 170-sf camper}. I am looking forward to having an home office again {that I can decorate} and a comfy chair, but for now camper living means blogging from the camper dining table with my coffee close at hand.

For the next few days, blogging and work will be happening from a hotel while we check out the Scottsboro, Alabama area for potential places to live.

The House Hunting Continues...

Last night, Daniel made my day. He called me on the way home from work and asked if I would be opposed to eating out. Are you kidding me??? After being cooped up all day, I am always ready to go out.

We decided to go try Mr. T's Pizza and Ice Cream in St. Elmo. It had good online reviews and it did not disappoint. The only negative was that it didn't offer outdoor seating, but we sat by the window and watched the coming and goings of everyone on the street.

Food was good. Price was cheap. We give it a thumbs up.

Mr. T's Pizza and Ice Cream. A medium pizza and drinks was less than $10.
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Before we left our camper, we wrote down addresses to 9 houses so that we could do a drive by to see if we liked their locations. One was in NorthShore – this is a transitional area that looks to be a fave with the hipster crowd. Like all transitional areas, you can be one street off the main area and feel like you are in the ghetto. The house we looked at felt like it was in the ghetto.

The only redeeming thing about this house was a huge detached garage in the back. 

Unfortunately for Daniel, I don't think I would be comfortable living at this location.

Even on a short term basis.

The next five houses were all pretty close together in the Orchard Knob area {close to the university}. These were bigger houses and 4 of the 5 felt like we could live in them. Negatives were lack of yards {in most} and no garage. Being so close to UTC, it would probably be easy to rent out one of these houses to students later on, but the houses also cost a bit more...

 

This house was super cute and had a fenced back yard. But no garage.

Finally we went to Missionary Ridge where we checked out three houses {and saw two others while driving around}. One of the houses we liked a lot and we plan to go look at the inside soon. It is priced well and probably needs some updating {which we can do}. And it has a decent yard and a two-car garage.

 

Great location with a decent yard and a detached two-car garage. 

It probably needs some updating, but we can see ourselves living here. 

This one made it to our must-see list.

In addition to all of this, Daniel found a posting on Craigslist for a house in St. Elmo for dirt cheap. It has views of Lookout Mountain. If we bought a house like this, it would be to completely gut the insides and build a basically new house. It is so cheap that we could probably cash flow the entire project and make some money down the road. The negative is that it would be a very big commitment. But at least we have acquired the necessary skills from our last home remodel.

This house would be a complete overhaul - down to the studs. 

Not sure if we are up for it, but could probably make some money 
if we want to devote more of our lives to renovation...

We have a lot to think about.

We have lists of houses to drive by in several other areas of town including Signal Mountain, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Valley and a few in Alabama.

Decision Making is Hard

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It feels like fall is starting to make her appearance. The temps have dropped off over the last couple of days and we have been able to sleep with the windows open. I was actually cold last night.

The moon was brilliant last night, almost like the sun. We went outside and talked under the light of the full moon. We are seriously unsure about what kind of decision to make regarding where to live. Deciding to buy our first home was such an easy decision. This time around is a lot harder. 

TVA is supposed to make the decision in June about whether or not they will fully fund Bellefonte. We really want to be in a house soon... but in some ways it seems like the best decision would be to stay in a camper. But June is 10 months away and I don't know if we can do the camper thing for that long.

Living in a 170-sf camper has taught us that you really don't need a lot of stuff to be content – we only have 1/10 of our belongings with us and I don't miss the rest. The first night in the camper I thought that I would never be able to sleep because the night sounds were so loud – now I can't imagine a night without the night sounds. Camper living requires patience and flexibility. It is not the easiest thing we have done but I don't think it is the hardest either.

I guess we could always rent a house... but that feels like we would be throwing money away. If we bought, we would at least be building equity and interest rates are so low right now, it seems silly not to buy.

Project 52 Date Nights: House Hunting

We didn't have a "real" date this week, per se. But if you count spending time together {just the two of us}, then I would have to say this week was the first of many House Hunting dates.

We just began our fourth week of living in a 170-sf camper. We chose to live in a camper while we waited for TVA to make a decision on funding for the Bellefonte plant {where Daniel works}. August 20 was the decision day and we found out that instead of fully-funding the project at this time, they are going to fund it for a year. They will reevaluate the decision in June of 2011.

This was not an unexpected decision, but it is not a particularly helpful one. We are ready to live in a house again, but are unsure of where we should buy. We could buy in Chattanooga and Daniel can commute {1 hour each way to Bellefonte} OR we could buy closer to the plant {but if they pull funding next year, we will own property that may be difficult to sell if we end up having to move}. 

And then there is decision of whether to buy 1) our dream house; 2) a smaller property to use as rental property in the future; or 3) land on which to build a house. 

Monday night we decided to drive by a couple of properties on Lookout Mountain and grab dinner at Guthries while we were there. We are also considering downtown Chattanooga, Signal Mountain, areas around Nickajack Lake as well as land in Alabama. 

Cute house. On the upper end of our budget. 

Yard would need to be fenced for Sophie.

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The main things we cannot live without is a garage {for Daniel}, a dishwasher {for me} and a fenced yard {for Sophie}. Beyond those things, we can renovate or build to our heart's content. It will be interesting to see what we end up with...

Great price for Lookout Mountain. Great winter views.

No yard and an HOA is a negative.

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