Living in a mobile home was a great choice for us when we bought it almost 8 years ago. We didn't have a lot of money to start off with, and our options were very limited, so having a brand new trailer with nothing that needed fixing or upgrading was very appealing. When we moved in Nathan was just 4 months old and Zack was 18 months, so living in a place that was all one level was also extremely convenient! But as our lives changed and the kids got bigger and their toys got bigger, the downfalls became harder to overlook; not having a garage, having just a small sideyard for play space, and dealing with stereotypical "trailer park" neighbours. The frustrations with real-estate in a mobile home are very minimal when moving in, but with owning a depreciating asset comes taking a loss when wanting to leave. Knowing that we had no equity, we had to come up with a down payment from scratch, as well as saving up enough to cover our losses. After a few years of planning and saving and waiting, we were finally in a position to list our house in mid-April.
Everything that happened next was so carefully orchestrated that only God could have figured it all out for us. After we listed it was quiet for a while, which was good for my unplanned major surgery at the end of April. We started to have more showings in May, resulting in an offer with just 3 1/2 weeks possession. Not knowing when (or if) we would get another offer, we decided to take it and immediately started looking at houses. A few days later we found "the one" and put our offer in. Now to sell one house & buy another in less than a month is great because you don't have to wait so long to move in, but it's also very stressful trying to make sure that all of the paperwork and changes can be done in a shorter amount of time. With this being our first experience both selling & buying at the same time, we just had to jump in with both feet and go for it. We encountered a few hiccups, but like I said earlier, God had everything so perfectly organized that all we could do was be amazed. With my slow recovery from my surgery, I wasn't able to pack or move anything, and we were overwhelmed with the people that came to help pack and move our stuff.
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| Empty Trailer |
On June 18th, we said our last goodbye to our first home. Because of the speed of the possession on our trailer, we had a 10-day period of homelessness. It was a little concerning until we realized that my Grandma was planning a holiday to visit my brother over the exact same days that we were without a place to live. Thankfully we were able to help eachother out; Grandma had us to look after things at her place while she was away, and we were given the gift of an empty house to live in for 10 days. It was so nice not having to be in anyone's way, and our daily life could continue on with school and work. We were also blessed with great friends who completely cleaned out their garage so that we could store everything we owned in it. Thank goodness it all fit!
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| Loaded up from storage! |
On June 28th we got the keys to our new house. Pete grabbed our mattresses that night after work and we slept on the floors of our new bedrooms. The next morning Pete and a bunch of our friends and some people from our church loaded up from the garage and we moved it all into the new house. We even had some friends that stayed after everything was moved in to rebuild the beds and other furniture that had to be moved in pieces. That night we all slept in our own beds and we were so happy!
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| New Home At Last |
So now it's been 4 weeks and we're settling in nicely. I wanted to unpack at the speed of light, but I'm still on light duty so we definitely have unpacking left to do! Since painting most of the house is a main priority as we go along, I'm holding off on decorating and putting up pictures until we can get that done. At the top of our priority list after moving in was getting the boys settled in their new rooms, painting also being the major need especially in Nathan's room. Nathan had a difficult time with his new room - pepto-bismol pink isn't really his favorite colour, haha. The pink was so dark and so deep that it took 4 coats of primer to get it white enough for the new paint to be put on top! I will have future blog posts with their completed rooms; we have the base paint done now, but an artist friend of ours is customizing their rooms with special pictures on their walls as well. So exciting!
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