When my husband and I started the
hunt for our second home together, we didn’t realize how different the
experience would be from when we bought our first home. The first time around,
we put in an offer on the third house that we looked at and we got accepted
right away. It was an average sized track home in a small neighborhood, close
to the city and work, it was move-in ready, and had an HOA that took care of
your front lawn. It was perfect for us first-time-home-buyers. But we always
had far off dreams of owning property of our own one day… of raising chickens
and goats and having a big garden. We both grew up in the mountains and I’ve
kind of always known I would end up back somewhere near my hometown of
Somerset. So after about four and a half amazing years together in Mather, it
just came to us one day… we were ready for our next adventure and we were ready
to sell our house…like, now!
We consulted with our realtors, did
some quick repairs and clean ups and then put our house on the market. Within 5
days, we had 3 offers and in less than 30 days after that, we were completely
moved out and living with the in-laws (our temporary home while we hunted for
the next big thing!). The house hunting process started pretty quickly and
before we knew it we were surrounded by an influx of houses for sale in El
Dorado County. So, so many houses. Some big, some small, some decked out with
beautiful granite countertops and hard wood floors and some that literally
looked like storage sheds. Some had 20 acres with river access and others
weren’t far off from the neighborhood house that we had just moved from… and
the prices were all over the map! It was a whole new world to us as far as
house hunting goes and honestly, pretty overwhelming. We knew exactly what we
looking for but it was very difficult
to find what we wanted inside of a comfortable price range.
Soon after we had sold our Mather
house, I watched this documentary called “Tiny” about the tiny house movement,
the main idea being having less “stuff” and overall simpler living. By having
these tiny homes, the owners found that they were less attached to their
possessions, spent more time outside and (my favorite part) saved a TON of
money that would normally go towards a mortgage, utility bills, etc. The documentary
really inspired me and although I don’t know if I could ever live in a 200
square foot home on the back of a trailer, I definitely felt ready to downsize.
Suddenly, my main focus was to find a small home, preferably a fixer upper, for
really cheap. My husband was soon on board with my idea, although, of course,
he had ideas of his own as well! So our “want” checklist was as follows:
- Small house, preferably under 1200 sq ft
- Large garage/shop (for the man)
- Location close to parents and not insanely far form work
- A good sized bathtub ( or the potential for one)
And that’s pretty
much it, everything else we were willing to bargain with.
Out of all of the houses we looked
at, only a few stuck with us… and we only actually put an offer in on one other
house. We had many people tell us to be prepared to put in many offers and get
turned down a lot, but actually, we were more discouraged by the fact that we
didn’t want to put offers in on any of the houses at all! We saw some very
beautiful houses for decent prices but we were really looking for something
that we could fix up ourselves and make our own and it seemed like most of the
fixer-uppers that we saw were just priced too high for what they were. And then
finally, we saw Foxtail and I instantly knew this was our house. We put in an
offer and it got accepted.
Foxtail was a little house that
needed a lot of TLC. It needed a full remodel inside and a lot of work on the
outside, but it fulfilled everything on our checklist and was very affordable. Little did we know,
there were a lot of unforeseen problems with the property that would take us
(our realtors mostly) down some crazy roads dealing with the county, HUD and
the title company. I could write a whole blog post just on everything we went through during escrow but I’ll spare the
details, because it’s not exciting or fun. Let’s just say there were multiple
times that we were at an “impasse” and ready to give up. At times, we were very
discouraged because although we were still working on getting the house, it
wasn’t looking good… and in the mean time, no new houses popped up that caught
our eye. But our realtors kicked butt and along with our patience and
persistence, we finally got things figured out with the county and things
started looking up.
In the middle of November we
FINALLY closed escrow on our house… and having waited almost 4 months to get
our keys, we were very eager to start work!
So here are the original listing photos, but obviously I will be posting more detailed "before" photos as well...
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| Yes, this a house, not a barn |
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| That's the shop/garage in the background |
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| The shop |
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| The shop from the deck |
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| The back of the house |
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| The deck, overlooking the creek bed |
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| The trail leading to the "meadow" |
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| The meadow, which has a steam running through during the wet season |
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| The creek bed |
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| The living area / kitchen / 90% of the house |
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| Room #1 with laundry |
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| Room #2 A.K.A. The "Master" |
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| At least it has a decent sized closet! |
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| Our ONLY bathroom! |
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| So luxurious ;) |
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| The Shop! Which is almost as big as the house itself... what you can't see is the "bonus" room in the corner that we hope to make a studio/guest bedroom. |
