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Surprise! We bought a house and we are filled with excitement and a little bit of fear (homeownership is a scary thing!)
I’m eager to finally share this news with you since I’ve been missing from the blog for a month! My bad but you’ll understand once you see all the projects I’ve been up to.
Before getting into inspiration, tutorials, mood boards, and decorating, I thought I’d show the before photos. If you follow me on Instagram (@sweettealblog) you’ll know that we’ve already moved in and have actually gotten a lot done already. These are just peeks but I’ll be going more into detail in the coming posts.
To start, I want to share how we decided and bought a house in a month.
How We Bought A House In A Month
The lease on our apartment was coming to an end after 3 years and we knew we didn’t want to be in an apartment any longer. We wanted more space and an actual yard for our pups! We also hated living so close to other tenants.
There weren’t many rental options for affordable homes with yards that allowed two dogs in the areas we wanted to live. Naples, Florida is expensive!
So we decided to get pre-approved for a mortgage loan. It’s the first step in the home buying process and after finding a few cute homes we were interested in on the internet, we wanted to meet with a lender and just see if it were a possibility.
Buying a home was something we’ve been wanting for a long time and finally felt comfortable doing. After getting pre-approved we felt good about the possibility and making it real!
Side note: we figured out how much we were comfortable paying each month and went off that. We wanted to stay on the low side since we love taking trips and doing things and don’t need a huge house. Just because you can get approved for a large amount doesn’t mean you should spend that amount. I’ll be going in deeper with some tips on buying a home in another post.
The week we got pre-approved was the same week we went and looked at 3 houses in a day. The house we fell in love with online was horrible in person and the house we didn’t care much for but was one our real estate agent (also my stepmom!) thought we should see was the one we ultimately ended up buying!
Funny how that works, huh?
So that night we put in an offer on the house and they declined. We came back with a full price offer with the seller paying $3,000 of the closing costs and they accepted!
Around a month later, we closed on our home. We still had about 2 weeks left on our lease and since we got a fixer-upper (what we’ve always wanted) we were able to get some remodeling and painting done before move-in.
We moved in the weekend our lease was up. The timing couldn’t have worked out more perfect.
So without further ado, here are our house before photos!
Our House Before Photos
The fireplace! The fireplace was a selling point for me. Not many houses in Florida have fireplaces and when we walked in and saw it, along with the vaulted ceilings, I fell in love.
I love unique homes, I’m one to go for different over cookie-cutter. I like character.
This kitchen is the biggest kitchen we’ve ever had. It’s huge compared to our apartment.
I love seeing house before photos and then the afters. It’s cool to see a complete transformation.
So far, we’ve painted, remodeling some of the kitchen, and cleaned up the lawn. While that may not sound like too much, it made all the difference.
I can’t stress enough how paint can make a space look brand new. Just wait and see my pretty white walls.
P.S. I never thought choosing a white paint would be so hard. Rest assured, I found the perfect shade.
