I’ve been keeping a secret from the online world. I wanted to wait until some progress had been made so from the beginning of February till now I’ve had to hold my guts in (as opposed to “spilling my guts”, get it???)…And no, we’re not pregnant!

We bought a 116 year old home in the historic Fountain Avenue neighborhood of Paducah!

Before we bought our current house, Neil and I were looking for something to renovate. We never found one that fit or that we could renovate to fit so we stopped looking altogether, and then our current house fell into our laps. And even though it didn’t need renovating, we updated it because we were both itching to do something. And while we love our home, the yard, the neighborhood, and the location (oh the location!) we couldn’t pass up this opportunity.

We weren’t planning to move for several years so we weren’t looking, but when my realtor friend posted on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to see the list of foreclosures in the area, I thought, Why not? The list wasn’t long but as soon as I saw it I wanted it. Neil and I made an appointment to see it and at that point I think he was just humoring me, but then we toured the house and we both fell in love. It has so much potential! It was at a great price but we sat on it for a couple weeks trying to figure out the logistics of taking on such a huge project. In order for it to make sense financially, we needed to do a lot of the work ourselves. Skill isn’t the problem, time and energy though… We both work full time jobs and then have a one year old to care for. When would we find the time to renovate this big old house?!? We did a lot of praying and sough support from our families, but that didn’t seem like enough. We continued to wait.

Then our realtor called one morning in late January with the news that sealed the deal: the bank lowered the asking price by a significant amount. We knew of at least two others who were just as interested in the house as we were so we knew we had to move fast. We made an offer for asking price and then waited. Our realtor had told us that it might take a week or more before we hear back due to it being a bank owned property so it was a pleasant surprise when we received a verbal acceptance only 48 hours later! We closed 9 days later and with keys in hand, the house was officially ours. Whoa. What have we gotten ourselves into?