Making a House a Home
Selene and I have had some self-imposed extra stress placed on us this summer. We rather suddenly and unexpectedly sold our home in July after living there just over three years. It was a bitter sweet situation. Bitter, in that we poured a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into that place. I framed it and basically co-contracted it with a good friend. It was a beautiful house in a very nice development. But it also was big house on a big acreage with big payments. We started praying about that when our son moved out and started college, but it really isn’t a good time to sell a house right now and we did love it. Then a gentlemen came and made a cash offer when it wasn’t even listed. He had purchased some adjoining land and wanted to put it together with our land. Wow, that was our answer. The sweet part is it was a good move from a stewardship perspective since it enables us to be debt free (except for our house payment); but have half as much debt as before and a 15 year mortgage.
We found a home in the Berthoud area that was in a bankruptcy. It was built in 2005 but has never been lived in. The utilities have been off so the grass all died, weeds were waste deep, pigeons built nests and pooped all over the front porch, mice and black widows occupied the house, and every smoke detector in the house was beeping. It took some vision to see what the house could become. It also took some patience. It took almost two months to get an answer from the banks regarding our offer. But we closed yesterday. Now comes the big work of making a house a home. It’s a lot of work, but fortunately I’m married to an extremely hard working woman who knows how to do it and is good at making sure I do my part! to help out!