The Story of Us: Our Brick Baby

Next up on our blog series “The Story of Us”, we are talking about our pride and joy, Our Brick Baby! For a very long time, our whole lives were consumed by house hunting and then eventually making a house our home! If you have followed us for any time at all, you know how much our home means to us. There has been a whole lot of hard work and love poured into this home!

When we embarked on the journey of finding a house, we started with prioritizing our wants and needs. We thoroughly examined alllll the things we wanted in our first home as we planned to start the rest of our lives together. Every single time we always circled back around to the fact that we wanted to be mortgage-free and live small at first. Living small was important to us because we wanted the house to be manageable. We wanted a home that would be easy to clean with somewhat light upkeep. So we made the obvious decision…less square footage means less to maintain! That is where the decision to buy small came into play!!

We wanted to force our hands into the minimalist lifestyle. We had become infatuated with minimalist lifestyles. We had been reading alllll the books and listening to numerous podcasts and we instantly fell in love with the idea. Living small would force our hand into that minimalist lifestyle. When you only live in 793 square feet, you can’t buy too much stuff (trust us, HA).

We were really excited to embark on house hunting with big things in mind. We saved, and saved, and saved some more. We worked endlessly to make sure we could achieve a cash purchase on our first home. Debt-free is the way to be and if you ask Bret or myself, Dave Ramsey is the man!! We house hunted for what seemed like an eternity. Nothing felt right! Everyone kept telling us that things would work out and that when you know, you know. We were hoping and praying our friends and family were right, because it was starting to weigh on us. We had looked at so many houses! Would we ever find what we were looking for?! Well, they were SO right!! (Our friends never let us down!!)

I still remember the day we stepped into that little brick bungalow. The house had been on the market forever, but for some reason, we had never gone and looked at it. Our minds changed one day and on a whim, we went and toured it. An older gentleman owned the house. He let us in and told us all about its history. It was almost immediate as those feelings hit when we knew it was our home! We started having our HGTV moment as we started dreaming of what that house would look like if we poured in enough love and affection! We started envisioning all the fun things!

Six days later, we purchased the house. We paid for the house and got the keys. She was ours!!! EEEEEK!! It was in that moment that #ourbrickbaby was born! We spent the next 9 months pouring allllll the love and attention into making that house our home while we lived at home with our parents! (We are forever thankful that we stayed living at home for as long as we could because the pay-off was SOOOOO worth it!!!) We spent every available moment perfecting it. Over the course of those 9 months, our hearts were so full and continued to swell because our house was evolving into the home of our dreams!!

#OurBrickBaby is 793 square feet and the absolute perfect amount of space to live in. We have 2 bedrooms (one is used as our office), 1 bathroom, and the most perfect living room and kitchen! Natural light pours into our home so naturally we are obsessed! Our backyard is the perfect size for our needs and we are absolutely obsessed with our back patio!! We have spent so many evenings out there mapping out our hopes and dreams!

As I write this blog, it brings tears to my eyes to think about how far we have come. My gosh, it is just perfect!! We were really able to bring our own style into our home. We have loved getting the chance to pour our style into her! It has made the process all that more special. Designing the house together was something we both LIVED for, like for real!!! Picking the aesthetic and look of the home brought so much joy to us because we were able to channel our inner Chip and JoJo aka the loves of our life! 

It has been such a fun journey! Buying a fixer upper and pouring our heart into it was so stinking worth it. It can be hard work and challenging at times, but we would recommend it to anyone. Who wouldn’t want to make their home EXACTLY the way they want it?! We wouldn’t change an absolute thing about the fixer upper life!! 

 

Part 1: High School Sweethearts
Part 2: Off to the Real World
Part 3: Building our Dream
Part 4: Our Disney Proposal