Hello Bungalow!
If you haven’t read my last post, you should definitely go back and do that first so you know what’s going on around here. If you’re back because you want to find out what happens next, thanks for going on this wild ride with me!
Just as a recap from the first part of the story, the Rollings (that would be Chris and I) had started looking at houses with the idea of buying something “in the next year”. We looked at some options, almost had seizures and panic attacks, and decided the best course was to step back, breathe a bit, and just go very slow. Even take a break from looking for a bit.
In all the years we were in Haiti, there were many times where we got to see God’s provision for us in very real and tangible ways. Ways that were very, very specific. When I say “provision” I’m not talking about prosperity gospel type stuff. I’m meaning that there were more times than I can count where we were almost drowning in a big, hard situation that felt impossible, and we just had to fully release it to God. I, many times, found myself praying and saying things like, “God, I can’t do this. I don’t know what the answer is. I have no idea how we’re going to get through this. You need to do this because we’re empty. We can’t physically do this ourselves. It’s one of those impossible situations.” There were so many times where we would be deeply entrenched in things and Chris would say something like, “This is literally the only solution to this problem, but that will never happen that way. It’s too specific and impossible.” Then that exact thing would happen in a way that we could not possibly orchestrate ourselves, and we had never shared those conversations outside of the two of us. So many times.
Because of that I knew that I needed to fully release this whole house situation and prayed that God would just work it all out in the time that was right for our family, and that when it was time we would just know and things would fall into place in ways that seemed crazy. Until then, I prayed that we would just be content where we were and not stress about things.
On the calendar we’re sitting right at June 14. It’s a Wednesday. We’ve kind of chilled out after the weekend and the complete overwhelm from seeing what my brother affectionately called the Horror House. In case you need a reminder, this was the house of reference…
I had stopped my daily repeated checks of new listings on Redfin and Zillow, but while I was taking a lunch break I decided to just take a quick look because it had been a couple days. In our area a lot of new listings start to pop up on Wednesdays to get them up before the weekend when people are more free to go to open houses.
I tapped in all the info and hit “Newest” in the sort options. I started scrolling past things that were way out of our price range, and then stopped because something caught my eye. I tapped on the listing and then checked out the write up. Then I looked at the location on the map. I started swiping through pictures. I got up out of my chair and walked over to the table where Chris was working.
“Hey, I know we said we were going to stop looking at houses, but can you look at this and tell me what you think? If you aren’t interested it’s totally fine, but I think you should look at it.”
He reads the write up. He scrolls through the pictures. He looks at the map.
“Huh. I would be interested in seeing this. Do you want to message the realtor?”
I did, and we asked if we could see it sometime on Friday because Chris had a full work day the next day, but she asked if we’d be free later that afternoon if there was an opening. We told her we could be if we needed to be, but didn’t need to rush. This was at about 2:30pm. The listing had been up for 1 hour when I found it. At 4pm we were at the house doing a walk through.
As a refresher, this was our list of needs and wants in a house:
- Have 3 bedrooms
- Be within our kids school boundaries
- Have the potential for a rental unit (ADU)
- Have enough parking space for multiple vehicles, including a covered parking space for Chris’ Volkswagen van.
- Have a decent sized yard so we can garden, plant fruit trees, and have space to host friends and family.
- Have some kind of work space for both Chris and I because we work from home.
- Ideally we would prefer to stay in the part of town we’re already living in because it’s close to family and all the best parts of the city and things we like to do, our church, etc.
- A bonus would be an older home with some character that we could fix up and put our own stamp on.
The house we went to see is a little bungalow built in 1942 when the city started developing neighborhoods for shipyard workers. The whole neighborhood is all little bungalows of similar size, and is just minutes from where we currently live. It’s minutes from downtown and all the things that we want to be close to. Literally two stop lights further from where we are now. There’s a park four houses away, with a community center, giant old growth trees, and picnic tables. You can see it from the driveway. The park is next to an elementary school. It’s in our kid’s school boundaries, so they would just be on a slightly different bus route. Alex’s best friend can still skateboard over, and one of Olivia’s good friends lives almost across the street in an apartment complex.
The houses in this neighborhood are predominantly very small, about 700-900ish square feet and built on slab foundations. This one is one of the few in the neighborhood that has a basement, and the current owners did work over the years to finish it to about the 75% mark, bringing the square footage to just over 1800 sq. feet. That’s about 500 square feet more than we’re living in right now. The house is two bedrooms, legally (closets and proper windows), but as part of the work done in the basement there are already bedrooms walled in, they just hadn’t put in the egress windows or closets. By replacing basement windows and doing the needed egress work it could go from a 2 bedroom to a 4 bedroom and increase the value of the house by quite a bit. It would also mean the house could have three bedrooms and an office space for Chris and I.
The roof is in good shape. The windows are all newer and in good shape. The foundation is solid. The basement was dry and had been heavily used for various things. There is a bit of a front yard and a good sized back yard. There’s a cement patio area out back. There’s a little shed that was used as a tinkering space and even has a shingled roof with gutters and a down spout. There’s a long driveway as well as street parking in front of the house, on a quiet street. And there’s a detached garage that looked big enough from the listing photos to have the potential to become a rental unit. And best of all, this house was well within our price range. It was listed quite a bit lower than what we said we’d be willing to spend on a place that had the potential for a rental unit.
As we walked through the house it was evident the house was tired. As in the people who had lived in it kept it in pretty good condition, but it hadn’t been updated in a very long time. All of the things that looked old were really more cosmetic, and were livable, but the bones were good. She just needs some love. It would mean that we could prioritize some basic cosmetic stuff, move in, then work on things over time. Chris and I know how much of a difference paint can make in a space, so we could give everything a fresh coat before moving in and it would completely freshen things up. The carpets need to be pulled up because they’re very worn and stained, but there are original hardwoods under that. The cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom are from the 60s, but they’re solid. Cleaning them up, sanding them, and repainting can freshen them up until one were in a position to do a kitchen and bathroom remodel.
The one thing that we didn’t see in the listing was pictures of the inside of the garage. Wanting to put in a rental unit, it was important that we got a feel for the space to see if it was a possibility. Initially our realtors were struggling to get the doors open. As they worked on that we walked around the building. It was obvious the garage had been added on to at one point. The back half had a separate entrance and a big 4×5′ residential window facing the yard. They did manage to get the door open and we found a good size garage space on the front side, but there was a wall up and another internal door going to the back portion. The wife in our realtor team went ahead through the door and then I heard, “Oh, this is interesting…”
I followed her then stopped dead when I walked in the room.
Friends, there’s a pool back there!
They had built an addition on the garage to fit a 10×20′ above ground swimming pool, which they had actually lowered about halfway into the floor. As in they built this entire room to accommodate the pool. They built the room, sunken foundation and all, then assembled the pool inside and got it all up and running. And by up and running I mean that they have an entire heating system so they can use it year round, as well as an endless pool pump to lap swim with. It’s a whole thing. The big advantage is that the space is perfectly sized for a rental unit, and after the pool is taken out, the floor is already open to run all the plumbing etc without having to break into a foundation.
We spent over an hour walking around and checking things out. Rather than having a panic attack Chris was chill and very much taking everything in. We both saw the potential and possibilities. It was all stuff we could manage, and what we couldn’t do ourselves didn’t feel crazy overwhelming financially or physically. It was just the right size. It was in the area we wanted. It was the right price point, lower in fact. It literally checked every box, no compromises.
We left and came home and kept having little conversations. Chris talked to his mum about it (she’s a retired realtor) and we all drove past it so she could see the neighborhood and get a feel for it. There were more pros and cons types of conversations, though we couldn’t really think of any cons. The next morning when I came downstairs to make my coffee I found Chris sitting on the couch scrolling through the listing again. Remember, this was the guy having a panic attack a few days earlier. We talked more. Chris had to go into Portland for a bunch of meetings and work. Later in the morning our realtor checked in with us and he told her we were still thinking, but interested. Again, no panic attacks. Interested. Chris and I ended up chatting on the phone a bit after that and both realized that we couldn’t think of any negatives.
At one point I asked if we were both saying that we wanted to make an offer and he just said, “Is it crazy to make an offer on a house when you’ve only been looking for a week?” I reminded him of what our realtors had told us, which is that when you know, you just know. It literally checked every single box. It even had a couple of things that I didn’t mention in my last post.
Yes, all the important must haves were there, but Chris and I had both said that it would be great if wherever we ended up had some tinkering space for him where he could work on engine stuff. One of my wish list items was space for my soap making, if possible. I haven’t made a single bar since we moved because our current house doesn’t have good space to cure and store the soap or my supplies where I can have easy access to them. In Haiti I had always just used our kitchen to make the soap. Then I would cut it and let it sit on the counter on trays under the fan for a day or two before I moved it up to the shelves in our upstairs storage room. I had a little nook where I had a desk and space to do all the labeling, storage of cured and wrapped stuff, etc. Having any kind of space to do something similar was high on my “wants” list.
This house not only had the little shed out back with power and shelves and a work bench, but the main garage has shelves and a big work bench built into it, so lots of tinkering space for Chris. The basement, as I mentioned, is already partitioned into rooms. Four rooms to be exact. Two of those would be bedrooms. One is more of a general use room at the bottom of the stairs. The last room is the laundry room, but is the size of one of the bedrooms. Along with the laundry hook ups there’s already a utility sink built in. And because the foundation is a mix of thick, poured concrete walls, and block walls on top of that, there are shelves built into the walls where the blocks meet the concrete. The shelves are the perfect size for curing soap and storing supplies, like my fragrances and colorants. There’s tons of room to build a big work table and extra storage shelves for bigger buckets of ingredients and supplies. We can even put Chris’ brew fridge down there, and he could brew down there if he wanted.
All of that to say that not only did the house have all of the “must haves” on our list, it also had every “would be nice” item on the list. Every one. An actual office space. Tinkering space. Soaping space. An older house with character that just needs some love.
As Chris and I talked that morning I finally just said, “Are we both saying that we want to make an offer?” He said that he figured we had to pull the trigger at some point. The guy having a panic attack three days prior, was now saying we should be making an offer. I got in touch with our realtor and we started working on an offer to submit that afternoon with a response deadline of the following day.
So did we get it?!
Well, we did get a response the following day, but it wasn’t the acceptance of an offer. You see, the selling realtor had scheduled open houses for the weekend and our realtor was hoping that by getting an offer in right away that they would just accept and cancel the open houses. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and the selling realtor came back and said they wanted to hold all offers until Monday, after the open houses. So, we had to wait. We did go to the open house on Sunday, just to do another walk through and confirm that we were still interested. It was a good idea because it just solidified our decision.
On Monday our realtor got in touch because we had to resubmit our offer, since the first one had expired on Friday. This was actually good, because she had been able to get in touch with the selling realtor to find out if there were other offers. There was one, and she was able to find out that it was above asking price, so we had an idea of where to set our second offer. We did that, submitted, then waited until Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning our realtor called and let me know our offer had been accepted.
Friends, we were under contract!
Here she is in all her listing photos glory :)
I actually started writing this the week after the offer was accepted because I wanted to get everything out while it was fresh in my mind, partly so I don’t forget details for our own memories, and partly because of time. You see, we were aiming for a 30 day closing.
What’s crazy about all of that is that we went from saying we were going to stop looking for a bit, slow down, not be in a rush, then two days later found a house. A day after that put our inital offer in. Exactly a week after finding the listing we had an offer accepted, and our 10 day window for inspections etc. opened. That 10 day window closed on June 30, and the following morning we left at 5 am to drive to California to spend two weeks with Chris’ brother and sister-in-law on holidays. We got back on July 13th, had 4-5 days of final mortgage paperwork to deal with, signed all the official paperwork on the 20th, and on the 21st we closed. And then we went to Mount Hood for the weekend because one of Chris’ board members has a cottage there and insisted we use it before they list it for sale next month.
And now here we are, homeowners.
Friends, we bought a bungalow!
It all seems so crazy. Chris has just kept saying things like, “Who gets an offer accepted on a house then goes away right in the middle of it for several weeks?” and, “What normal person closes on a house then immediately leaves town to go away for the weekend?!?” In the past month we’ve been coming to terms with the fact that apparently we don’t do “normal” well, and actually thrive in the abnormal, in the chaos of many things happening at once, in big decisions. Of course we would be the people who have a whirlwind experience buying a house. We’re the Rollings, it’s what we do, and as a friend told me during some challenging times, “You will do this, because you guys were made for stuff like this.” :)
When I was thinking about, and talking about God’s provision earlier, I was also factoring timing in there, and how God’s timing is amazing. We had been planning the trip to California well before we started looking at houses, in the event that my green card hadn’t come through by summer and we weren’t able to travel to Canada. We had booked the weekend at Mount Hood well beforehand as well. The dates and timing on everything sandwiched right in between all of those plans. Nothing was forced or moved to accommodate the house purchase. And thanks to modern technology, we did most things electronically from where we were, whether it was at home, or while we were traveling.
The house itself checks every single box we had, event the “would be really nice” list. The asking price and what we settled on was still much lower than what we’d said we’d be willing to pay with the option of having a rental unit. Since our offer was accepted I’ve kept my eyes on the market and there hasn’t been a single house that has come up that had everything we wanted, in the part of town we wanted, for even close to what we offered. Everything is way higher for less square footage and only part of the things on our list.
We held onto the house loosely in the early stages, being willing to step away if needed, trusting that if this wasn’t our house something else that was better would come along. We still had all the inspections and steps to go through. When it did come time for the inspection, the inspector went through everything and told us that with the age of the house he expected that he would find issues, but there were none. The house was solid and just needed some updates. Things like new doors, changing the flooring, painting, and eventually refreshing the kitchen and bathroom. He had some suggestions about things in the basement, but it was things like, “That wiring should be in a conduit,” in a room that we plan on doing work in anyway, and, “That tape might have asbestos in it and should be covered,” on a duct where the tape obviously needed to be redone or covered.
The biggest issue that was found was that the sewer scope showed old pipes with separation and that needed to be replaced, along with some root intrusion. The estimate to have the work done was about the same as our closing costs, so we asked that the seller cover closing costs and we would do the work later, and they agreed. The benefit of this to us is not only that our closing costs got covered, but when we build the rental unit we need to tie it into the sewer system, so we can do all of the work at once. The other issue that came up was during the appraisal when the appraiser said they couldn’t finalize things because the covering over the back patio area had several rotten roof supports that were a hazard. They said it either needed to be fixed or taken down. This was something the seller had to take care of. We had already planned to take it down, so we told them to go that route, which they did, and we didn’t have to do the work or take care of the expense. The appraisal got done and things were good to go.
My next post is going to be a house tour based on the listing photos so you can see what we’re starting from. I’m planning to share the renovation process and all the fun of updating our sweet little bungalow so you can journey with us, and so we have a scrapbook of sorts for this next phase of our lives. We have a lot of things that need to be done, much of which will happen over time. Some of it will be “Phase 1” type projects, where we do a “for now” upgrade until we make decisions about what we want to do long term. Things like paint and refinishing floors. Other projects, like building the rental unit, will be full on as soon as we can get to them.
Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a fun ride!
~Leslie
