I always loved the front of the house. Clearly, it needed some love, but those corbels! That wraparound porch! Swoon. I definitely had on the rose-colored glasses because the exterior needed/needs a ton of work. I created a little inspiration board a year and a half ago which is kind of fun to look back on.
Becoming Debt Free - Part 4
April finally arrived, our tenants moved out, and we moved out of my parents house back into the Brooklyn House. For 2.5 years we had thought about this moment, and sadly, it was not such a happy time. I will spare you the drama and gruesome details, but I'll tell you that when we moved back in, we were not alone. We had some new house guests: rodents. We spent the first two months back battling and reclaiming our house from critters and repairing the damage the renters had done on the house.
Becoming Debt Free - Part 3
Becoming Debt Free - Part 2
At this point in time, our plan was to keep the Brooklyn House and rent it out. Once the Myrtle House renovation was complete, we would move in and continue to rent out the Brooklyn House. This would be the beginning of our real estate investing (or so we thought). In order to fund the renovation for the Myrtle House, we knew we had to save as much as possible and we nervously asked my parents if we could stay with them temporarily. (They sweetly agreed.) We thought the renovation would take about a year and cost around $25,000 (hilarious).
Becoming Debt Free - Part 1
Our debt-free story is far from conventional (like most things in our lives :). We didn't simply save all of our pennies and pay off each debt one by one. Though not the typical path, it got us to our destination nonetheless, and we hope to inspire others to think outside the box when eliminating debt. Before I delve in to how we are 100% debt-free and own our humble little home outright, I need to talk about how we got into debt in the first place.
Our Free Kitchen Sink
One early morning, I was cruising Craigslist and found a posting for a free kitchen sink. If you have any experience with Craigslist, you know that a "free" posting is basically the start of a race to see who can get there first. I showed Brian, told him it was probably already gone (the pickup location was about 40 minutes from us), and then started to take Lola for a walk. Five minutes into the walk, I couldn't get the darned thing out of my head, so we ran back (literally) to the house, jumped in the car, and headed downtown to see if it was still there. Miraculously, no one had picked it up yet, so we hauled our VERY heavy new sink back home.