Now that we had a house to pay off, the pressure mounted. We had to finish fixing up the house we lived in and get it on the market. We had already remodeled the bathroom and painted almost everything, but the outside was still a wreck.
We worked for a month and in the end our house had gone from this:
To this:
We put it on the market with high hopes of selling quickly. Having two houses was a financial challenge we didn’t want to endure for long. In the past three years, we had been eliminating bills and now we had three credit cards maxed out!
In the weeks that followed, we managed to get our new house gutted, but making money took priority over remodeling. I tried to wait patiently for the offer that would ease the pressure, but I bothered our Realtor and paced way too much to call my trying a success. It took six weeks for an offer come, but that was okay. We would be out of debt again with money to spare!
The problem was that our new house still wasn’t inhabitable. We weren’t sure what to do. If we moved into the construction site it would only slow down progress, but we had to sleep somewhere.
The week of closing we found out that a neighbor had an old, camp trailer for sale. It was soon parked in the driveway and I began cleaning and moving our clothes into it. A friend stopped by and teased,
“Oh, I bet you’ll only have to live in that trailer for a year and a half.”
I didn’t think he was very funny, but I laughed anyway. I knew I had to keep my sense of humor in this transition. The situation was far from ideal, but it would be worth it.
Closing finally came and a train of trucks, cars, and a trailer pulled out of town. My dad was shocked that I was so calm when he left the rubble and mess of my new home. Mom assured him,
“She likes it out here.”
And I do. Even though it’s been cold and messy and annoying living in a construction zone, I like it.
When I shivered in the trailer at night, I told myself that it could’ve been worse.
When my husband and I moved inside the house to share a room with my daughters, I considered the blessing of owning our own home.
When I get frustrated because my kitchen is gutted and ugly, I just remember that this was my choice. I begged my husband to get me this house. I wanted the possibilities and the opportunities.
The opportunity to overcome the obstacles.
The opportunity to invest in my family.
The opportunity to make a profit from doing what I enjoy, taking a cast off, ugly place and making it beautiful.
I can’t wait to see the end result!
