We Bought a Fixer Upper - Say What!?!?!

I'm not sure if I've ever told you this before, but we live in a tiny little mining town about a 5-minute drive from the main city. It's the total opposite of suburbia where the homes have three garages and 5000 square feet of living space. (Which is totally fine if that's your thing but for some strange reason I much prefer the creaky floors and lack of closet space that you get in older homes.) There are quite a mixture of house styles here  - from one street of old three-story mansions to many streets of tiny shacks. We are fortunate enough to live on one of the nicer streets - about two minutes from the local school and several parks. While some folks have done an amazing job at maintaining, updating, and fixing up the houses in the area, many of them have become run-down and, well, ugly.    

I'm not sure if I've told you this before either, but it's always been my dream to flip old houses. I love the idea of taking a crusty old out-dated house and fixing it up all cute-like while still maintaining it's old-fashioned character and charm. More specifically, I've been dreaming of fixing up some of the run-down houses in the town where we live.

The problem that Alex and I have is that we are just waaaaaaay too busy. With two full time jobs, renovating our own home, two dogs, friends and family, hobbies, and now a new baby - it's basically impossible to even conceive how we could pull off flipping a house.

I'm sure you are wondering then, how and why did we just buy a fixer-upper? Well, let me explain.

Right now, Alex's parents live out of town in a small retirement community. They've been wanting to move back to our city for awhile (to be closer to the Coopster of course) but house prices are ridiculous right now and the thought of taking on another mortgage and the hassles of owning another home isn't what they were looking for. They are retired and want to enjoy traveling, etc.

So, Alex and I bought a second house. His parents will live in it and pay just enough rent to cover the mortgage. They will get the perks of living in a house without any of the responsibility. We will gain the equity of another property AND have babysitters close by. Win-win if you ask me. 

Wanna hear the fun part? We went one street over from our house and bought the UGLIEST, MOST DISGUSTING HOUSE ON THE STREET. Just to give you an idea, the previous owners apparently kept snakes, rabbits, chickens, and goats in the basement. Goats, people! The house was so grimy that I wanted to throw away my shoes after walking through it the first time.

I'm sure that many people will think we're crazy, however we were able to look past the grime, gunk, and junk to see that the house had good bones and lots of potential.

Are you ready to see how horrible it is? Here is the fixer upper in all of it's ugly glory:

Ummmmm, yeah. Now that's ugly.

What's really neat is that friends of ours live on the same street as our fixer-upper, in the exact same style of house. They've worked really hard to fix theirs up and it's sooooo cute. We'll keep their house in mind while we work on fixing up ours. 

Here is our friend's home (and inspiration):

To say the least, it's been a crazy busy two months (me with the baby and Alex with working out the house purchase). We get the keys tomorrow so I'm sure it's about to get even crazier around here.

P.S. This story has some more interesting twists and turns to it that I'll share for another day....... ;)

P.S.S. Raise your hand if you think we're nuts!

P.S.S.S. My hand is up. What were we thinking!?!?!? Hahaha.