Walking Away From Our New Build and Buying a Fixer Upper!

We have had a whirlwind of events happen over the last several weeks in terms of our homeownership situation. I shared a few weeks ago how we might not be able to move into our new home due to not being able to obtain a loan if the interest rates went too high, but we never would have expected not being able to move in for a completely different reason.

When we put down our deposit on the home, we sat with the builder and made our plans handicap accessible so that it would be a home that Em could live and thrive in for the rest of her life. When we were in that meeting the builder did not take into consideration the house on the actual lot that we chose. Because the lot slopped in the back, they gave us a daylight basement without telling us. This meant that when you went outside the kitchen from the sliding glass door, you now had eight stairs to walk down before you made it to the backyard, meaning that Em couldn't simply walk out to the backyard in her gait trainer and go play like we originally thought, taking away from the entire fact that this was supposed to be an ADA home. 

We signed the papers and walked away from that house officially last week. While we were in the middle of all the chaos with the first house, a house in our current neighborhood, in our same ward, in our same school zone, that was handicap accessible enough for what we needed went on the market, and we jumped on it the second we saw it. We were the first ones to get an offer in, and even offered quite a bit more than asking price, but actually got beat out by an all cash offer. 

Derek and I decided to just wash our hands of the home buying situation, and decided to stay another year in our rental house, and then used the money that we would have used for our earnest money to pay off some debt and be responsible adults. 

Low and behold, a week or so goes by, and our realtor calls us and tells us that the previous buyers found another house that they liked better, and now the house was ours if we wanted it. Hooray! However, we used all our earnest money to pay off some debt, and now had no idea what we were going to do. We needed $1,500, and only had about $1,000 in extra cash sitting in our bank account, and were sweating about how we were going to come up with an extra $500 in 24 hours. We lied to our realtor and said we had the money no problem, and figured we'd go get a cash advance on a credit card at the last minute if we needed to.

The next morning I woke up, grabbed my phone, started scrolling through my email, and got a message saying that $550 had been deposited into my back account for a blog project that I wasn't expecting payment on until the end of the month. It was insane. A miracle really. A huge tender mercy that came right when we needed it! 

We're so excited to get into this home and make it our own! We already have some awesome DIY projects and renovations planned, all of which I can't wait to share here on the blog with all of you. I've truly missed owning my own home and doing all of the projects and sharing it all on the blog with you guys, and so I'm very excited, jazzed, and motivated to be able to share all of that with you again!

Heavenly Father has been in every single detail of this home situation. We always prayed to know if building was the right choice for us or not, and that if it wasn't, for Him to block our path. He tried stopping us with the loan situation, and we worked around it, so then He slapped an eight foot deck onto the house so we'd get the message. And then the right house, at the right time, in our favorite neighborhood in the world pops up for us. He knew what he was doing, and we couldn't be more grateful.