Responsibility (n.) something you ought to do because it is morally or socially right

(Photo taken on the day we got our keys)

One year ago we were signing our life away at the title company and on our way to becoming first time home buyers at the age of 21 & 22.

We had first decided that we weren’t going to buy a house in California because of the crazy house prices. Matt, who grew up in Oklahoma, always said he would NEVER buy here because the house that they are trying to sell for $500,000 is only worth $50,000 in Oklahoma. Only one difference though, WE ARE NOT IN OKLAHOMA!

I was bored at work one day (as I often am) and took a trip over to Realtor.com, as I often do at least once a week. I remember when there was only 1 house below $300,000 and it looked like it needed to be condemned.
We’ll the house market had started to fall a bit by the time we got back from our honeymoon. Still, we had no intention to buy. Then, I came across one house that I instantly fell in love with.
As a child, I always said I wanted to live in a really old house with the sidewalk that had grass growing on both sides.

This house was my dream home!

The cute little house was located on a Pleasant Street. Right there, I was sold. How charming would it be to live on a street named Pleasant?! It was in the heart of a historic town that had been around since the late 1860’s.

The house sat on a pretty good size lot, for the area, and had my dream sidewalks not only in front of the house, but throughout the whole neighborhood.

The house square footage was about 860 and had 2 bedrooms and 1 Jack and Jill style bathroom, a laundry room and a basement! This was rare for our area.

It didn’t have a garage, but it did have alley access, 1 garden shed, 1 tool shed and 1 office shed that had electricity, air conditioner and was carpeted.

The lot has 1 olive tree, fig tree, orange tree, lemon tree and tangerine tree.

The kitchen didn’t seem that small compare to the size of the house, and it had a really old stove that helped with the overall character.

I was in love with everything…except that it didn’t have a dishwasher or garbage disposal, or a shower…that’s right, NO SHOWER, just a bath tub...Oh yeah; the paint color was pretty bad too. It was stark white with a lavender purple scallop trim around the top of the house and windows. The previous owners really loved purple. EVERYTHING has a lavender purple tint to it…

While at work, I called Matt and told him to look at it. I said “I just found a really cute house that I know you will love. I know we are not in the market to buy, but it doesn’t hurt to look.”
I just wanted him to take the tour on the Internet and look at the photos. Once he saw the tour and photos though, he couldn’t contain himself. WITHOUT ME, he hopped in the car and headed over there to look at it in person. I was on the phone begging him to wait for me, but he didn’t.

He called once he got there and said that we needed to call our realtor so we could take a look inside. He, too, was in LOVE.
(I’m pretty sure he was on love once he saw that outdoor shed that he could have his office in)

That next night, we got to do a walk through. I took about 200 photos of just about everything. I think another reason I loved the house so much was because it was like a blank canvas. Everything inside was white and plain. It was very easy to envision all the changes I could make to it in order for it to become absolutely adorable!

(The day we did our walk through)

After the first walk through, we started the paperwork and got approved for the loan. We drove by our soon-2-be home at least once a week leading up to the day we moved in.
I lost a lot of sleep planning out where everything was going to go and what colors to paint each room. We started shopping for new ceiling fans, light fixtures, couches, rugs, accessories etc… That was the best part!

Fast forward through 30 days of escrow…

Matt got the keys from our Realtor but we weren’t able to go to the house until we got the call that everything had been processed. We had our cars loaded and were impatiently sitting out in front of our soon to home just waiting for that call. I kept telling Matt, “Let’s just go in, it’s basically our house anyways!” But Matt, being “Mr. I always follow the rules” said, “Nope”. We were only there about 10 min when we got the call. Helen said, “Congratulations, the house is all yours!” I don’t know what came over me, but I just started crying. I knew the house was ours, but to hear her say that made it official. I ran to tell Matt, who first thought I was just making it up so we could get into the house, but then once I showed him my recent call history on the phone, he happily opened the door for the first time.

We were home owners!

(The first time we opened the door to our new home)

We got right to work and unloaded both of our cars that had been packed with stuff that we had been buying for the past month. The first thing we did was paint the kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. After painting all of the white walls, that seemed to have a purplish tint, we ripped out all of the purplish tinted carpet. Underneath, there were BEAUTIFUL hardwood floors.

Once the painting and carpet ripping were done, we started to move in our furniture. Most of which was new, which made the whole house seem new. New home, New paint, New furniture. It was great. After the furniture was in, we got rid of all of the outdated butterfly 70’s light fixtures and updated them with pretty new oil rubbed ones.

From the weekend we moved in, we have been non–stop updating and remodeling our house. It has been such a fun process and if I had to do it all over again I would in a heartbeat.

Here are some of the things we have accomplished over this past year.

Painted the exterior

Painted the interior

Replaced the indoor/outdoor carpet with nice slate tiles

Cut down all but 1 tree in the back yard. We would have liked to save them, but they were planted dead smack in the middle of the yard!

Painted the sheds

Re-tiled the bathroom

Re-organized the tool shed

Put up Fence after Fence after Fence…and still need to put up a few more…

Put in planter bed after planter bed after planted bed…and still need to put in a few more.

Replaced all the light fixtures

Lined the walk way with old bricks

We also grew some grass and made the back yard green and pretty!

OH...and we cant forget... We had the fire department come out to see WHY Matt was burning a stump out of the ground… Remember, Matt’s from Oklahoma… We told him that he can’t burn items in his back yard, this is CALIFORNIA. He said, “If the Fire Department shows, I will tell them to get off of my property, I am the one who pays the mortgage…” less than 10 min after throwing coals and lighter fluid on the stump and going to town with the fire, we heard the sirens and the FD comes barreling down our alley. Matt’s response? “Sorry guys, I’m from Oklahoma. I wasn’t aware you couldn’t burn here in California”

There is still so much more to do with the house. I feel like our list is never ending.

we have to:

Put in a new Kitchen

Put crown molding in all of the rooms

INSTALL A SHOWER!!!

INSTALL A DISHWASHER!!

Stop living like Amish people

Put in a desk off the back

Put in a pergola over the current concrete slab off of Matt's Office.

Cut down another tree

Finish painting the exterior

Put in recessed lighting

Have the hardwood floors refinished

Put in brick BBQ area

It's like the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends.