Get me out of here!

In February of 2011 I'd finally had enough.  20 years of living in rentals and this last argument with my landlord of 7 years was my breaking point.  I'm arguing with her over painting the house she owned?  She wants me to pay for new carpet to replace the 20 year old, country blue, contractors carpet?  No. We'd never paid rent a single day late and the entire time getting them to fix/update anything was a fight.

A friend had just bought a fixer-upper for $80,000 in Tempe.  80k?  Heck, we could afford that!  We'd built up a little nest egg for a down payment and home prices were hitting historic lows.  Maybe it was finally time that we could buy a house?

A few phone calls later and we were pre-approved for a mortgage and the hunt was on!  This was going to be easy, right?  Wrong!  In 3 months, we looked at over 75 homes.  I can't tell you how many homes we looked at that were so disgusting, I had to shower when we'd come home from house hunting.  Or, they needed far more work than we were willing to do.  I didn't want move-in-ready, but I didn't want to be replacing a roof the first week.  And holy cow, did we see some doozies!  There was the "movie star" house with a living room floor that had been painted, glitter (yes, glitter!) sprinkled over it and sealed with shiny sealant.  Same house had a bedroom with a faux paint treatment meant to make it look like the interior of a castle, complete with a "window" that overlooked a meadow with a unicorn in it.  To this day, we still laugh about that house.

And then, just when I didn't think I could look at another house without screaming, we found our house.

That's when our adventure really began - turning our house into a home.