Taking the Leap

We built this house in 2000 with such excitement, such high hopes. After having spent the previous 7 years in our "starter" home on a high-traffic street full of rental homes, we were thrilled to be moving into a sparkly, clean, giant home in a "real" neighborhood.


It never quite works out the way you expect, does it? We didn't move into a bad neighborhood, just an indifferent one. Over the years we began to long for more land and more country-like setting, but at the same time, we liked our general location and didn't want to have to move 30 minutes out of town to get those things. So we would look, and look, and look at new houses. Many that we looked at were $400,000+ homes. And it never felt quite right.

Don't get me wrong, we live in a nice neighborhood. We brought two children into the world in this house. We've been happy here. But something just didn't sit quite right.

It turned out that all this time, the answer was literally down the street from us, in a 30 year old neighborhood which some people might generously label "questionable". This blog will be the diary of our journey as we leave our McMansion for our unlikely dream home.