First flip home

Well, I simply cannot put into words just how happy and excited Riley and I our to start tackling all the home renovations we have been planning ever since we found out our offer got accepted! I wouldn't necessarily label it a "fixer upper" because the previous owners did some minor updating that evidently laid out some of the ground work for us. We wont be demoing at all until we decide to finish the basement so, just adding ALOT of tlc and love into this place.

How did we decide on this house?

Well, long story. To sum it up; when we first started looking into buying I was sold on the idea of building due to my dad being a residential home builder in our area and can get some steal of deals with that route. I spent weeks hand designing and altering the perfect floor plan for us with every single little detail laid out on paper. BUT, with a new construction home comes high specials (the lot we would have built on), no trees, dirt yard with no fence, and quite honestly my biggest hatred...no character. So, with all of that being said I had a complete change of heart and we started to look for a smaller, cheaper, semi fixer upper home!

The things we wanted most when we were searching ::

» Location
I wanted our home to be near Lindenwood park in Fargo because there are a few streets filled with character homes and tons of walking paths in the nearby parks to go see on our daily walks!

» Smaller square footage
As previously mentioned, when we first started looking into buying, our first thought was to build. Well, this ultimately lead us down a path of a 3 level split with 2,600 sqft, 3 bedrooms, 2 living spaces and 3 bathrooms. For two people, thats A LOT of unnecessary space needed! Don't get me wrong, some people love the idea of roommates/ renting out but it's just not for me. (i'm kind of a clean freak) So, when we were looking at existing homes on the market we were definitely leaning towards a smaller home which (for us) means...
1. Less to renovate
2. Less to decorate (sad about this one a little bit lol)
3. Less to clean
4. Most often cheaper

» Yard
We have two dogs; Finley (Pomeranian, 2) and Murphy (Pomapoo, 1) that are so full of energy and we were desperate to get them a big yard to run around in with some privacy. I have always wanted to start a garden, so this was something we weren't willing to budge on.

After we knew the house was ours I immediately went to work and started planning every single little detail necessary. During our home inspection (3 days after accepted contract) I brought my tape measure and measured EVERYTHING to create a digital floor plan of our house. This helped a ton on deciding how we were going to plan renovations and what furniture we needed to keep or sell. I changed my mind so many times during that period but it makes things so much easier to plan out your vision and gather materials/ to-do lists before the chaos of moving and renovations begin!

Well, thats all for today folks! Enjoy these before pictures and stay tuned for many updates! If you stuck around for that whole rambling session, I just wanted to extend a little thank you and i'm so happy to have you here on our little adventure.