Little Brown House

I thought I'd tell you a story about a little brown house, this little brown house. My husband and I own this house. We bought it in March and then we beat the crap out of it. The inside looks like a war zone and we are going to make it beautiful. I have a bunch of pictures that I could post but I won't right now because when the house actually is beautiful I will take a whole bunch more and then I will post the before and after and the WOW factor will knock you off your feet. Hopefully this house will be beautiful by June and then we can sell it and move on to the next phase of our lives.

Now I must back track and tell you how this little brown house came to be. My husband has big dreams, he's a dreamer. He loves to talk about all the amazing things he wants to do. He has one flaw..... NO action. All talk , no action, that's Darcy. For years I heard him make plans, change plans, draw up plans and dream about these plans but nothing ever came to fruition. One day I said enough is enough. Stop talking and start doing. Unfortunately, the down side to this 'doing' involved selling our house, pulling out the equity and making some hard, solid decisions. It also involved renting to keep our money free and to avoid some ugly taxes. So the search began to find a rental that fit the bill. It had some pretty specific criteria: it had to have four bedrooms or more, it had to be in Tuscany (where we were living) to avoid upsetting the children too much and finally, it COULD NOT be disgusting! How hard could these things be to find? Well, pretty darn impossible, as it turned out.

We found a beautiful brand new house that had four bedrooms and a bonus room, a developed walk out basement, it was reasonably priced and we loved it. But.... it was in Cochrane, which is not Tuscany. We were running out of time so we took it. I was sick about moving the kids and devastated that I had to leave my ward, my friends and my sister but with 4 kids to think about and my sanity, what's a girl to do?

We moved last September and began the search for the perfect project to sink our money into. We found a fixer upper but it sold. We looked into building a house and picked a lot but soon realized there is was no money in that. We bought a house inner city and found that it was chock full of asbestos, we gave it back. Finally in March we found the little brown house, or I should say our realtor found it. We loved it and bought it. Now we renovate. The first time is always the hardest they say and they are right. We really had no plan as to how long it would take but we have a budget, big dreams and a rent and a mortgage to keep us motivated. As soon as Darcy finishes his last house (he's a framer) he will devote 100% percent of his time (or so he tells me. I choose to live in denial about the actual truth to this) to getting it ready for drywall. Next week it begins.

At first this was a 'contract out all the trades' kind of deal but when the painting quotes came in at half my budget it turned into a huge DIY project. I get to paint it now, awesome!! (until you get to know me I will indicate when I am being sarcastic). When I say paint I mean inside, outside, trim, doors, baseboard and all cabinetry. My wonderful mother offered to come and be me while I take a full time job as a painter. Can't wait for the drywall to get done and start painting (sarcasm!)

So..... my little brown house will soon be light olive green and I will be the one who made it so and even though this journey has been hard, scary and very much unknown, it's my husbands dream and therefore it is mine as well. Welcome to my blog little brown house.