“We’re from all over. I grew up in New York and lived mostly on the east coast. I moved to Seattle when I was in the military. I hated Seattle, it wasn’t for me. We were living together in my basement apartment that I had for a while that was small and dark with spiders. Neither one of us really liked that so we decided to move into a luxury apartment. We got tired of paying an exorbitant amount of money to live in a pretty box. We came to Colorado to visit and there was something about CO that I just really loved. We made the decision together to move. It went really quickly once we made the decision literally in 6 weeks or less, we just made it happen and that was that.
I never really pictured owning a home with someone. I grew up in the city. You didn’t see homes unless you went outside the city, upstate, or crossed the bridge. I never had this idea in my head that I would ever have a home, not to mention a home as big as this. It didn’t really hit me until I was in the military, living in military housing, that that’s the route I wanted to go. Apartment life is not for me. I made that decision to really strive to have that for myself and for my family. It does feel like we have stability now because it is ours. There’s a ton more responsibility but it’s an investment in yourself. The things that used to scare me about home ownership don’t really scare me anymore. Like if the furnace goes out and I can’t afford it because I have to pay the mortgage, it doesn’t scare me like when I was living in an apartment. Yeah, it happens, that’s home ownership. Now I’m in that spot and I realize you just deal with it, you move forward with it. As far as the plan for the house, we’re really too new to even know. Owning a home opens so many other doorways for you. Before, we couldn’t really see that and now we can.”
“We were excited to buy a home together because that’s the next step in the evolution of our relationship. We lived in apartments together for the last 2 years and then after moving to Denver, it just seemed like the next obvious step for us. Owning a home is a big deal for us, it’s cool. You’re paying towards something that belongs to you, you’re basically investing in yourself. It’s huge, right, you’re paying a mortgage for 30 or more years which you try not to think about, you just kind chug forward and make due with your everyday life. Now, with having a baby, it feels really good to be in our own home and know that at least we have that level of security because moving sucks, we’ve done it several times. It feels good to be somewhere where we can be settled for as long as we want to be.
We bought a home just in time for the baby. There’s space, there’s a backyard, it’s a quiet neighborhood, we have a nursery for the baby. I never really put any thought into it but it’s super impactful that the baby has his own space. I didn’t grow up with much luxury. My mom was a single mom and we kinda just made due. This is pretty luxurious compared to how we grew up. I think we’re doing the best to create an environment that we feel comfortable in and it’s not an easy thing to do, its actually really hard I would say. It’s something we’re still just both working on. Furniture is not cheap, neither are rugs, it’s a slow process. There’s a lot of open space that needs to be filled, I’m definitely not used to that.
I wish we had taken more before pictures. We didn’t really do that. The house isn’t perfect right now, but we’ve come a long way with what we’ve done so far. The only thing that’s really left is that strip of carpet on the stairs. I kinda wanna leave that strip of carpet as a reminder of where we’ve come from. It’s a reminder of the pain, sweat, blood, tears, aggravation, nastiness. We’ve been through a lot already with trying to transform it into something we can feel at home in. It’s way more expensive than you would ever think to make changes happen in a home. But then you reap the benefits. You sit back and look at what you’ve accomplished and think, yeah, that’s what this is for. It’s cool.”
