Journey to Wander Lane

When my husband and I first got married, we lived in a small apartment in a cute suburb outside of Salt Lake City. We were only there for 1 year, but we look back at our time in our little apartment in Holladay fondly. We often say that living there was the happiest we’ve been. That may just have been newlywed bliss, but I can’t help attributing some of our happiness with where we lived. Holladay has always been a town near and dear to my heart, filled with fond childhood memories of the days before my parents divorce and before we moved away. Its mature trees, homes with character, diverse community, and mountains within walking distance, cemented its place in my heart—making it a place I hoped to call home again someday, in a house of our own.

Well during our second year of marriage, when we were deciding on where we were going to buy our first home, we looked and looked and looked all over the Salt Lake Valley. Our price range was small, and our down payment was almost non-existent, but we wanted to make it happen. It seemed like the next thing to do. We’d been married over a year and had already started a family. The house seemed to be the next thing to check off our list.

While searching for homes, I couldn’t help but feel a small “keeping up with the Jones’” attitude stirring inside of me. With our small budget, we weren’t going to be able to keep up appearances, especially in more desirable places in Salt Lake Valley. When I realized that, I started researching rural areas where the mortgage options were better for those with a small down payment. I stopped caring about where we were going to live, and started paying more attention to what our house was going to look like. Then, much to my husbands dismay, I finally convinced him to look into a rural town 40-minutes outside of Salt Lake where we could actually afford to build a brand new home. A home that might be brag-worthy.

So we did it. We built that brand new home and we loved it.

Do you like my ginormous couches? lol they were huge

Until we didn’t anymore.

You see that’s the thing about shiny new objects, they lose their sparkle. About a month after moving in, I just thought, “what did we do?” I felt so far away from everything that I new. I didn’t have access to all the places that I loved, the stores I frequented, the parks I liked going to, our family and friends, plus Michael and I were 45-minutes to an hour and a half away from school and work. We were putting thousands of miles on our cars and spending countless hours driving to and from our home to see friends and family, or just make a trip to the closest Costco. A month in, I thought about selling the house and getting out of there. I tried to think of ways to make it happen.

But then my husband brought me back to reality, and helped me realize it was going to be okay.

I definitely took this modest little kitchen for granted

We stayed.

Soon enough we were no longer the only house on our newly developed street, and our neighborhood stopped feeling like a construction zone. And that helped. So over the next two and a half years, we grew to love that little rural town and our little starter home. We made friends. We got involved in our church community. We found Michael a job that cut his commute time in half. We made it work.

Still, in the back of our minds we new eventually we were going to move. We had plans to stay there for 3-5 years, if possible. We needed to be able to get enough money out of that house to have a decent amount on a new home, so we decided to stop focusing on what we missed about Salt Lake and focus on the things we had available to us.

Well, last summer, the summer before Braelyn started Kindergarten, I started feeling a little pressured to settle down in a place we knew we wanted to stay. Mike and I both grew up moving often and attending numerous schools, and we have always said we did not want that for our children. With Braelyn starting her elementary school life, I felt like we needed to start thinking about moving before she was in 1^st grade. We decided we’d list our house the following spring. That would make it a little over three years since we moved in and we thought that would give us a significant amount of money to work with.

Well, then something happened.

It was August and I was just browsing Facebook, when I saw a post from a woman in our neighborhood (let’s call her Carrie) that was looking to buy a home nearby. She listed a few things that they were looking for in a house, and I couldn’t help but think how our house checked most of the items off her wish list. Since we had decided to sell our home the following spring, I thought, “too bad our house isn’t listed yet” and went on my merry way, not thinking anything else of it.

Then one evening, a couple of weeks later, while making the 45-minute drive home from Salt Lake, Carrie’s name popped into my head and I just thought “why don’t we just ask her if they’d be interested in buying our house?!” When I told Mike about my brilliant idea, he seemed hesitant but thought I should ask her to see what she would say.

I contacted her that day and told her we might be interested in selling our home. I told her our plans for selling that spring, but if she was looking for a place now, it might be worth a shot for the both of us. She was very interested, but then I told her how much we wanted to list it for and she just said, “That’s more than we want to spend, and we think we already found a place we want to put an offer on, so I don’t think it will work.” I was surprised by how disappointed I was with it being such a crazy thing to do, and after a few days of feeling disappointed I realized how much I really wanted to move now, before Braelyn even started Kindergarten. Mike agreed and suggested contacting our realtor to see if selling then was even a good idea, so I did, and we got positive feedback from her, but were still a little hesitant and didn’t feel ready to get the process started. We didn’t rush into anything.

Then a few days later, I got a phone call from Carrie. She told me how the house they had put an offer on might not be working out for them and that her and her husband wanted to come check out our house. I immediately called my realtor and told her what was going on, and that we might be selling our house sooner than planned. That was a Friday afternoon, so we made plans for them to come walk through our house on Monday—two days later.

We quickly realized how unready our house was to show to a potential buyer, so we spent the next 48 hours painting ceilings, trims, doors, walls, deep cleaning, hanging pictures, de-cluttering, organizing, and everything else you do to get your house ready to sell—in 48 hours! By the end of the weekend I had developed carpel tunnel (I’m not even kidding). But it was worth it, and our house was more put together and beautiful than it ever had been. Honestly, I hadn’t done much to decorate over the 2 years we’d been there. For some reason I just felt like we’d be moving eventually, so why spend the time decorating? I’ve learned how ridiculous that is. While staging the house, my mom was throwing up every random picture, painting, and clock we had stored in our basement and hadn’t even touched. Having things hung on the walls made such a huge difference in our house. It made it feel more like home and I felt a touch of sadness that we might be saying goodbye to it.

Anyway, long story short, Carrie and her husband came by as planned, and they decided they wanted to make an offer! Our house still hadn’t even been listed on the MLS yet! We weren’t even under contract with our realtor! I just couldn’t believe what was even happening. Tuesday we got everything signed and handled, and by Thursday of that week we had both accepted each others offers. Our house was under contract!

At this point, I felt like I was dreaming. We had just sold our house in less than a week, and we had started out not even knowing if we were ready for that. It just seemed too good to be true, and I couldn’t help but feeling some anxiety that something was going to fall through during the closing process—surely things don’t just happen like this.

I waited. Hoping and praying that everything would go smoothly.

It did.

About 40 days later, we closed.

We were ready for our house at Wander Lane.

To be continued…