Our home-iversary!

2 years ago Andrew and I were handed the keys to our very first home!  We were introduced to the wonderful world of home-ownership and have been learning a lot ever since.  I know 2 years sounds like a drop in the bucket to some, but to us it feels like a long journey filled with changing furnace filters, flooded basements, hosting parties, shoveling driveways, and holiday gatherings.

As we’ve mentioned before, we decided to purchase a house after we got engaged—knowing that we’d want to live in a house together once we were married.  Looking back, we were pretty naive through much of the house hunting process, but thanks to the guidance of a great realtor and reading real estate books at Barnes and Nobles, we felt comfortable purchasing our little cape cod bungalow near downtown Holland.  The first weekend after getting the keys, my parents made the drive to Holland and we spent a solid day cleaning the house from top to bottom.

It’s interesting how cleaning someone else’s filth is grosser than cleaning your own!  But we scrubbed the place clean and ate dinner around our only furniture in the house—a card table.

The next day several of our friends helped move the majority of our belongings and furniture to our new home.  Mismatched college furniture, hand-me-down pots and pans, and several trips later, we began to get settled in.

Like many new homeowners, we quickly learned the joys and sorrows of owning a home.  We have had our basement flood four times (and consequently installed a sump pump), refinished a basement room (thanks to the flooding), learned how to install a new toilet and put in a new bathroom floor.  But we’ve also had a comfortable place to call home, hosted family for Easter, created memories and got a great tax return thanks to paying all that interest!

Owning a home is a great investment but is also a great marriage-strengthener (picture the two of us shopvac-ing a wet basement for the fourth time!).  We wouldn’t trade the last 2 years in this house (it’s amazing to think how far we’ve come from that first card table) and look forward to what we have yet to learn!