Krystal bought her first house…I’m very proud of her. I have been pushing her for years to purchase a house for her family, however she always thought it was something she couldn’t do. Either she had bad credit, or she didn’t have the money, or she just wasn’t in the right place. But it seemed like it was always because she just wasn’t worthy enough to own a home of her own. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me to get her feeling worthy enough to have something of her own.

I know where that thinking came from I also have those thoughts about myself. When I was younger in high school. I would hear the kids talk about where they were going to college, what they were planning to achieve in their life, and I never felt I would be able to go to college, I’m not sure why, I don’t think anyone one ever said: Velma you will never go to college” I just felt that was for other people to do. I did want to go however that wasn’t for me. I did go to college, after getting married, having Krystal and getting a divorce. Then I didn’t have that same mind-set I did when I was younger.

My cousin is a realtor and she started talking to Krystal about buying a house. We had moved to the Tampa area at that time and was renting an expensive house. Krystal was thinking she was going to stay in the Tampa area for 3 to 5 years. Krystal started listening to my cousin Sybil and we started looking for houses in our area. The point when I know she was sericous was when she called and talked to a realtor. Krystal’s job is to call candid’s to set up interviews, however she is almost deathly afraid of calling someone for her personal life. example bill collector or doctor. weird I know. So when she contacted a mortgage broker and he ran her credit, I know she was serices.

We found a realtor close to our town (Sybil lives out-of-state) and we started looking at houses. This realtor really only showed us new houses, we seen a few houses that we wanted to see that wasn’t new, but his direction was a new build. I owned two houses in my life. One with my husband that his family used to own when he was small. So I really didn’t have a choice whether to buy it or not. And the other one I bought shortly after we got a divorce. It was in a small town where Krystal went to school and it was the first house maybe the only house for sale in that town. So being picky was really out of the question.

Krystal decided on two houses one new and one in the community we were living in already. Still not having a huge amount of confidence she was going to be able to purchase a house she decided to go for the new house in a new community. Well she was approved to purchase this house. It wasn’t her dream house however it had the right amount of bedrooms for everyone. So…here we are in the house.

Before we even moved in we could tell that we should not have purchased it. We got a scare from one of our neighbors, the kids were playing out side in our back yard when a large man came around, he was very loud and I was taken off guard. However he just wanted his kid to play with our. My first thought was we were always going to have them over. While that is true, if we out the kid just shows up in the yard. However they are very nice people and the boys enjoys playing with the neighbor kid. We just wasn’t ready for close neighbors.

The house is in a HOA Community and that is a challenge to get used to also. The houses are pretty close together, lots of two-story houses. It doesn’t feel like we have mush privacy. We have pretty much promised each other now more HOA. Our house is a two story house. It feels like we only use half a house and then go to sleep. The builder was only interested in selling this model, even though they knew we needed space and had time before we needed to move from the rental. All around our house are 5 and 6 bedroom homes and not once were we offered to see them or even that they were an option. So we are a family of 7 in a 4 bedroom home.

Don’t get me wrong we are happy where ever we are. I would have loved to see Krystal Love her first home. Krystal is however starting to do projects in the house. When we first moved in it was hard for her to even hang a picture. Now she is going all out. She put in wainscoting in her bathroom and is hanging barn boards in the downstairs bathroom. She is painting old furniture to add caritor to the look of the house. We have even talked about putting wainscoting downstairs in the living room/dinning room.

We will have many wonderful memories in Krystal’s  home. We have also learned a lot of things about the buying process and making sure we are in the proper location and the house itself fits our needs as a family of seven. We are blessed in our life, we are not perfect in any way. One parting words of wisdom…DON’T BUY A HOUSE WITH STAIRS!!!