Our First Home Purchase:

Our first home purchase on seven acres in the country. We are turning this run-down outdated manufactured home into our dream farmstead.

Finding our first home

Trey and I bought our first home in October 2019. We didn’t spend months looking for our perfect home. Knowing our budget, we were prepared for a renovation situation. The loan officer approved us for way more than either of us were comfortable with so we set out to find what was most important to us. We wanted to be near a decent size city, but out in the country, and we wanted land. Not knowing if that was even possible, that’s what we prayed for.

Having a family friend who is a realtor, we were able to look at houses as soon as they became available. We scheduled the day for the next Saturday, a Saturday in June, and with 5 houses to browse, we made our plans. Every single house had one thing or another wrong with it, some of them I liked ok, and some of them Trey liked, but none of them did we both liked, until the last most unlikely one.

Strangely, the first thing we both liked about it was that it was on a private gravel road. As we drove down the pothole ridden gravel road, we couldn’t even see the home we were visiting until we were at the driveway because the grass and shrubs were so overgrown. The place was a dump. Quite literally, the owners had been dumping trash all over the place.

We get to the door and its held shut from the outside by a cinderblock…. Our realtor knocked; no one answered. We thought surely it was vacant. She proceeds to go in and sees a naked man run from one side of the house to the next. I was terrified to even go in the house. I begged her to come out at once.

We regroup on the porch and I get the courage to go in with her and see the house. The smell that hit our noses as soon as we stepped inside was horrendous. Something must have been rotting inside. The house was in shambles, and there was roach powder lining every inch of the kitchen and house. If I had any experience at all with roaches, I might have noticed that in the pictures before we went. We didn’t quite make it to the back of the home. It was too awful to stand. What in the world drew us to this place, you might be asking…. Well, it was the price, the privacy and the 7 acres.

Coming from a family that lived in a fixer upper my entire life, I was no stranger to construction work and Trey has ten plus years of experience in renovations and construction work. We knew we were taking on a large undertaking, but we were both up for the challenge. The double wide was located 15 minutes from an up and coming city in north Tennessee, but yet it was still located in the country and in a private location. The house could have been almost falling in and we would have both been on board. We just knew it was the one and didn’t need to see any more. Our minds were made.

We began the process of applying for the loan. We prayed and both felt peace that if it wasn’t the one, we wouldn’t get it. The process drug on and on. We ran into a very literal roadblock with the appraisal. The man who appraised the home wouldn’t give us an approval because the road was in such disrepair. One end of the road was blocked off by the neighbors to keep through traffic from driving on our road, that end was pitted with unbelievable ripples in the road.

Everything was looking like we were going to have to move on and everyone was telling us the same. Yet, we both felt that this was the place the Lord had given us and so we kept believing it was ours. We ignored the negative remarks and just kept waiting. Months went by and still nothing. Finally, I get a call from our finance agent letting us know that he has left the company and moved to a new loan company. We chose to move with him and within 2 weeks we were able to close on our new home.

Before the work began…

These outside pictures show only a glimpse of the mess. We had trees growing up in our stairs and porches, essentially no real grass, wires and broken glass, old phones, tires, multiple burn pit sites with more broken glass and aluminum cans, and a whole host of other trash heaps everywhere. That was just outside. The inside was worse. Our neighbors told us that the place had been vacant for seven years prior to the previous owner. We found several different types of drug paraphernalia, roaches, and just trash everywhere.

Even with all of that, we were both so proud to call it ours. We knew what it could and would be.

Our goal was to clean it up and make it livable, then move in. The small stuff could be done while we were living in it. Its been 2 years since the day we signed our mortgage and the transformation has been huge.

We still need to paint all the cabinetry and replace counters and decide on some flooring but little by little we are getting it all done. The best part is we are out in the country, a place I’ve always known I wanted to live, have great privacy, and a home.

Join my email list for updates and comment below and tell me your first home purchase experience….

Check out my some of my homesteading recipes below

https://livinglangtonhomestead.com/how-to-make-homemade-organic-apple-cider-vinegar-from-scraps/