Today is an important day. Do you know what day it is? Seriously, take a few seconds to guess why today is a big day for Wyatt and I.

Nope, not a wedding anniversary or a first date anniversary or a birthday or anything like that. It is an anniversary though.

Today, one year ago, we met…our house!

Yup, it’s been exactly one year since we first drove up to this house and stepped in the front door.

We were pretty nervous about seeing this particular house because we had seen so many houses already. In fact, we’d found a house really close to this one that we liked pretty well and we were just seeing this one to compare!

…Until we stepped into the entryway and fell totally in love with this place.

Of course, it didn’t look like that when we moved in, but we saw the potential.

You might not know that we only found this place because we were planning to make an offer on another house nearby. We had gone to see an older house with a decent size yard that backed up to a pond and were so tired of searching that we convinced ourselves it was “good enough.”

That night, we went home and started planning our offer. We sent the online listing to our parents to see what they thought of it and we checked out a few real estate websites to get an idea of what the actual value of the property was, compared to the list price.

On one website, I noticed a banner in the sidebar that said something like “Similar Houses In This Neighborhood.” Underneath the banner was this photo:

And I knew if this house was for sale in the area we were looking for, I had to see it.

We quickly found the listing on the For Sale By Owner website, which the photo linked to. (That’s why this didn’t show up in the online database search our realtor set up for us–it was for sale by owner.) We scanned through the photos, and didn’t see anything awful on the inside, so we called our realtor and asked if there was a way we could see this one right away.

After some red tape and confusion, she finally got in touch with the seller and set up a viewing for the next night. After spending less than 30 minutes at the house, we left that night, planning our next move, and we called our agent as soon as we got home with an offer.

We soon found out the house had only been on the market for a week and the seller hadn’t even finalized his asking price. (This was unfortunate for us because he ended up raising it but awesome that we found it at just the right time so no one else could swoop in and take it from us.)

After about a week of negotiations, we settled on a price and the terms. We’d bought a house! (Here’s the recap on that day.)

Since the house we almost made an offer on was so close to this one (we drive by the road that it was on almost every time we go to town) I often think back to how close we were to settling for something that just wasn’t right.

Sure, it had a decent-sized yard (smaller than the one we have now), and a pond behind the house (that wasn’t included in our property) but it also had a tiny, damp basement and a really awkwardly arranged garage. It was a lot older and the floor was even uneven in a few places.

It had some perks, of course, like a real dining room and a big deck, plus hardwood floors, though they were damaged. But it also had tiny bathrooms, all upstairs, and an awkward upstairs hallway. 

I still sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to live there, and I’m tempted to drive by and see the house that was almost ours. But, I always come back to how unbelievably happy I am that we ended up here.

Yes, we have plenty more plans for upgrades and fix-ups, but this place felt like our home the minute we walked in the ugly-pinkish-tan front door.

For a full trip down memory lane, check out our Home Tour. Plus, here’s a few of my favorite posts about some of my favorite updates that we’ve done. Don’t remember? Feel free to click the links to check them out!

The Popcorn Ceiling. (Wow. Just wow. Such a huge difference that made!)

Painting All The Trim (No post for this, but it was so worth the effort!)

The Wall Stripes (So fun!)

The Door Projects (Inside, and Outside)

The Living Room Gallery Wall (Special people, special memories)

The Living Room Curtains (It was like adding icing to a cake)

Our New Bedroom Dressers (Chester and Mr. Professor!)

The Ceiling Fans. (So much nicer and newer)

What has been your favorite project so far? Do you celebrate the first time you “met” your house, or is that just us? Did you know your house was the one (love at first sight) or did it have to grow on you?