Because Jon owned a house in Provo before we ever met, the first thing we considered when we got married was moving in together. Ultimately we decided against that, because his house was much too small for everyone. I was trying to picture having three teenagers, a dog, and a few cats all squeezed into a 900-sq-ft 3 bedroom home, and it just seemed like a bad idea.
We also looked into the possibility of building an addition above the house. And y’all, I went deep down that rabbit hole. It was actually kind of fun. But then ultimately we again decided it didn’t make sense. It would make the house twice as big and expensive as anything else on the block, which meant it would be hard to recoup our costs for doing it.
So, we bought a house in Orem, and rented out the house in Provo.
But we needed to sell both houses if we want to buy a new house. So, that’s what we did.
Fixing Up the Provo House
I went through the house and took pictures of various things that needed repairing. In retrospect, I don’t think I needed to do that. But, I hate hate hate the idea of selling a house (at a profit, especially) to someone without fixing everything I know needs to be fixed.
I had a disagreement with our realtor, Dean, about whether or not we needed to pay for new carpet in the house. Jon had removed the previous carpet and refinished the original wood floors underneath. Normally I 100% agree with this, because I hate carpeting. In this case, it had created an awkward ledge between the carpeted areas and the kitchen tile. I also felt like people wouldn’t love the gap between the baseboard and the flooring.
We let it sit on the market for a couple of weeks before everyone caved and let me get the carpet installed. We did the carpet, which honestly looked pretty good, and then had an offer within 48 hours.
