My Hermosa Home Beginnings
I drove past the house weekly over the course of a year, and I always thought it could be quite the looker with some love and affection. It had clearly been neglected for some time, and I never saw any vehicles there.
It wasn’t the height of the housing crash, but many homes were still being foreclosed. Then that spring, the grass started to grow. Within weeks, it was knee-high. The house clearly no longer belonged to anyone. So I drove past more frequently — every day frequently — waiting to see a sign (literally and metaphorically).
Was it okay to wait for a sign that would announce another person’s misfortune?
One day, it was there. (Was I a horrible person to be excited about the possibility that this was a foreclosure?) My husband, of only one year, had been complaining about the lack of space in the home we shared with our teenage son and three pets. So I said, “there’s this house that could be really special with some work.”
We called the realtor listed on the yard sign and was told it was a short sale and would likely take at least three months to close if the bank was receptive to an offer. If you haven’t experienced a short sale firsthand, which I’ll write about more later, pray you never do!
And so the journey of creating our forever home started — our hermosa home, a beautiful respite from the world for our small step-family.
Please join us on this journey of sanding, painting, staining, stripping, nailing, hammering, blood, sweat and tears. It won’t always be pretty, but I hope it’ll be fun!