It's official!  We have finally sold our home!  (Happy dance!!)  It has never felt so good to say "We are no longer home owners!"

For those of you new to the blog, we have been living in what I have termed "the situation".  We both lost jobs, had to move a state away to keep jobs and have been balancing mortgage and rent for a year and a half!  But no more!!

We closed on the house yesterday!  I have been dying to tell you guys but due to the public nature of the internet - didn't want to say anything until I knew it was closed!  So this may explain one of my sudden absences for a week (those of you who follow in twitter may remember all my - "posting from Starbucks" tweets) and why I am having a massive yard sale. 

My yard sale starts in about 45 minutes so I have to run - but I wanted to share the good news with you guys! 

Whoohoo!!  (I am so excited I could burst!!)

Anyone who knows me knows how HGTV-redo-a-room obsessed I am. I love that stuff - can't get enough of it! And it makes my heart go pitter patter to see someone installing a back splash, painting a room or replacing a fixture.

 Photo by Vincent Ma

And there are times when I want to do all of those things here, but there is this little nagging voice in my head that says "Psst, Jess - you know you don't really own this house right?"  Yep - for those of you that didn't know, we are renters due to "the situation". What is the situation? The cliff notes version is that we both lost our jobs and had to move to another state to find work. Caught in the balance was our home that we had been in for a year and a half. So we have been balancing a mortgage and rent for quite some time. When we finally get it sold, it is going to take us some time to bounce back from the inevitable loss we are going to take. I figure we will be renters for awhile. And from the emails I have gotten - there are a LOT of us out there in similar situations.

So my question today is when you rent, how much renovation is too much? I think the answer depends on how long you plan to be a renter and if that is the "norm" for your area. In some markets, especially big cities like NYC or San Francisco, it is cost prohibitive to purchase. Most people are long term renters who are looking to find a great place (preferably rent controlled) and just stay there.

But for a lot of us, renting is a temporary situation. A stop over if you will. And while I don't want to cut out all decorating, I also don't want to take it too far. I mean we are probably only in this place for another year to year and a half. Given that time frame, I have been thinking a lot about what I will and won’t do and here is my personal list.

I won’t be … painting the walls.

I love to paint. Love it. Love picking out the colors, love rolling it on the wall, love standing back at the end of the job and just adoring how it brings a room together. But I hate the prep work. If I paint something, I plan to leave it that way for at least 2 years. And since we are under that time frame here in this rental, I think I am going to pass. The vaulted ceilings in the main living area would be a pain and would probably require a professional. Besides – the walls aren’t white. They are a creamy deep beige color that is actually nice and works with all our furniture. See example below with bird plates.

I will be … hanging things on the walls

As you can see, I have had no issues with putting holes in the walls. Actually, I use a lot of the 3M Command products (no endorsements here just love em). Our Kitchen Chalkboard is hung with the picture hanging strips.

I won’t be …. installing light fixtures

Yeah the ones here aren’t great. But they work in a pinch. The only thing I might have considered was if the master didn’t have a ceiling fan – but it did. So we are good to go. See example of builder basic chandi and the only BAD fixture in the house – the kitchen florescent.

I will be … adding additional lighting through table and floor lamps.

Yes, the ceiling fixture in any room can be the focal point of your eye when you walk in. But if the fixture isn’t horrible, you can take that view point down and into the other details of the room. Especially the other lighting details. And adding floor and table lamps is something you can take with you when you go!

I won’t be … installing anything in a bathroom

Yeah – I won’t be installing new faucets or even hanging new towel rods. There is just no point in investing in that kind of stuff. Yes – you can take them down and take them with you. But who says that they will work in your new space or if your style will have changed by then. So for now, I will stick with what I have. Here is a peek at the guest bath vanity. Nothing to write home about but it isn’t horrible either.

I will be … gussying them up a bit

The baths actually aren’t bad. I love the transom window we have above the shower! It is really a highlight in there. I did hang the two prints above the toilet, find some great towels and put in a little bamboo. To me – that is enough for a rental!

I won’t be … purchasing any more furniture

Let’s face it. A lot of your furniture purchasing is based on the room you are going to put it in. I don’t want to purchase anything else for this house because we just simply aren’t going to be here long enough for me to worry about making an investment for the space. Now if someone offers up something for free or nearly free – certainly I would consider that! Like our living room sofa and chair. All freebies.

I will be … updating what I have

I don’t have a problem with making new pillows up for the couch or refinishing a chair cushion. Or even painting a piece. That is all fine by me! Like my desk I refinished. Looks tons better than what we had before and let’s me get my painting fix.

What about you? Are you in a rental now or even in a home that may be temporary? What will you do in that space and what won’t you do?  I wanna know!

We went back to VA this weekend to work on our "summer" home (aka the house we can't sell).  If your new to the blog, you can read up on the situation.  We did some yard clean up (which can take a bit when you have over 2 acers) and I painted the porch and did some work in the flower beds.  I finished by late Saturday afternoon, stood back and saw the garden I had planned for over three years finally come together.  It was a little sad to know I had to leave it. 

I wanted to take pictures to share with you guys - but seeing how I am pretty open with how the house is technically vacant I didn't want to give too many details about what it looks like!  We had several people out to look over the weekend so we are hopeful that something will come out of that.  We have had more people out this spring - same feedback, house is great, price is great - it just is too far out for us to drive.  Sigh - you guys keep your fingers crossed for us. 

We drove back the 10 hour drive Sunday and I had six little petunias that didn't have a place for in our garden. So I brought them here.  I found this cute planter at Joann's for $10.  (They are having one heck of a sale this week!)  I would also like to point out that I realize we have only been here a month, but I never noticed that there is a child's hand print on the brick by our front door until now.  How odd...

I added a grapevine wreath to my springy sign too.  I feel like it completes it a little more. 

So that was my weekend.  Bittersweet and exhausting ... but it was fun to dig in the dirt and plant some beautiful flowers.  Anyone else work in the garden this weekend?

So I have been working on a new project ... one that is going to take me away from the blog a little over the next couple weeks.  Can you guess?  (If you are up on "the situation" you might have an idea!)

We are moving!  No we haven't sold the house.  (Yet...)  But we did find a great new rental that puts the lil one bedroom place we are in currently to shame!  We are about have three bedrooms and two baths with a garage!   Ahhhh ... space!!!  

The hubby and I haven't killed each other after a year with one bedroom, one TV and one bathroom.   But I am super psyched to have a little more space (and two bathrooms).  And more importantly, it is more space to decorate, more space to create, and most importantly - a place where I can actually spray paint!  (For some reason that is frowned upon on my apartment balcony - go figure.)

I have so many projects I can't wait to get underway, but first I am going to have to get out of this place.  Since I write about the things that are happening, you can expect to see some moving/cleaning out/cleaning up projects make it over here.  But don't go hating on me if I don't post too much here - I got a lotta work to do! 

Ok … so I know what you are thinking … why are there no pics of my home up on here? Well that simply has to do with state of this craptastic economy.

The Hubby and I were happily settled in our first home that we bought in 2007, a lovely 3br, 2ba rancher on 2.5 acres in the country in VA. It was a steal at over $40k cheaper than anything we had looked at and the way the housing market was going we thought it was the safe bet. It didn’t have everything we wanted, but it had most of it. We painted, installed new light fixtures, put up a shed and moved what must have been a ton of dirt with the landscaping projects I started. After my promotion at work, we were ready to start really amping it up. We had plans for a deck, new décor for the bedrooms, and finally getting the living room finished.

Then the economy went down the tubes and both the hubby and I were both laid off this past January. I went to work finding another job like was well my job. And in a little over 4 weeks I had a great offer to move to Nashville and start a new life. Hubby got a job a few weeks after and we were both gainfully employed again by April. I even got a relo package as part of the new job, so we put the house on the market and were hopeful we would have it sold by mid summer. We even left all our “good furniture” in the home in hope that the staging would help sell it.

Well (sigh) summer has come and gone, and the house has still not sold. We have done everything that we have been recommended to do … including lowering the price and every marketing gimmick in the book. Everyone who walks through loves the house (we have even had 20 Realtors tour it) but comes back with the same response … “The house is great, priced right, perfect for a new homeowner and shows beautifully - but it is a little far out in the country and is going to take that person who wants to live ‘out there’.”

Therefore, we hope and pray everyday that someone who wants to live “out there” will find our lil home and put in an offer. We currently are shacking up outside Nashville in a small – albeit adorable – 1br apt. I can’t buy too much stuff here (because we are space constrained) and I can’t really consider getting a new place until we get the old one sold. It doesn’t help that the mismatch of hand-me-downs and college furniture in the apartment is driving me insane. Instead, I have resorted to dreaming vicariously via the internet for all my home design dreams.

So I for all my dear friends at the blogs I have followed, I hope you will forgive my months of lurking while salivating over your beautiful homes. Please keep it coming so that I can make it through this rough patch! I know God will provide just as he has for the rest of our trouble.