Our Home

We bought this duplex in Powderhorn Park 2 1/2 years ago and have settled in to it nicely with the baby.  We live upstairs and have renters downstairs who give us money to live there.  It works out very nicely financially.  It's the only way I was able to quit my full time job when Cedric was 5 months old. 

The original plan was to live in it for the 3 years we had to to keep our $8,000 tax break for first time home buyers.  Then we planned on buying something else and renting this place completely out.  This is still not a bad plan, but I have doubts that we'll have saved enough money for another down payment on another place.  We are also slightly in the hole with our current mortgage, because home values continued to decrease after we bought ours.  So I'm unsure about our ability to get another mortgage or any kind of a loan, although we both have excellent credit. 

And now I'm kind of falling in love with the neighborhood and my neighbors and the house itself.  I feel like we could stay here for a while.  I feel like we could have 2 small kids fit comfortably here in our 900 square foot space.  I also feel like it would be hard to find anything better for the price we could afford.  But hopefully we can both find better jobs sometime in the next 6 months.  I think it is likely we will be living here when the next baby arrives (2014 estimate), and probably a bit after that.  Call it a 5 year home plan of sorts. 

The biggest thing me and my husband have been discussing is what to work on in the house.  I have a long list of things I would like to do to make the house better.  I would like to fence in the backyard, screen in the front porch, get a new kitchen floor, paint the ugly oak kitchen cabinets, and a few other things.  My husband would like to do as little as possible and save money for the next house.  And it's really a moot point right now because we don't have extra money for either.  Back to the jobs, we feel kind of stuck until this job crap gets sorted out.  It's hard to budget when you really don't know what your future income will be. 

I think doing a bit of work will increase the selling or renting power of this place.  The cheapest thing I can do right now it to fix up our neglected yard, which I've been doing a little of and am committed to doing this spring.  Mostly it's going to be pulling up weeds and little trees and doing some over seeding and mulching.  I'm doing some preliminary weeding of the paved areas now.  At least it will make the sidewalks easier to shovel.  And maybe I can convince my husband to take on the screening project or something else. 

I felt overwhelmed by home ownership the first couple years, but now I really want to make this a nice place, one that we'll probably be hanging in for a few more years.