Our Next Fixer-Upper

If such a thing exists as a regular reader of this blog, that reader would notice that my regular schedule of posting has been disrupted.  On Monday, we left town until Wednesday for a wedding.  Yesterday we headed down to Spartanburg because I scheduled a turn-on date for water and electric utilities at our new-to-us fixer upper-house in Spartanburg.

Yes, we bought another fixer-upper when we're not done fixing up the house we have at Lutheridge.  Let me be clear--we're not selling that house.  We are fortunate enough to be able to afford 2 small houses.  And one reason why we can is that each house needed work, and very few homebuyers these days want to put in that sweat equity.

In the spirit of full disclosure and complete honesty, I, too, would like a house where I didn't need to think about upgrades, where someone else had already made the decisions and installations.  But as we looked at houses, we kept saying, "Why would someone make the kitchen this way?  Why didn't they do the bathroom that way?"

I almost didn't look at the house we bought.  The pictures were just too scary, like this one of the kitchen:

Did they have a fire?  Some catastrophic plumbing issue?  But it was around the corner from a very cute house, so I swung by.  As I peered in the window, I thought, well this isn't as scary as it looks.

When we had our realtor show it to us, we all said, "This house is much better than it looks.  And more solid than it looks."  So we made an offer which was accepted.  We closed on the house May 8 and because of travel plans made a year ago, we are only now having time to make upgrades.

You might say, "Yes, but why 2 houses?"  In March, I accepted an offer of a tenure track Associate Professor position from Spartanburg Methodist College, which means more job stability--income to count on and a schedule to count on, a schedule which means I need to be on campus every weekday, during the 8 months of the year that school is in session.  I have done that kind of commuting for the past 2 years, and it's getting tiring.

I'm still a Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, so our thinking is that we'll be at the Lutheridge house on the week-end, in the Spartanburg house during the weekdays.  And I will want to spend the summer months in the Lutheridge house.

Of course, much could change, as much has changed.  It hasn't been that long since we bought our current fixer-upper, the Lutheridge house.  It was just 4 years ago, when I had only done a year of seminary, when I didn't even know that SMC existed.