The Power of Prayer

When we first started talking about moving to Florida, it wasn't a clear path of how that would happen. We'd been trying to move to Tennessee for the previous 3 years, and not a single door was open. We couldn't even get a window cracked open.

The funny part about moving to Florida - how fast it happened.  We didn't just get a window, but multiple doors opened wide - wider than I thought possible!  And every prayer was answered so thoroughly, we were left amazed.

It was harder making a sale on the place in Ohio than it was to actually buy in Florida.

So what prayers were answered??

1 - My friend who had moved to Florida had been praying we'd move to Florida. When we came to visit in January 2015, I told her that my husband had said "don't ask, because we'll never move to Florida."  She said "I'm not asking, I'm praying." Later I'd learn that it wasn't just her praying, but her mom, siblings, and entire congregation at church! When we had arrived in Florida my husband was not feeling well and his arthritis was flared up badly. He slept soundly the first two nights, which is unusual for him, and his arthritis wasn't as bad by day two. Suddenly, our vacation turned into a house hunting trip!

2 - We didn't want to move and have a mortgage. Originally we thought we'd have to sell the Ohio home to make this happen, so first prayed for our house to sell. Then somehow our prayers changed. We prayed to not be dependent on the Ohio place to purchase in Florida. That prayer was answered above and beyond what we could have imagined! Thanks to a few smart decisions, and the right timing, within six months we found ourselves dual home owners.

3 -  We didn't want to sell our Ohio home to just anyone. We wanted the new owners to see the beauty and potential and to appreciate the land as we did. As it was, our house went on the market in May, and 2 weeks later went under contract and stayed under contract, with 3 different buyers, until we finally closed in October! Meanwhile, we had purchased and moved into our Florida house before we had a final deal on the Ohio house!  Once again prayers were answered in that the buyers were exactly the kind of people we hoped to have buy our place!

The time frame was so fast - God answered all prayers and moved us in 6 months! Not just moved us, but opened all kinds of doors and windows that we never dreamed would be opened!  The blessings from Him have continued since our move as well!  We have a wonderful church, have made new friends, I'm employed, the schools are way better than what we left, and we're getting bees in April!  How amazing is that?!

I also learned later that other people were also praying about our move - that God would plant us where He wanted us. While I think they were actually praying that was Ohio, God moved fast at moving us.

We are enjoying this new adventure we've embarked on together, and are so excited to see what plans God has in store for us!

The Walk Through

 

Here's a quick walk through of the house.  After this, everything will be in real time as we slowly remodel this place.

 

This is the dining room to the guest bedrooms view from the kitchen area of the home.  That little half wall is half the size, and that glass piece is gone. This happened while we were trying to move our couch into the house, and the space just wasn't big enough - so we cut the wall in half from ceiling to floor after the couch wedged and got stuck.  The dining room windows face the back yard.

 

 

This is the view to the kitchen from the dining room. The door to the right side is the main entry we use into the house.  That is the driveway side. That wall is half pantry and half hot water tank space. Beyond that is the laundry room and what used to be a breakfast nook before the previous owners made it a completely separate space by adding more wall and a door.

 

This is the living room view from the dining room.  I was most excited over the fireplace in the house, until I learned it is gas and NOT wood. We hope to change that up to wood before next winter.

 

This is the master bedroom. The only changes we've made in this room was using left over Earthy Cane paint. But instead of nice tan walls, the Earthy Cane over the pale yellow looks more like a light gray.

 

The guest bathroom. The only thing we've done to this room so far is to add towel storage.

 

 

First guest bedroom.

 

Second guest bedroom.

 

And that's it, the grand tour of the house. One of the things that really drew us to this place was the yard, and all of the gorgeous trees. This is our front yard.

 

We spent about an hour on a Saturday morning to assemble a nice fire pit from Lowe's in the midst of those trees.

 

This was the best idea we'd ever had. We've spent hours sitting around a fire in the evenings and sometimes in the early mornings. For the most part, our winter in Florida has felt like early Spring in Ohio. We had a couple days of heavy frost and one day that spit some snow, but the flakes melted as soon as they landed.

 

 And in case I failed to mention it, we do live on a canal that leads out to the lake. We love it. I will end this post with this photo I took when our neighbor gave us an airboat ride out to the lake.

 

Third Times The Charm

This is how our home looked when we first set eyes on it in June.

It was advertised as a "banging buy on the water that won't last long!" And it didn't. It was only listed 3-4 days before we found it. Our realtor was amazing and had way more information than we could have possibly needed to base our decision. We did a quick walk through, checked out the yard, counted over 20 palm trees, and told her we wanted to make an offer.  We were literally leaving for Ohio the next day, so we were in a hurry to get our papers signed. We had looked at 2 other homes that weekend, and this one was the clear winner. It was a third trip to Florida to house hunt, and the third house we had seen that weekend.

ADD Remodeling

So when we made the move to Florida we purposely looked for a fixer upper. I'm obsessed with DIY stuff, and really a total home remodel is the ultimate DIY project.

And sometimes all that DIY stuff isn't the way to go, but we're neck deep in it now, so there's no going back! Thankfully I have this awesome husband that's in to it, too, and he's sooo patient with my ideas, projects, and total derailments.  If we did things my way 100%, nothing would get done because it would totally look like someone with ADD remodeled the place. LOL

And no, I don't have ADD, I just get sooo excited for the next part, I can barely wait until we're finished with what we're working on. So while we're laying new subfloors, my mind is already moved ahead to cabinets, counters, and what light fixtures will we be putting up - but we're totally not ready for any of that yet. So to keep me happy, we call it "research" and "price comparing" or "data gathering".

Remember in school and those dang diagrams you had to make for language arts - the brainstorming ones? That's pretty much what I'm doing every day, all day. I go to work, I'm thinking about the house. I get home, I'm on pinterest pulling ideas for the house.  Then I fall into craft ideas, DIY furniture, etc and I'm off again with some half baked idea of what we could do.

Excitement. That's all.

So to keep myself in check, we find little DIY/crafty projects that I can take on mostly on my own. (Mostly because sometimes I require help operating saws.  Sometimes I pretend like I need help because it's more fun working together on a project.)

So, an example of what keeps me happy...the coffee wall space.  It's cute, but the wall it's on will eventually be ripped out, so it's super temporary.  But it was a fun couple hours project E and I completed together on one of my days off.



I will forever be grateful for pushing to move ALL of our extra/surplus cans of paint with us. Due to that decision, we've painted nearly every room of the house without having to buy paint. By using the paint we had left over, we have saved a ton of money on walls we'll be ripping out and hanging new dry wall on later. Meanwhile, we were able to give all of the walls a much needed refresher.

Here's a before and after of the fireplace corner of our front room.

Before



After

I scrubbed all of the walls and painted them a light blue in the living area.

Before

After

So that's the first things we did to the house to make it more homey. We didn't go full into remodel until just a few weeks ago. We've started in the laundry/kitchen area and are working our way from one area to another. Just because I like some things to be nice, I've played with the decorating, etc.
More to come in a few days.


Well, it's been a while, and we've made changes!

Has it really been two years since I've posted here???  So much has happened and changed since my last post.  The biggest change being we bought a home in Florida!!

 

Yep, that's right, we moved to Florida! We sold the farm and moved over 900 miles away - to a warmer climate and no snow. Ok, that's not totally true - there was one day where some snow fell from the sky last month, but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. And there was two mornings that we woke up to frost on our cars, but today it was 86 degrees so a couple days of frost is worth bearing!

 



I plan to be back to blogging regularly soon, but for now I'll share one of the first pics I took when we arrived here in August of 2015.  Later, I'll share details of how the move came to be (totally God's doing and lots of answered prayers.

 

 

This is actually our BACK yard, but our FRONT door.  And what you don't see is behind where I stood to take this pic, a canal that is connected to a local lake.  To the left, where that door is opened, is where our driveway is.  That fence is now gone.  One day on a local sale group, posted free if they remove it, and boom, fence gone. It was wonderful!

 

Over the next few days I will be sharing some of our current and upcoming projects, before and after pics, and any new adventures we fall into.

 

OH, and some things that never change - I still have five chickens. Bantam Chocolate Orps.  We'll be adding bees soon, and we're making plans for raised beds.

So stay tuned, there's more to come!