The Frantic Reality of Moving Into an Unfinished Fixer Upper

The frantic reality of moving into our unfinished fixer upper was quite stressful. It was a sacrifice to pursue financial freedom to be completely debt free! We are almost there!

Well, we were finally able to move into our fixer upper. But, the thing was, when that happened, it was actually not even finished yet. And in reality, no where near finished! 

RENT AND MORTGAGE WHILE RENOVATING FIXER UPPER

We were renting an apartment nearby and for about a month or so were paying our apartment rent and mortgage on our new house at the same time.

That of course, was something we only wanted to do for a short amount of time. And our apartment was so gracious to allow us to extend our lease until someone else came along who was ready to lease it. That happened sooner than we expected, so we had to make plans to move out of our apartment for real this time. And yea, we were really not ready to do that, but had to figure out a way to make it work. So this is us moving out of our tiny little apartment studio. 

GETTING READY TO MOVE OUT OF OUR SMALL STUDIO

It was finally moving day for us in May 2020 right during the pandemic. The frantic reality of moving into our unfinished fixer upper was starting to settle in. It was a crazy time to buy a house, but yet we were so blessed to be able to do so as we would have our own place without sharing walls, ceilings, and common areas with others. We were looking forward to having our very own property. And mortgage interest rates were super low so we locked in a great deal!

We purchased our little fixer upper in February 2020 and were getting ready to move in about three months later. That was definitely not enough time to get all the renovations done, which of course is why we actually moved into an unfinished fixer upper!

MOVING OUT OF OUR STUDIO APARTMENT

Here we were moving out of our small studio apartment, which was less than 600 sq ft. It was an open concept design with the living room and bedroom in one space and the kitchen and bathroom in separate spaces. Oh, and the “laundry room” was also in the kitchen area. It was really small, but still bigger than our last apartment in Korea, which was only about 200 sq ft! Now we were getting ready to move into a 744 sq ft house! Yes, gaining about 200 sq ft! Very cool y’all!

Nate packed up our mattress and was trying to figure out how to get everything out of the studio. When you think you don’t have much in a small space and then realize you really do, it can be very overwhelming!

That was one of the most stressful days ever! We spent the whole day packing and moving all of our stuff to our unfinished fixer upper. I can’t even remember the number of times we went back and forth to drop stuff off. We finally left the apartment for the last time around 1 in the morning! That was crazy! 

FIRST DAY LIVING IN AN UNFINISHED FIXER UPPER

And then we woke up like this. 

This is where we slept! In the one bedroom that had drywall up – our master bedroom. After all that moving and getting in so late, we were just happy to have a bed to sleep in that night. Now we had to wake up and face reality – life in a literal construction zone! Another reminder of the frantic reality of moving into an unfinished fixer upper!

DOCUMENTING OUR UNFINISHED FIXER UPPER JOURNEY

Shortly after I finally woke up, I started to clean up all the stuff we just threw everywhere when we finished moving in very late that night, or actually really early that morning. As I cleared out a whole section in the “living room,” I realized that I needed to document the before and after so we didn’t forget our humble beginnings. 

I grabbed a camera (my iPhone 7 Plus at the time) and started filming and sharing our crazy situation. 

“We moved into our brand new old house last night. We finally moved out of our apartment. Wow, that was crazy! I wanted to capture some video because I’ve actually already cleaned out this whole front part right here. So I wanted to document this so we could see how far we’ve come. So it was like packed with stuff. There was stuff all over. We just threw everything in here and this was the result {chuckle, chuckle}. Oh my gosh! So I organized and threw stuff out. It was kinda nuts!”

WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF

We also dumped a lot of stuff in the kitchen and even our bedroom, which was now filled with boxes stacked to the ceiling. Thankfully we didn’t have to put together our handmade bed frame Nate built from scratch as we only had to prop it up and place our mattress on top. I had clean sheets and duvet cover ready to go. 

Alright y’all, since we lived in such a small studio less than 600 sq ft, I thought that we couldn’t possibly have that much stuff, but when we were moving, I realized that we had WAY more stuff than I really thought we had! Another reminder, to have less stuff and live more simply because moving all of that stuff was such a pain and a huge nightmare!

DRYWALL IN ONLY TWO ROOMS

The master bedroom and bathroom were the only rooms in the house that had drywall on them. No other rooms had drywall. 

Wow. Who knew that you’d move into your first house and it would look like this! Wow, you can see the wiring and everything. 

I also planned to move all the suitcases and bins underneath our high bed frame to hide them out of sight in our bedroom. We also put down some temporary vinyl flooring in the bedroom. Lots of work ahead to get this all organized!

We have a brand new toilet and it’s awesome. The plumber guy gave us a new toilet seat cover made of wood instead of the cheap plastic kind that comes with the original toilet. 

The sink is not plugged in yet, er – I mean not installed yet. We have a toilet that flushes, electricity, and internet. What more do you need?

I tried to organize everything in the bedroom and bathroom before we started the drywall in the other parts of the house. That way there would be room to work in those other rooms because they would be cleared out. So when it would get very dusty from the drywall, all of our stuff would be contained to just those two rooms.  

TO SPRAY FOAM OR NOT TO SPRAY FOAM

Nate also did such a great job spray foaming all the cracks in the siding to seal it up from the elements outside. Wow, that was such a huge job! And ahh.. our vaulted ceiling just looked so delicious!

We also had all the insulation stored in the office at that time. We would work on that before the drywall. It’s the white fluffy kind that looks like a huge sheet of cotton or something. It’s actually made of fiber glass though. Kinda wished we would’ve gotten the newspaper or denim kind for a more natural environment, but think that was way out of our budget for now.

We were debating if we wanted to do spray foam or the fiber glass one we had. Our house is so old so we weren’t sure if spray foam would be a good idea. It seals better, but there are also many different opinions about it. But, I’m happy with what we decided on. Since we have an older home and it’s more expensive to have spray foam and you need to pay someone to get it done. But this way, my husband can take his time to put up the insulation when he is ready to for each area of the house. And we can do it exactly the way that we want it done. 

Another reason we are so glad that we didn’t go the spray foam route is because it would also make it difficult to move things around like the wiring later if we decided to change things up behind the walls. And as you will soon start to see, we ended up changing a lot of stuff around here! That spray foam would’ve been like glue stuck to the siding or something. And what if it went through the cracks of our very old siding and started oozing out and separated the siding?! All that to say, we are happy that we didn’t go for spray foam insulation for our very small old house.

OUR FRANTIC REALITY IN AN UNFINISHED FIXER UPPER

Wow, yea, so we were planning to insulate and drywall most of the house while we were living in it. Ugh, I really hate dust. But, you gotta do what you gotta do!

We tried to see if we could park an RV or camper on our property and live in it while we were renovating our fixer upper, but then we learned about a local city ordinance that prohibited us from doing that. That was a huge bummer! But, we can also understand why we have an ordinance like that too. 

At least I took that week off from work to get settled into a wonderful beautiful construction zone site.. or, I mean our beautiful wonderful first home {wink}. 

Despite the frantic reality of moving into our unfinished fixer upper, we had peace knowing that with this sacrificial mindset, we would coast our way to financial freedom in no time! Debt free scream in the Dave Ramsey studio – here we come!

Philippians 4:19

And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic home mostly on our own. Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead!

You can also watch a video about this here.

To see more adventures of our tiny fixer upper journey, click on the links below.

📦 GETTING READY TO MOVE INTO OUR UNFINISHED FIXER UPPER! 🏚

🏚 CHECKING OUT THE CEILING FRAMES AND PLUMBING 🚽