Saying Goodbye to Our First Home: Park Avenue

Saying goodbye is always hard especially when you are leaving something that is very close to your heart.  Something that  binds your family for years.  I feel very sad leaving  our first home on Park Avenue.  We lived in it for 10 years.  My son was conceived there.  We've built  so many sweet and happy memories there.  Our children grew up there and it's hard to let it go but we had to.  The space is no longer  enough for our growing family.

When I first came here in the States, my  father-in-law  was very nice to let us live  at  his house  for  a year.  In fact, he did not want us to leave when we told him that we  bought a house.  My FIL is the nicest person I knew here in America, he   treated me like his own daughter and I am forever grateful for that.  However, I wanted a home that we could call our own, a home I can decorate the way I want to,  that's why even though we are welcome to  stay in his house, we chose to bought our own.

 We bought a fixer upper because we wanted to  make it our own. We thought it was a great starter house for our family and it was.  It's funny because when we were  house hunting we had a list of things that we want in a house  but  most of it wasn't met when we bought this one.  There was something in the house that made us fall in love with it.  I think it was the sense of a close knit family feel  that the former has in this home.  We felt  right at home when we first looked at this home.

This house was built in 1952 so it was already old when we acquired it that's why it needed a major renovation. We gave the basement a total lift and made it fresh and look new. We added a bathroom there, replaced the flooring, added some walls and painted them.

The whole family pitched in and helped us with some of the projects we did in this house. Our daughter was just 6 months when we bought it but we didn't move there right away.  We wanted to  spend our daughter's first birthday at Dad's.  

 Dad  was still healthy and strong  back then so he helped us a lot in  making this home especial.  He was the one who  painted my daughter's room.   Glad I documented every thing that we did in this house because we will have something to look back to.  

When we came back from South Korea, we  put  a fence around the house  because we wanted a dog.  I also  love gardening and the fence  provided a protection for the plants against the deer.  

The backyard  is a  decent size and I really had a great time  hardening in it.  I hope that the new owner love to garden as much as I do.

We had so many great memories in this backyard.  I can still remember so vividly the laughter and energy my children had whenever we  played outside.

I planted so many  flowers and vegetable in here over the years.  I actually got some if it and transferred it to our new home.

According to our  agent, the new owner  love the cement patio set.

We put  so much work in making this  house  comfortable and presentable.

As you can see in the first photo, the look of this house is old and dingy.  We completely change it by building a new and bigger porch.  It cost us $22,000 to have one built.  Home renovations here in the area is  very expensive.  That's one reason why we were not able to  upgrade the kitchen in this home because  the contractor wanted 40 thousand for it.  I told my husband to just forget it lol.

My husband originally thought of listing this house  the price that we paid for when we originally bought it but I objected because I thought we put in around 40 thousand on it and I didn't want to under price it.  So the agent came and assessed its value and thank goodness, it was way higher than I anticipated.  

My husband really want to get rid of the second mortgage that's why he wanted it to be listed lower but we agreed  to list it  a little higher and see what happened from there.

After just 18 days  of listing it, we  received an offer and we accepted it.  The buyer wanted us to do so many things but we declined some of it because  the house is in great condition and we left them a complete kitchen appliances.

We officially closed on it  on October 4th and it was bitter sweet handing out the keys to our first home that we love and became a big part of our family.  My son is heartbroken because he loved this house.

We planted the tree in the front with the help of our daughter so this cherry tree is as almost as old as our daughter.

Saying goodbye to our first home in Park Avenue is  hard but we had to.  It only have 2 bedrooms and with two children, it wasn't big enough to accomadate us all.  It has been 3 months since we moved to our new home and my son is starting to like it.  The great thing is, we still live in the same neighborhood so the neighbors that we call our family is still near  from us.  I hope that this new home will be our last home because I  don't want to move again.