There are many major decisions we make in life and for our families!  Choosing the home to live in is one of those big decisions.

Many of you are aware that our family of 8 lives in a 1050 square foot 2 bedroom 1 bathroom home.  Crazy, I know!  It isn’t easy, and I do try to make the best of it … some days are easier than others.

Well, the debate continues … remodel or buy and both have their definite list of pros and cons.  I actually can’t believe that we’ve been here for 4 years (as of the end of Feb).  We still LOVE the neighborhood (ha, we can’t see even one of our neighbors’ homes LOL, but I think that’s what I like and the neighbors we do have are wonderful) and our property is truly beautiful.  That is probably why we haven’t made more effort to move.

Well, that and having twins a year after we bought it.  We’ve done quite a bit to the house, but there’s nothing that can magically make it bigger or newer (it was built originally as a logging cabin before 1910).

Either way though, the problem is that we are kind of in a pickle!  Here’s the condensed version …

Selling/Buying: The market is clearly down around the country meaning that our little tiny house is not likely to sell and that it isn’t worth nearly what it was even a year ago meaning that like many other families there is a possibility that we owe more on the house than we could get in a sale.  In order to buy another house we HAVE to sell this (no matter how much we’d like to keep it as a rental).

Building New on Our Property: We’ve looked into building another house on the property, but we would have to come up with 20% to 40% down out of pocket for a building loan and the costs would be more than we could afford in the end.

Renovating and Adding on to the Existing house: This is the most viable option for us in some ways but would still require a lot out of pocket.  What many of you don’t know is that the front of our house is basically sitting on jacks right now.  It’s a long story, so I’ll spare you the details, but it isn’t the most comforting thought in the world.  It will cost us about $20,000 to get a foundation poured and completed, then we could actually start the process of making it more useable space under the house (a daylight basement of sorts).  Again, with the market being what it is, we aren’t sure what we can do for extra financing since there wouldn’t be equity to draw from.

So you now see my dilemma!  I’ll be honest, I’m not asking for a lot more room in the house (if we were to add on), another bathroom would definitely be nice, and a rec room would help the kids with the serious cabin fever they tend to get when couped up in this tiny living room.  I would also like it to feel cozy and inviting (right now it’s very cold and our ONE source of heat for most of the house is the pellet stove in the living room and it isn’t working well right now).

The reason I’m sharing all of this with you is two-fold …

1. We could definitely use prayer as we make these big decisions.  It’s not like there’s only 4 of us anymore, so any kind of move or undertaking tends to become major.  I’d be thrilled if any of you would pray with us as we journey toward a solution.
2. I’d be happy to hear what you have done when making these big decisions for your family.

I’ll keep you updated about this as we go.  Both my hubby and I have made it a major goal to see positive changes in our living conditions by the end of 2009.

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This entry was written by Shera on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Bloggity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.