the purchase of the beach house

It still seems unreal to me that we bought this beach house. While it's in an awesome location( across the street from the beach) and in a nice neighborhood it requires A LOT of work inside and outside. This house is the definition of a "fixer upper" or I guess in today's terms a "flip house" except we don't intend to just "flip" it.

The house is actually a "duplex" and we have right side (look at the picture). It has three bedroom and two and half baths. It has a good size garage, a driveway upfront and very large driveway in the back.

As you can see, the house has been neglected for a while...the deck is old and falling apart, the paint on the house is faded and chipping, the grass is overgrown, and the prickly pair cactus is taking over the flower beds.

It has a two level deck in the front and good size deck in the back. The house gets a nice sun in the front and a comfortable shade in the back.

Adam and I plan on spending 10 days doing as much fixing and cleaning as possible. What remains, we'll get to on the weekends.

What do real estate moguls tell you the secret is? location, location, location! We got this one right!

This is the beach right in front of our house.

He's actually very happy it's just that the sun is in his eyes...or maybe he's just dreading the work that needs to be done on the house.


This is actually the bay so the water tends to be a little calmer than the rest of Virginia Beach.

You know you're close to the beach when your front yard is more sand than grass!

The neighbors are very nice. I think they're happy to finally have someone fix and occupy this house. They told us that the house sat vacant for almost three years.


This is the back driveway and deck. As you can see, we have plenty of parking.

I love the backyard of this house. It's so peaceful and pretty. So in the front it's a beach house but in the back it's a lake house.


The back driveway...

This is the lake in the back. The lake is full of turtles so we call it "turtle lake".

Adam's 30th suprise birthday party

goodbye to annandale

My room!!! I did lot of thinking in this room. A LOT of thinking. I also did a lot of dreaming, praying, and snoring. ; )

The kitchen...I can't even imagine the number of dinners cooked in this kitchen. I can tell you that I probably washed an equal number of loads of dishes in that sink!

Some mornings we'd even have breakfast on the deck...it felt like we were on vacation somewhere special.

Here's the back/side yard. We spent a lot of time back here grilling out and hanging out. This was definitely Mom and Dad's little piece of heaven.


That's the sunroom off the deck. I remember Mom and Dad were very excited about that room but it turned out to be not such a great investment. In the summer it got too hot and in the winter it got too cold...there were basically a few days in the Spring and Fall that the room would get used but otherwise, the doors remained shut.

You can also see our little vegetable and herb garden where my Dad grew tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, and lots of peppers...hot hot peppers.

That's my first BMW....loved that car! Sold it Oct 2005, right before Aiden was born so that I could upgrade to an SUV.


Home Sweet Home!

I used to think this front yard was huge. We used to kick the soccer ball around and pass the football across the yard.


I was the designated lawn mowing person for this house...mainly because I liked mowing the lawn. It was a good work out and a chore that no one else cared to do.


That's my Dad's garden in the front yard. He worked on that garden daily as soon as he got home from work. Sometimes he wouldn't even come in the house until he worked in that garden for a while.


When I think of home, this is the picture I have in my head - this house in Annandale with my Mom and Dad standing there...the only thing that's missing my is Abdullah and a random football laying around and an old flat soccer ball.

I was so sad to see this house empty.

construction of our centreville townhouse

Adam and I were so excited to be able to pick all of the options in our new townhouse. While it was fun picking each fixture, finish, style, brand, it was also very difficult. There was a lot of temptation to pick high-end stuff but we had to balance our needs with our wants.

In the picture above you're looking from the master bedroom into the master bathroom. I was so excited to have a master bathroom with windows and view of nothing but woods. I've always like to have fresh air in the bathroom while taking a shower.


Adam filmed a lot of the inspections just to be on the safe side. We've heard some horror stories about builders not caring about the quality of their work and hiding defects or mistakes with drywall.

The builder was Winchester Homes. I have to admit, they did a very good job of staying on schedule. The promised us a the first week of October and that was when they actually delivered it. The market is very hot right now so it helps them to stay on schedule so that they could move on to building other houses.

We went by the sales office last week and I could not believe the line of people waiting to by these townhouses! People are actually spending the night on the side walk outside just to be the first one there when the sales office opens in the morning.

This is the master bedroom. The little room on the right is the walk-in closet....it's a very small walk in closet so I'm not looking forward to sharing it with Adam.


We bought our first house four years ago and I can't believe we're already buying our second house. What's more, I never thought I'd have a brand new house. Just imagine, everything is brand new, nothing is broken, everything is under warranty, and everything is just our style...oh the excitement.

This is the garage looking out into the driveway. It's a two car garage with decent space with a very large drive way. Adam and I counted and if you include the garage spaces, you can actually fit 6 or 7 cars in our driveway.


Here's the front of the house with no bricks yet.


Here is the house all bricked up. The builder selected the type and style of the bricks. I guess they wanted to stay with a specific pattern of bricks across the neighborhood. We did get to select the color of the door and the shutters.


Getting very close to move in!

new mexico!