Verses and can a house be a home if...

Today's Verses

Genesis 20:1-22:24
Matthew 7:15-29
Psalm 9:1-12
Proverbs 2:16-22

I know I'm a few days behind on the verses, but I'm sure I can catch up a some point ; )

Genesis: I'm just not understanding what is going on here. Abe and Sarah are really brother and sister (from a different mother) or was he being figurative (different mother, God is our father). And I know that he was trying to protect himself, but keep giving your wife away to with another man everywhere you go? It's slightly ridiculous. 

Matt: How to get into heaven - eat good fruit.

Psalm: "Death of a Son" - sounds like a heavy metal band name

Proverbs: Prostitutes bad.

I want to talk about our house for a bit.

I love the idea of our house. It's brick, it's in a nice neighborhood, high vaulted ceilings, and it's a corner lot, two car garage, really nice landscaping (at least when we moved in). What's not to love about that. When we were looking for houses, this was our number one pick. Our number two house was bigger (much) with an upstairs and a library! But, it was in a cookie-cutter neighborhood that was one of the last built before the housing market crashed (you could tell by the vacant lot beside the house that still had the trash left from where they started but never finished the next house).  Our 2nd choice was nice, but we couldn't get over our surroundings. It also didn't have a garage. Our 1st choice (our house) was at the top of our range. Not out of it, but at the top. Our 2nd choice was in the very comfortable range. 

Kat and I felt a little rushed because we were starting on jobs in August, but we still had time to look around. But we didn't. We went with our first choice, thinking that we would have some time before we were ready to move out and upgrade. 

Now, 3.5 years later, we're feeling a little cramped. The house was built by an elderly couple with a little dog. No kids, and it was just to the two of them. We have a medium sized dog and a baby, plus the two of us and all our crap. Now, we are going to do some purging this summer (first summer we've had since college, yay grad school) and hopefully that will clear some space for us, but it's still going to feel cramped because that house really wasn't meant for three people (no matter how small the third person is). 

Here's the dilemma we are running into. We are paying too much for our mortgage (let's just say, we've consolidated or gotten ride of ever single bill we can, minus the cell phones, and we still aren't making it month to month). We haven't owned our house long enough to remortgage for a lower monthly payment. We still owe more on the house than we can sell if for now in the current market (we'll have to live in it another 5 years at least). It's not a sellers market, and I'm afraid it won't be ever again. 

I know enough people between my family, friends, and colleagues, to add on to our house. I just don't know if it's worth it. The amount of time it would take to build (codes and regs especially hampering the speediness of completion), the amount of money it would take to add, the stress of coming home every day to a "demolished" house, will adding on to the house increase the value to more than it's actually worth, would the remodeled house look to foreign in the neighborhood, making it harder to sell? Should we just suck it up and tough it out until Addison is older and we're ready to have another kid? I really don't think we'll ever get what we paid for it (ever), but if we stay in there long enough, we should be able to make some money and move into a better home.

The upside to building on to the house is that we would be able to put exactly what we want into the new part. That may not happen with purchasing a "new" house (all the cons listed above). Any way you look at it, it's stressful. It doesn't help that we have friends in the same profession as us that live in much nicer houses. WTF are we doing wrong! 

My childhood best friend's mom is a realtor and I've been talking with her, and there aren't a lot of options short of screwing our credit score. We're not so desperate that we need to do that. Hopefully the summer purge will make me feel a little less stressed and we can continue to "make it" until everything is in a better position.

Until next time, dear readers...