We're Moving!

This blog has become many things over the years, but it began as a place for me to share our newlywed nest with my family living a province away. From the start, it's been about making a home with a small budget, DIYs, thrift finds, and making our Montreal flat truly ours. From that initial rental, where we brought baby Lily home from the hospital, to our current home which we bought 11 years ago when I was pregnant with Oli, I've loved documenting where we call home. And now there will be a new space to fill the pages of this blog and our hearts. Yes, we're moving!

In front of our new home! 

After almost 11 years in our tiny condo, we are thrilled to be moving to a larger home in our neighbourhood! We've been so happy in our current home and it will be emotionally hard to leave. So many memories have been made here. But at the same time, we're ready. Our three kids, ages 8, 10, and 11 have shared one bedroom for their entire lives. We have never been able to offer our overnight guests more than our couch for the night, and have been limited in a lot of ways in this small space. That said, I am so grateful for the 11 years in a quite small condo, as it's taught me so much and really shaped our family culture and values toward minimalism and contentment. 

We started looking for a new home in 2021, though I'd regularly been browsing MLS for years prior to seriously looking. For us, our non-negotiables were three bedrooms, some sort of office space for Brad, who works from home, and staying in our neighbourhood, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. Anything else was negotiable. Old homes, modern builds, triplexes, single-dwelling, sky rise buildings... anything was a possibility so long as we had one more bedroom than we have now and could stay in our beloved neighbourhood. The challenge being that Le Plateau is not known for spacious homes, three-bedroom homes, or affordable homes. The vast majority of homes in our neighbourhood have 1-2 bedrooms and are well under 1,000 square feet. It's a densely populated area with homes packed in like sardines, which coincidentally is one of the things we love about living here! The community, the vibe, the architecture... It's all so lovable. But house hunting here is tough. 

We were fortunate to buy our current home, which has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and is 1,000 square feet, over a decade ago. Buying back then meant that house prices were much more affordable, so going on to our second home was less intimidating, having that equity from our first place. But still, we were looking for months before we found anything in our budget with our non-negotiables. We had a lot of homes that felt right and fell through our fingers, some at the very last minute. Our hearts were broken more than once, especially one place where we had an accepted offer and the sale was nullified by the City after it was discovered that the seller had done illegal work and the home wasn't to code to sell. 

So what's our new place like?! You may have seen the video tour on Instagram, but I'll explain more in detail soon. The funny thing is that we'd seen our new home on MLS during our many searches, but never seriously considered it. For one, it needs a lot of work. The back porch is also shared with many neighbours, so there isn't much privacy, which was a hard pill to swallow since we have a quite large back balcony in our current condo. Now those elements don't bother us, as there is a large front porch and we have a great team working with us to renovate it, but at the time, it felt impossible. After losing the home where we had the accepted offer Brad suggested we circle back to what is now our new home. We couldn't really remember why we were so against it earlier and decided to visit. 

It was so bright! So many windows! And really large for our neighbourhood! Plus there was a possibility of finishing our portion of the basement, giving us even more space! But most importantly, it's in the heart of our neighbourhood and has enough bedrooms and office space. When we inquired we also found out that not a single offer had been put on the home. This is likely due to the fact that the market isn't as hot for larger homes in need of a lot of repair. During the pandemic many families left the city, and since our home is part of a triplex, it can't be used as an Airbnb according to the bylaws. Thus, the home of our dreams was untouched on the market and we ended up getting it for under asking price. I still can't believe it. It really feels like God saved it for us. 

I can't wait to share the before pictures and all of our plans for the home with you!