Our Pine Place
After finding out about Ara’s next military assignment to Pope Army Air Base in Fayetteville, North Carolina we began our house search this past spring. Initially we figured we would be renting a house again like we had done in all our prior moves. The housing market this summer proved to be extremely difficult (to put it lightly). We tried going down the rental avenue and kept coming up short or getting “ghosted” by contacts. We discovered people were offering several hundred dollars more than the rental price offered. Back to the drawing board, we decided to explore the avenue of buying a house—for the first time in our marriage.
After several months of scouring Zillow daily (hourly), a house hunting trip and making offers on six houses, our seventh offer was accepted. Whew! But that was just our first hurdle…!
We watched the movers pack up our household goods in Montgomery on June 19. Nora and I set off on our journey to stay with several friends along the way to Fayetteville as Ara stayed behind to finish with the movers. He set off with the cats on June 20, along with his Dad, to make the long day trip up to Fayetteville. Nora and I made our way there a few days after and we started our countdown for closing on our house that coming Thursday. We soon discovered there was a hang-up with our closing and there wasn’t a definitive end date in the problem getting resolved. We waited…and waited…and waited for the problem with our appraisal to get resolved. We stopped by the house several times while we awaited the closing—to check the mail and to pray over our new home. It was a special moment to sit on the steps and pray for our soon-to-be house and the memories that we would make there. We ended up being able to close on our house on July 1 and moved out of our hotel room! Then came the next problem…our household goods. Our items had to be put into storage since we had to wait so long in our hotel and the first available delivery date wasn’t until July 18. We did 18 LONG days of “camping” out in our new house. Thankfully we were able to borrow some air mattresses from several friends to outfit our house with a bed and some makeshift couches to have somewhere to sleep and lay on. We also made quite a few memories with picnic lunches and dinners on our dining room floor.
It was a glorious day when the big moving truck showed up with our household goods in late July. We were thankful to have Ara’s parents come out to help us move in and navigate Nora during the unpacking process. But not without some hiccups—three large boxes were missing from our shipment, a first time problem for us. Our two large stained glass windows from Germany and our large “Bartemes” name sign were missing—but thankfully were found a little over a month later! Greg also helped us do a little DIY to our laundry room. Since we had a little bit of time on our hands before our belongings arrived, I decided I wanted to brighten up the space. We took down the basic wire shelf, painted it white and replaced the flooring. It really livened up the space and we are working to finish it off with a wooden shelf and an industrial pipe for hanging clothes on the side wall. I also changed the front door color to a beautiful warm charcoal color—much more fitting than the blue color in our opinion!
We are absolutely loving our new home. Each home we live in, I love to come up with a nickname for the house and this one seemed fitting to be called Our Pine Place. There are a lot of great qualities to the house but the screened in porch quickly became our favorite room in the house this summer. I quickly secured some ferns and a few other plants—along with some great plant cuttings from a friend, and the space began to look like our green outdoor oasis. Greg (Ara’s Dad) helped to install a ceiling fan and that put the finishing touch on it for proper summer usage. Nora and I would eat breakfast out there every morning and the cats were living their best life. Newman especially, decided that he found himself the happiest when he was napping away the morning and afternoon on the porch couch.
Ara and I have lamented that this feels like the fastest we have every settled into a place, a home. It feels like we have been here much longer than six months. We have all celebrated a birthday here (well, except Riley who gets her turn in May) and hosted several friends and family members. The open concept in the kitchen, living room and dining room has made it the prime space to “run circles” around the first floor to the Nutcracker soundtrack (a favorite of Nora’s). One of my favorite things to do while playing with Nora or coloring at her color table—is to look outside our windows into our back yard and see pine trees for as far as I can see.
