When we moved to Midland it was a bit of a shock to the system. I went to Texas Tech so I expected Midland to be like Lubbock...oh no. When we came out here to do our house hunting trip we were shocked at how small Midland is - you can get from the north to south side of town in 15-20 minutes. We are less than 10 minutes from our offices which is awesome considering I had a 30-40 minute commute to go ten miles back in DFW. The only downside to Midland is that everyone is out here so for a small town there are way too many people - you can wait up to two hours to get a table somewhere for dinner. Even still, I think moving out here was the right decision for us given the options presented.
When we lived in Dallas we lived in a 10 year old home, 3,000 sq ft, 4 bed/2.5 bath with a game room and an office, updated and great natural light. Real estate in Midland is extremely expensive - you are talking upwards of $140/sq ft even for homes that are not new construction. Our house in Dallas could have easily gone for $500k out here so that was out of the question for our budget. We looked at close to 30 houses, made offers on 5 and finally ended up with the one we have now. It was built in 1980, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and after living in it for a few weeks...it has not been taken care of very well. This house is going to require a full renovation - upgrading everything, paint, scraping the popcorn, new bathrooms/kitchen, the works! One of the movers who did our move out here was part of the crew that unloaded our stuff in Midland and he said "Woah! Major downgrade." Yeah true but the space has potential and it is livable for now. We are excited to make this place a home and take care of it for a change. We are the 5th to 6th owners of this home.
I started this blog to update our family and friends on our progress and to document it for ourselves. We have never really done any kind of big renovations like this house needs so it's excited but scary all at the same time.
Have you ever done any kind of renovations? I love reading home/DIY blogs so we are hoping to do some DIY and utilize contractors for the big stuff - we know our limits!
