We bought a 200 year old house

Well hey there! Man… it’s been a LONG time since I’ve written a blog post.

Like a long, long time. Like over three years. But yes, I’m still alive and well.

If you follow along on Instagram, you probably didn’t even know I was “gone”.

So much has changed since I posted regularly on my blog, so let’s do a bit of an update.

I have so, so many things to tell you… because honestly I feel like a completely different human since the last time I wrote a blog post. And we’ll go into all of it in another post, but today I wanna share our “new” old house. (If you count moving in 8 months ago as new?)

Welcome to The Enchanted Manor! Built in 1824, this house is *kinda* 200 years old. Now… if you’re not up to speed… let me catch you up.

In 2020, we decided that we wanted a change in life. I mean, didn’t we all decide that during the pandemic? But we actually acted on it.

In October 2020, we rented out the house on the creek, and moved to Huntsville, AL into an apartment to see if we liked living in the city.

We loved apartment living… and liked Huntsville so much that we decided to buy a house there. And we did! We bought a beautiful new build in a very charming neighborhood.

And within a year we regretted it, for several reasons. We LOVE working on our home, but if you’ve been reading a long time, you already know that. However, we didn’t realize just how much it meant to us until we literally had zero to work on.

Then there was the HOA. If you have never lived in one…. it’s tricky. There are positives and negatives to it, but we were not fans.

On top of that, the three years we lived in Huntsville were some of the fastest growth the city has ever known and it just got to be too much.

So almost 2 years after moving in, we decided to sell the house and move to a small town. But the caveat was that we wanted an old house. One that needed some work but was livable.

Our entire goal was a “Practical Magic house in a Stars Hollow town.”

And that’s exactly what we found. There were lots of twists and turns along the way, including a house we had an offer on but the contingency ran out on before ours sold.

But…. let’s get to the house! I wanna show you a peek inside and share a little bit about it.

This house was built in 1824 originally, however it has been added onto and renovated a couple of times throughout the last couple of centuries.

It started out with the living room area on both levels as the entire footprint of the house. In the late 1800s, someone built on an addition, but eventually that was removed to built the current one that is what you see today.

While it has extremely good bones, it needs a TON of updates. Including the kitchen, all the bathrooms, the plumbing and electrical. This house sat empty for eight long years, and it was on the market for five years before we bought it.

That’s a wild story that I tell over on the video on my Youtube Channel if you wanna check it out.

But this house… man we fell in love at first sight. Is it a victorian era home? No. But the energy here is just straight up magical. Which is why we lovingly call her The Enchanted Manor.

So yeah… we bought a 200 year old house. And I have never, EVER felt so at home in my entire life.

I get a lot of folks asking me why we sold my childhood home and moved from the creek. And the simple answer is that “You cannot heal in the place you were hurt.”

I had a pretty traumatic childhood, which I’ve been processing and going to pretty intense therapy for a couple of years now to heal. And in the process, I found myself.

I’ve lost a lot of things – and 120 pounds – along the way… but I have never been happier, healthier or felt more aligned in my entire life.

So…. I’m back. Back to blogging. Back to sharing my story, my life and the lessons I’ve learned. I’m so glad you’re still here and I cannot wait to show you how I’ve transformed my life and how we are transforming this beautiful home into something even more magical.

This blog is going to transform as well. Into more of a personal story about how I’m making my life magical and how I wanna share the magic with you.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for being you. And thanks for giving me the space to heal.

xoxo

gina