Hi everyone. Instead of the usual Tuesday Tips, I thought I’d just quickly share some news. For the most part, I try to keep our personal lives out of the blog. However, I think it may affect A La Modern, our thrifting activities and how much time we can devote to posts.

We’re moving!

We just closed escrow on the house today – I’d been waiting to say anything about it because we wanted to be sure.

It’s a little bit of a complicated situation, but in essence – we’ve purchased my late grandmother’s house. I realize that for a lot of folks, moving is not such a big deal. However, I’ve only ever lived in two houses my entire life (not counting college dorms/apartments). We’ve accumulated a ton of stuff over the last decade+ at our current house, so it’s not going to be a quick move. And hence – I’m thinking that we’re going to need to devote less time to the shop, at least in the near future. Such is the benefit of working for yourself as a vintage reseller. =)

Grandma’s house was built in the 50s, but it’s not the midcentury modern marvel that some of you might think we would opt for. It’s definitely not perfect. However, it’s a fairly nice house with a decent view – and we felt like it was an opportunity that was difficult to pass up. (I had some other pics of some interesting pieces of vintage decor, but I don’t have the time to put them all up right now.)

Also, I think some of you may know this, but this is going to be our SECOND house. And when I say second house – I mean that we are nearly done paying off our current house. AND we’re going to keep it and rent it out. AND we’re not yet 40 years old…

I don’t usually toot my horn too much – but we’re pretty proud of that accomplishment. I don’t know of too many of others our age in that situation. And if I may get up on a platform for a bit… the road to paying off our current house has not been completely smooth. We went through some rougher times (some really rough times when I was laid off from a tech job), and it was difficult when everyone and their mom was refinancing, borrowing like crazy and living the good life. Well – you all know how THAT went down…

We remained conservative and stuck to our guns when everyone said we should do it differently. I’ll admit that we were pretty lucky at having purchased our house when both the price and interest rate was “reasonable”. However, we could’ve easily went in any number of other directions at the time.

I won’t keep going on and on. But what I want to say to everyone, is this: Follow your own path. I think this applies not only to buying houses – but life in general, jobs, goals, family, etc. I mean, you shouldn’t be completely foolhardy. Listen to advice, but keep your own vision in mind and when opportunity arises…

I’m going to be the first to say that I sometimes fall victim to inactivity, or I’ll end up going with the “popular” view. I also think that sometimes we’re a bit too conservative with finances – but it’s just the way we are. That’s why this move is going to be such a big deal for us. It’s going to be tough (especially until we completely pay off the current house), and we’ll have to juggle the finances quite a bit and save more, but we’re really looking forward to it.

I’m heading over to work on the new house right now – we’ll probably keep up the posting on the blog at least once a week. But if you don’t hear from us – well, you know what we’re working on! =)