Simply Salvaged: Why We Decided to Sell Just After Finishing a Three Year Remodel

If you've been following along on Facebook, you know that my husband and I have been remodeling a house for the better part of the past 3 years.

It was our first home in Texas. When we bought the house, we never intended to stay. We did play around with the idea of staying on and off as we lived there. Especially after most of the work was coming to an end. The idea of ''no more projects'' sounded amazing. The idea of enjoying our hard work sounded spectacular. But that was never the real plan. We'd always intended to sell the house after a few years or rent it out and buy something else...

Earlier this week, I shared exactly what lead up to us selling our house. You can read all about that here but we decided to sell instead of rent because selling was more beneficial to us financially. Most American families have debt. My husband and I have been working for a long time to pay ours off. In fact, our journey to becoming debt free started just after we purchased this home. Although we'd made leaps and bounds to get out of debt and stay out of debt, we still had a long way to go. I could not stand the idea of going into another year with our debt. Being debt free took precedence over everything else financially. So we made our hard work pay off (no pun intended). We sold our house and paid off every penny of our debt. Have I mentioned that we also downsized when we moved? You can read a little about that here, but I will be sharing more about downsizing and minimizing later.

My husband and I were sitting on the couch and I was going from account to account paying off debt. Vehicles, cards, loans. We weren't in a situation where were in trouble with our debt, but it was a significant amount. Basically, we were very irresponsible in our early 20's and have been paying for it the past few years- literally.

I always imagined that when the ''debt free'' moment came, I would cry tears of joy. It's a moment I've been waiting for for years... but y'all, I was pissed. I was so mad at us. We'd worked 3 years on a house only to watch our hard earned equity disappear- and with nothing to show for all of the debt we had (and by the way, we didn't finance our renovations, that's why it took three years, haha!)

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW WE UPDATED OUR CABINETS FOR LESS THAN $700

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW WE COVERED OUR POPCORN WITH A DIY COFFERED STYLE CEILING

I was trying really hard to be joyful. I finally looked at my husband and said ''this is terrible!'' There were so many other things I would of loved to do with that money (like the next project house we bought which you can see a few pictures of here). My husband immediately spit out the dollar amount of debt that we started with 3 years ago when this journey to being debt free began. That is when the joy came. That is when I felt the liberation we had been working so hard for.

Click here to see the details of our guest bathroom update turned remodel

So that's the skinny on why we sold our house just after finishing a 3 year remodel and coincidentally, our 3 year journey to becoming debt free. God's timing is always perfect.

I'd love to hear what measures you have taken to pay off your debt!