Our 4 dogs & the house we bought for them!

So I figured I'd give you a little background on me and my family of dogs.  My husband and I met at a local dog park (yes it happens!) we both had two dogs.  I had Rai (Weim) and Baily or Bai as we call her (Anatolian Shepherd) and J had Macie (Small Pit) and Halo (Lab mix).  We started dating and juggling 4 dogs between our two townhouses we owned, no small feat!  I was was working full time as a consultant and getting my MBA full time as well.  We got engaged at Christmas 2009 about 8 months after we started dating.  We were older (36/37) so I think we knew what we were looking for...not necessarily 4 dogs! Introducing Rai, Bai, Macie and Halo our children:-)

 Rai

 Macie

 Bai

 Halo

We moved into J's large townhouse, rented my townhouse but J's had no backyard...ugh!  4 young dogs, two working adults lets just say we needed to get a house with a yard!  We got married, got things in order to put J's house on the market and started looking for a house with a yard.  Meanwhile I finished MBA school and my company downsized!  Yes I think we worked through all of the major life stressors in the 1st 6 months of our marriage!

We had a small house budget for the DC Metro area and wanted to stay close into the city vs. commuting from the suburbs.  We put J's house on the market and it went under contract the 1st weekend and we had 45 days to find a new home!  Pressure :-)  We put in a couple offers and lost those houses, ugh.  We went to see our current house early on in our search and I literally walked in the door and walked out.  I don't think I even went upstairs it stunk, it was dark and choppy...no..no..no! "But the yard" J kept saying. We kept looking, lost another house we LOVED and went back to the yucky house....this time it was cleared out so it was a little better but I wasn't sold except for the yard.  It was amazing...not pretty but BIG, a half acre 6 miles from D.C.!  So we ended up buying the serious fixer upper, living in the scary basement for 4 months and gutting the house all the way to the studs....I'll share more in my next post, for now here are a couple pics of the house when we bought it.  You'll have to check back tomorrow to see what we did to it!

This is the house when we bought it (ugh!)

 This is the 300 sq ft basement we lived in for 4 months

 And this is the reason we bought the house...the yard for the dogs :-) and this is only a third of the yard!

Check back tomorrow to see what we did with the house :-)