Diving into the Deep End: Our Ranch Renovation Begins

how we snapped up a small slice of Colorado and what we plan to do with it

The last 6 months have honestly been a blur. I’ve been meaning to keep notes, but as you can imagine things moved quickly and renovation on our house began immediately so that we could make it a bit more livable before we moved in. We like to say we jumped off the deep end.

What led us to the plunge? My husband and I have been married 6 years now and having some land has always been a dream of ours. We ended up in Colorado almost two years ago now and have completely fallen in love with everything this land has to offer. I remember saying last fall, as giddy as possible, after a leaf-peeping hike that "I am literally falling in love with Colorado." So we decided this is where we wanted to put down our roots.

That’s when I went "Zillow mad." I would write down listing prices and obsessively check back for months to see what they sold for. Then, one Saturday morning, I found a new listing that seemed like way more bang for our buck than I’d ever seen in my research. I showed this too-good-to-be-true listing to my husband, and it was the first listing he said we should try to go see. 4 hours later, we pulled in the driveway.

We found 16 acres and a house with a wrap-around porch built in the 70s. Really, things could’ve been worse. We expected them to get worse. But, somehow it was a seamless buy with no major red flags. We still had our work cut out for us, though; the place was overgrown everywhere you looked, proof of mice, seafoam green inside and outside, in desperate need of structural changes to update, and now it had new owners that have a whole lot of vision.

So, here we are, swimming in the deep end! Sometimes drowning, too! It has been six months into the renovation and one and a half months of living here full-time. Our priorities have been on getting the house to a comfortable, livable point—although we are still working with a makeshift kitchenette at the moment. We can’t wait to give this ranch house the update it deserves and start working the land to turn this into a true homestead. I’ll delve into the updates we’ve made in a future post, but wanted to get this first one shipped off so I can get back to my to-do list.

The nice thing about drowning (if there has to be one), has been the countless “life rafts” that have come our way. From family and friends willing to spend a weekend or more lending a hand, all the way to the Home Depot clerk giving me $80 off my chicken coop flooring, or the guy who pulled over with a fire extinguisher when the tractor blew up in my face. I can't wait to share it all and take the time to document our progress.

I’m no writer, by the way. Actually, I’m someone who has a hobby of having hobbies. I think that will suit our ranch life well. As for my husband, he is the handiest, most practical guy I know. You'll see how it all pieces together eventually.

KB