Cherry Cobbler

Design love.

A huge part of the Salzwedel abode. We love...wait...are obsessed with design and real estate. Talk about shared passion - Nick and I have it BAD. We count down the days to Design Star, Flipping Out with Jeff Lewis, Flip this House (lovveee Armando), Million Dollar whatever and could watch HGTV for hours. I mean seriously - the other day HGTV was featuring a Property Brothers marathon and I happened to catch it. I DVR'd 8 episodes. When Nick got home from work I told him about my amazing catch and you would have thought it was Christmas. "ALL RIGHT BABBEEE" is what he said followed by immediately telling me he was skipping his run (he is getting ready for the Spokane to Sandpoint run) so we could watch it all night. We started at 7:30, after Cruz hit the hay, and finally closed our eyes at 11. Ya, totally how we roll.

Beside the fact we love TV we also take our passion for design and real estate on the road. Often we will be driving through town and one of us will go -

"Hey wanna go to Home Depot and look at appliances?"

"Hey wanna go to Carpet One and look for hard wood flooring?"

"Hey let's go to Dania and see what they have."

Mind you, we don't need appliances, wood flooring or furniture.

We also are very prone to busting into an open house and creating fake professions and fake names cause CLEARLY we just want to snoop and are obsessed with finding fun, new, exciting real estate.

Ashley - Ohhhh open house, turn here.

Nick - Alright

Ashley - We need to come up with fake names and fake jobs. My name is Lola. What's your?

Nick- Mike??

Ashley - Good one. What is your job? I am a beauty pageant producer.

Nick - I'll be a landscape architect.

Ashley - Okay great. If they ask, let's tell them we just sold our house and are looking for something 'exactly like this'. We have 3 kids and 3 dogs and just moved here from Oregon. Oh you can tell them we have been married for 15 years too if you want.

Nick - Ohhh babeee. Fiiinnee.

Ashley - Remember to call me Lola, Mike.

Nick - (Chuckle)

It always ends up that I make chummy with the Realtor and make him or her think I am so interested I will talk my husband into making an offer 200k over asking. It's pretty great.

I might go as far as to call us house flippers - you see, we have lived in 3 houses in the short 4 3/4 years we have been married. It all started with a sweet bungalow we lived in on the South Hill. The previous owners did an okay job at updating parts but we have a very particular style and thought - hey let's do the work ourselves to turn it into a house we love. So for the next year and a half we gutted the kitchen, bathroom and totally remodeled the master addition. Can I just tell you how immensely proud of Nick I am?!?!?! He did it all himself learning tons along the way.

{Back story: His dad is a genius carpenter/contractor/remodel-er/DIY-er. He can honestly do anything. I once asked Nick if he and his dad could do a master bedroom and bathroom addition in a weekend. Nick snorted and told me I was absurd. I was serious. His dad is crazzzyy good. While Nick didn't ever care to learn it when he was young and in the house, it totally rubbed off on him. He's got mad natural talent - totally passed down from dearest dad. Thanks Bob! }

Next project, an outdated condo in Browne's Addition. Nick literally took the WHOLE thing to the studs and started over. The summer it took for Nick to complete the project was hell. I never saw him or we worked every minute of every day we were not at our JOBS. Not fun. After it was done we were ready to move on. We lived in it a year, sold it for a pretty fantastic profit and said okay maybe it is time to buy new and take a break.

Next house - a new townhouse in Liberty Lake. Who were we kidding?!?! Buying new...pshhhh. The second we moved in we painted the whole house, ripped up the brand new carpet to install new wood floors, painted the kitchen cabinets and added a couple of kick-a wallpaper walls. Yeah - new didn't work out so well for us.

This brings us to current day. 2 years in and we are OVER IT. Time to continue to build our empire and move on and let me tell you we have found the most PERFECT next house.

I mean this house by anyone else's standards would be considered a money pit, old, smelly, an absolute no-way-ever, and outdated - It totally has pink siding and avocado bathrooms - but this thing is SCREAMING with potential. Ohhh baby..the second Nick and I get our hands on this property, its over. Could even be a house I actually get emotionally connected to and not ever want to leave.

Papers have been signed but we don't close for another 90 days. We have a lot work to do in order to get the keys considering we are renting out our town home and lending rules are super strict when considering rental property. BUT - we are determined, willing to make every sacrifice to secure this puppy and make her beautiful. I can't wait to take pictures and detail the transformation and all of our inspiration along the way!

In the meantime I will leave you with one of my favorite features...a sweet cherry tree. After eating 36 cherries last night (we like to visit the house daily and pretend we already live there, talking out our grand plans) and ranting for 15 minutes how I am going to make cherry cobbler for him every night, Nick so lovingly told me he was cutting it to shreds to make room for the new garage. SAD.