A note from 2026: This post combines a series of updates I originally wrote on adamsooley.ca in early 2014 and restored from archive.org while we were selling our first house in Riverside South. I've cleaned them up and brought them together into one story, but the events and thoughts are from those original posts.
Out with the old, in with the old?
After eight years in our house, we've decided it's time for a change.
When we bought this place in Riverside South back in 2006, it was our first house. A lot has changed since then.
Our family has grown, we're expecting another baby in May, and we've reached the point where we need more room.
So we've decided we're going to sell.
And, because apparently simply buying and selling a house isn't enough work, I'm going to document the entire thing here.
The plan is to sell our current house and find something that gives our growing family a little more space.
First up?
Figuring out exactly what we need to do to get this place ready to sell.
Step one has begun
The first real step is underway.
We've selected our realtor and started preparing the house to go on the market.
And when you actually start looking at your house through the eyes of someone who might buy it, you suddenly notice every little thing you've been perfectly happy ignoring while living there.
There are things to clean.
Things to fix.
Things to move.
And things that apparently shouldn't be sitting where they've been sitting for years.
The goal now is to get everything ready so we can put the house up for sale and see what happens.
It's exciting.
It's also a little strange preparing a house you've lived in for eight years so somebody else can picture themselves living in it.
House for sale
Well, it's official.
The sign is up.
Our house is for sale.
After all the cleaning, organizing and getting things ready, we've reached the point where strangers can now wander through our house and decide whether they like it enough to buy it.
Nothing weird about that.
Now comes the fun part.
Waiting.
Just past one week
We've now been on the market for a little over a week.
So far we've had an open house and four private showings.
But no offers.
Yet.
It's still early, and we're getting people through the house, so that's encouraging.
Of course, every showing also means making sure the house looks good, getting everything cleaned up and getting ourselves out of there while someone walks around deciding whether our house should become their house.
Then you wait for feedback.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Selling a house is apparently an excellent way to learn patience.
The house is sold
And just like that, we're onto the next step.
A little more than two weeks after putting our Riverside South house on the market, it sold.
After eight years, this chapter is coming to an end.
This was our first house.
It's where we started building our life together and where our family started growing.
But with another baby arriving in May, it was time for more room and something that worked better for where our family was heading.
Now that the selling part is done, we get to move onto the considerably less stressful task of finding another house.
I'm sure that'll be easy.
Looking back from 2026
Of course, I know how the story ends now.
We found the next house and moved to Greely in 2014.
At the time these posts were written, though, none of that had happened yet. We were simply trying to sell our first house while getting ready for another baby and figuring out what came next.
That Greely house would become another pretty important chapter for us.
It's where the kids grew, where I whitewashed the brick wall that eventually became another post on this site, and where plenty of other family stories happened over the years.
Then, in 2021, we'd move again — still in Greely — into the house we're in today.
Looking back, I'm glad I wrote these little updates as everything was happening.
Individually they weren't huge blog posts. One was basically the sign is up, another was still no offers, and then finally it's sold.
But put together more than twelve years later, they document the end of our first house and the beginning of the next part of our family's story.
Which is really one of the reasons I've kept adamsooley.ca around all these years.
Sometimes the boring little updates turn out to be the ones worth keeping.
