The New House!!

As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago Matt and I got completely fed up with renting this tiny, tiny house with its detached garage and lack of dining room. More than that, we were sick of not knowing what our future held. We were constantly on edge waiting for notification of a showing on our Charlotte house, counting the days until our lease ran out here, worried that our Charlotte house wouldn't sell in time. Preschools have their deadlines for applications coming up, and kindergartens are starting to host the open houses for next year's students. We couldn't deal with either one of those things because we had no idea where we'd be living. The life in limbo got too much for us, and we decided that we'd been living our life "on hold" for too long. So, we decided that come hell or high water, we were going to buy a house. Either we'd qualify for a mortgage (thank you Mom and Dad!) or we'd BEG someone with a vacant house to let us rent it from them pursuant to a contingent offer to buy. We drove our realtor crazy and scoured every single part of the city we'd want to live for anything we'd be willing to call home.

And we found it. In all it's 1960 ranch glory!

This house is NOTHING like our house in Charlotte, and I never would have imagined that I'd be willing to buy a "fixer upper," let alone be excited about it, but I AM! In fact, I'm ECSTATIC! Fortunately, the only fixing the house needs is cosmetic. Lots and LOTS of paint! But the bones are fantastic. It has almost 3000 square feet all together, including the unfinished storage. Four bedrooms and 2 baths upstairs, and a guest bedroom and bath downstairs. It has an exercise room and a couple of storage rooms, one that's already set up as a workshop for my carpenter-wannabe husband, and a big playroom and family room downstairs. All together it has 3 fireplaces, one of which has 2 compartments and is in the dining room/kitchen, so we can cook on it. It is on a quiet street on a huge lot, so I have lots of room and sun to garden my ass off. It's a short walk from a nature preserve with a nature center and playground and, in the other direction, a park with a lake. We close in a week and a half and having it painted before we move in on the 26th. And we have LOTS of room for visitors -- even more room than we did in Charlotte. So come on people!!