How We Met Our House

What a fun party!!  I definitely want to play!!

 (and please excuse the mess of the blog - I JUST decided to redo it)

It's no secret that we have moved every year we have been married (this coming Memorial Day Weekend marks our fourth anniversary) - so we've lived in A LOT of houses, though we've only bought 3.  I guess we get itchy, who knows.  This year will be different though - no moving for us.  This will be the house that I finally have draperies made and the kitchen will be just right.

In 2008 we had bought the Dream House.  Loved it.  It was the perfect humongous, pain to clean, beautiful house - where we were supposed to live forever and raise children in.  Only problem - we ended up deciding to have children earlier than "our plan" and then on top of that I got laid off.  So - bye bye Dream House.

We had looked at renting, but with two large dogs, a cat, and  a baby on the way, the options were slim.  Either the rent was cheap but the neighborhood was scary, they didn't allow dogs over 30 lbs (ours are 50 & 75), or the rent was too expensive.  Plus, after owning two homes, we didn't know how we would feel about renting again.  Not having something be OURS would be quite the change.

 

So we got our realtor to find us some houses to see in the piddliest of price ranges I never thought we would have to look at.  And turns out - they weren't bad houses - just, well, different.  (and disappointing...)  I thought we would never find a house and we were definitely running out of time - closing, baby, etc.

One Sunday, Sam & I just started driving around and came up on the corner of 17th & 35th and I thought I spied a sign up in the ivy.  (why they thought THAT was a good idea...?!)  Anyhow - we hurried home, looked it up, and called Renee.  It was $20,000 more than we wanted to spend but the mortgage would still be totally manageable.  (we had purposely set a VERY low limit)

When we walked in - it was perfect.  Mostly.  I hated the steep driveway, the trim & roof color, the crazy big texture on the walls, the parquet floor in the dining room, the nasty 50's kitchen, the bathroom made me sick, and the carpet in the office - yuck.  And the yards were untended, messy, and full of weeds.

But in spite of all that - it was perfect.

The front door opened into a large (much larger than it looks from the outside) living room that is perfectly situated to not have to deal with any awkward door openings and then there are french doors to the dining room.  Swing door to the kitchen - which has plenty of storage & cabinets and the cutest vintagey stove/oven that still works perfectly!  There's a small hallway that has both bedrooms & bathroom off of it and it's perfect.  I love that we are only 15 feet from pepito and sharing one bathroom is no big deal to us at all.

The office is kinda weird - we did have to move a door opening to the laundry area and we removed a very strange and un-airconditioned half bath because it just didn't make sense - but it definitely works now that we've rearranged it a dozen times.

We are the happiest we've ever been in this house, even though it's the smallest house we've ever owned - a mere 1500 sq ft, but it's perfect for us.  The layout and flow of the house is perfection - which is what is truly most important to us.  I know that here we can resist the itch to move for SEVERAL years.