The House

Wowsers!  Has it really been a month since my last post?!?  Yikes.  I did not intend to take a month off of blogging, but this has been the summer-o-travel for us as well as the summer-o-hecticness with buying a house among other summer projects.  I will save all the travel stories for another post, but in honor of closing on our house this week, I thought I'd share a few pictures with you.  How does that sound?

Here's a side view: brick front with Hardeeplank siding.

It has a drive under garage, which is new (and weird) to us, but apparently they are quite common here.  While I'm used to only one type of garage (attached, where you just drive up the driveway and straight in), here we've looked at homes with drive unders, side drives, and the traditional front style.  The nice part about a drive under is you get half a basement with it because the garage portion only takes up half of the space in the basement.  Most homes around here are either built on a slab or on a crawl space, so it is a bit of a luxury to have a basement even if it's only 1/2 a one.  The basement will be our primary storage space.

The bad part about a drive under, and the reason we really didn't want a house with this, is that every time you come home, you have to walk up all those stairs from the garage to the main level.  When I think about carrying groceries and R, it gets to be a little overwhelming.  But it's free (forced) exercise, and there were a ton of other good points about the home, so this is one area where we had to give in a little bit to something that wasn't our top choice.

We do have a formal dining room! 

We've never had a formal dining space before, so it's sort of exciting to think about.  I can finally get the hutch I've been wanting for years but never had the space for.  I can't wait to display some of the fine china and special pieces my grandma has recently given me.  These were items that she had displayed in her hutch, so it will be extra special to display them in mine.  Plus, it'll be so nice to have the extra dining space for hosting guests in our home.  We always have large groups of people over, so I'm looking forward to hosting here.  As you can see, we do have some wallpaper that needs to come down and painting to take place.  I don't know what color yet, but we shall see.

The kitchen is also an area that will need a little work at some point.  We have a small breakfast nook overlooking several of the trees in the yard. 

All of the appliances are new as well as the tile floor, granite counter tops, and tile backsplash.  I don't know what to do about the cupboards and dark-trimmed windows though.  This is a sign of the home being built in the late 80s.  The whole upstairs has white trim and white windows everywhere and the main level has these dark wood windows, trim, and doors.  We could paint the windows and trim, but that seems like such a huge task with so much attention to detail.  We do plan to paint some of the dark wood trim in other places, and I suppose we could paint the cupboards or reface the doors.  I just don't have a vision for what to do, but we have time to figure that out.  I know I want to brighten things up a bit but am afraid of it not looking good if we just paint over it.

We have another whole list of items we want to fix or update- trees trimmed, some landscaping problems fixed, repairs on the roof, and so on.  Once we close, we have to figure out what needs to be done before we move in and what is less urgent and can wait awhile.  Thankfully, we have about 2 weeks after we get possession of the home before we need to be out of our rental home.  We could probably push it and be out sooner (We both want to be.  Wait until you hear out latest critter stories), but it's nice to have the extra time and not have to stress about moving quickly.

Our new home is 3.5 miles from our current rental home, so DH and I figure we can load both our cars up and make several trips over on our own before we rent a truck to move all of the big items.  Hopefully, that way we can organize the items we bring over little by little.  Our new home is just 3.1 miles from DH's work and church!  Still super close, but it won't compare to the 0.9 mile commute he's had from the rental!  He's gotten spoiled here.  I know of another blogger who moved 3.1 miles away from her sister (Patiently Waiting....Kinda).  My DH appreciates the 3.1 number as he is a runner too (3.1 miles = 5K).

Anyway, lots more going on that I hope I get time to blog about.  It's still so hard for me to believe we are moving yet again.  It feels like we've been moving since last fall, which I suppose we have been when you factor in prep time, moving, and living in temporary housing.  Even though it's just a local move, this place has been our home for the past 7 months.  It's the place where R learned to crawl and walk, and of course holds memories for us.  It makes me a little sad to think about leaving,
but I guess that's the sentimental person in me talking.  On to new and different things in our own home!