House Update II
This morning Aaron and I visited an appliance warehouse to pick out our kitchen appliances. The front of the showroom was filled with Viking ranges and SubZero refrigerators; floor to ceiling wine coolers and showroom kitchens you’d want to live in forever.
Our salesman met us up front and led us aaaaaaall the way to a little back room, for Average Janes and Joes like us.
But that’s okay, because picking out brand new appliances and the most beautiful fridge I’ve ever owned was a thrilling experience. We decided to go with a double wall oven, and my husband just doesn’t even know how handy that is going to be when we host Thanksgiving this year.
It’s a real grown up house. I cannot wait to move. We’ve done pretty well in this little place the past 21 months, but knowing that our forever house is only a few months away makes the imperfect things about this place harder to deal with. Aaron keeps saying that he’s going to keep groping around in the dark in our new closet and that we’re still going to brush our teeth over the same sink and fight over who gets to hit snooze and who HAS to get up and shower in order for us to get to work on time.
After we left the appliance store, Aaron went to work and I drove by the lot. There were people working so I didn’t get out, instead opting to creepily idle on the street and take pictures from my car with my phone.
There are two stories! And a garage!
It won’t be long now!
Four Walls, But No Roof. Yet.
This weekend our Realtor called us to ask if we’d been by the lot yet, as he’d just been by and there had been a lot of progress. So yesterday afternoon, we drove over to check it out. When we turned the corner and saw actual walls, well, there was squealing. (Just by me. Maybe.)
The first floor is framed. The garage will be on the left (from this view). It looks small to me without it!
The great room with the fireplace framed out in the corner:
Aaron on the stair landing:
The back of the house. There will be a walkout basement, so the cutout on the lower left will be sliding glass doors:
Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Now that the basement is dug and the framing has started, it will probably move pretty rapidly the next two months. We’ve made most of our selections, so the next steps with be an electric walk thru with the electrian (to discuss outlet placement and other things I don’t know about yet!) and a cabinet walk thru with the cabinet maker. Our builder does all custom cabinetry, so we’ll be able to actually say where we want the microwave to go or which drawer to use for the garbage pullout et cetera.
It is definitely all feeling real now!
Dante Forgot About This Circle
Aaron and I have been actively househunting since late summer. It’s not a lot of fun.
I looked at probably 20-30 houses before I bought my place in Atlanta, and I thought that was tough. But having to take a whole other person’s taste and opinions into account, uff da. There have been places I loved that he’s nixed because of what I might consider a minor factor. There have been houses he’s been excited about that I’ve had to axe. In all of this there’s only been one property that we both had the this-is-it feeling about, and it went for more than asking price in about 48 hours on the market. (Yes, in this economy.)
We’ve looked at older homes, newer homes, small towns, lakefront, suburban and urban neighborhoods. We have looked — literally — from west of Minneapolis all the way over to the Wisconsin border. I guess you could say we’re all over the map with what we’re looking for.
And that is part of the problem. Every time I feel like we’re zeroing in on what we’re looking for, something else comes up. Well maybe new construction wouldn’t be so bad. Well maybe we can afford a little more. (Well, maybe we can’t.)
I know we’ll find something eventually, and it doesn’t have to be our dream house, it just has to be a nice house that we can comfortably afford that we’ll enjoy living in. (And that can accommodate four dogs, so small lot, no fence houses are out straight off.)
But even with the glut of properties for sale, tonight at least anyway, it feels like a large order.
Houseaversary II
You know the second year of homeownership is a lot less stressful than the first when your second anniversary of ownership comes and goes before you even remember.
Aside from a major plumbing issue back in December and an adventure with a resident rat in the fall, the past 12 months have been pretty smooth, house wise. My county and city taxes were drastically reduced (thanks Homestead exemption!), and because of that my monthly escrow payment dropped a whole $12. (Which covers Netflix, I guess!)
I’ve grown to love my little ramshackle house, sloping floor and jungle backyard included. Two more houses on my street have been renovated and the former rental property next door was recently purchased by a fabulous guy who loves landscaping. The yard already looks 100 percent improved. As for my own yard, the work my mom did last summer means I have less jungle to prune back and I have a brand new lawnmower that will hopefully start for every mow. (The lesson here is: don’t buy the $99 model at Wal-Mart if you want it to last more than two summers.)
In a few months the government will make a decision about the future of the area Fort they’re closing, which if they do what they say they’re going to do, will be huge for the little old ITP municipality in which I reside.
Things are looking up on the South side, and even though there have been moments (and weeks and days) when I thought I made a terrible financial decision, I think it’s going to be okay.
Daddy, do
My dad is coming down at the end of the month to help me out with a few house projects, and I’m trying to figure out exactly the best way to put him to work! A lot of what’s left to be done to the house is cosmetic – painting the bedrooms, replacing the dining room light fixture – that kind of stuff.
The main reason for his visit is to wash and seal the deck, something that had never even entered my thoughts until he was here at Thanksgiving and insisted that it be done. But how else to take advantage of prime pops handyman time? Should we stick to the yard and attempt to clear out the jungle in the back? Should I get him to help me unstick some of the painted-shut windows? Or do we chuck it all and go see some shows and eat a lot of pizza?
J0shua did end up stopping by this week to fix my bathroom sink, and while he was here I took advantage and got him to change a few tricky lightbulbs. At one point he shook his head and said he didn’t get nearly the work done over here that he had planned (there were big plans to retile my bathroom and reglaze the tub – something I will NOT be attempting to do in one weekend with my dad).
I hadn’t seen J0shua since December when he came over to fix me dinner and give me a Christmas gift and I can honestly say that seeing him stirred up no feelings and no sense of loss. We were never right for each other – he just figured it out sooner than I did. It is weird sometimes though – because he acted as my agent and my broker, so many of my memories of him and our time together are connected to this house. My houseaversary would also have been a year since we got together and that’s weird that they’ll always be connected. Luckily, I don’t plan to stay in this house longterm. (But who knows? I could still be here in 2020 with eight dogs and squirrels as pets.)
But it feels good to be over all of that and to be at a place where the house now feels like MY project, not OUR project. He was a part of the beginning, but I get to write the remainder.
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Compassion
