OUR NEW HOME!!!
I guess I shouldn't jump the gun too much or jinx myself..... we put our application for this home today and are very confident that we will get it. There are some downsides to this house.... I will explain later, but it is a beautiful home inside and out, has a near-perfect layout for us and has a lot of extras that we love.
When you walk in the house, there is a living room on the left with a fireplace and a family room on the right. It is separated by an aisle of hardwood floor (the living and family rooms are carpet) leading to the dining room which sits behind the living room on the left. It is one big room, but defined by the flooring. There are ginormous vaulted ceilings in the living room and dining room. There is a bay window at the front of the house in the living room. In the dining room, there are beautiful french doors that lead out onto the back patio, which has an outdoor kitchen with a grill, a mini fridge and storage. It's an L shaped mini kitchen with a tiled counter top. There is a patio area for a table with a ceiling fan. The backyard is about half the size we have now, but I honestly can't remember when the last time we were in the backyard at this house.....? haha.
Back inside, next to the dining room is a walk through kitchen. Even though it's a walk through, they have utilized the space wonderfully and there are still four walls with cabinets and counter ops, making the space large. It has a small bar area, perfect for our two bar stools we have now. The counter tops are blue.... not my first choice, but it does match my current "blue" kitchen right now.... :) It has a double wall oven.... awesome! But the oven does need to be replaced. It is quite old. It may be an original to the house.... haha. But all the other appliances are brand new looking (they are 3-4 years old is all). There is no pantry, but they turned one of the closets into a pantry, but I think there are far enough cabinets that we may not need it as one....
The kitchen leads out to the hallway. At the end of the hall is the master bedroom. There are sliding glass doors that lead out to a private patio with a hot tub. There is a bathroom in the master suite that is pretty large with a separate shower, a garden tub and double sinks. There is also a walk in closet in the bedroom.
Next to the master bedroom is the laundry room that has a pocket door leading to a half bath. The laundry room is also a mud room that leads to the garage. It is not a large laundry room by any means, but it does have cabinets and good storage in there and I think it's going to work just fine.
Across from the laundry room is a closet. The "under the stairs" closet. They have turned this into a pantry + storage for their vacuum, broom, mop etc. I am hoping we won't need it as a pantry and can make it a coat closet, since there is not one downstairs. (They turned the coat closet in the family room into a media storage closet, housing all their DVD's and such).
Upstairs is two bedrooms. One of them is easily bigger than the size of BOTH KaeLee and Hannah's rooms put together! So I think they may just share this room and then we will use the other "normal" size room as an office. There are a couple of closets in the hallways upstairs for linens and such and a bathroom upstairs. The downfall is that the bathroom upstairs does not have a tub and isn't too big. It only has a shower and one sink with little counter space. So the girls will have to take a bath in the master bath in the garden tub. This would be okay, but a garden tub is tough to give babies baths is because you have to reach so far over and washing them is quite the back-breaker! (speaking from experience!) We are contemplating asking the owners if they mind that we put in a tub/shower combo upstairs instead of the stand alone shower. It would be quite the task because we would most likely have to move the location of the toilet too, but it would be worth it! And then it would be considered a "full" bath instead of a .75 bath, so really, we would only be increasing the value of the house!
That bathroom is really the only downside of the house. Sure, there other little things we would do a bit different, but overall, it really is the perfect house for us!
The owner is a nice older lady. She said the she and her husband retired early and they bought that house with the intention of retiring there. But then her son moved to southern california and her daughter to Illinois, and her her husband insisted that he has to live somewhere where his grand kids were. So he wanted to move to either place and they chose Illinois. He is already there, waiting for her to sell the house and move. But the house has been on the market since 2008 and has not sold yet, so they have decided to rent it out.
So another plus of this house is that if we love it, we can also purchase it if we wanted to!
The downside of this house is the availability of it. We are not really sure yet when it will be available. The lady goes to the doctor today to schedule surgery to have her gal bladder removed. Then there are 2-3 weeks of recovery and then they will move out for good. So, depending on when her surgery is, they think the available move in date will either be March 1st or April 1st. March 1st we can deal with, but April 1st is a lot later than we wanted. We were hoping to be completely moved in and unpacked by March 1st, so this is a sacrifice we are going to have to figure out. We have a lot of options, but none of them are "ideal". Shawn could commute, or we could work a 3 or 4 day week up there and just stay up there while he does, or we could move into a different place for a month and live out of boxes..... so we are not sure WHAT is going to happen as of right now, but we really feel like this is the house for us and we are getting a GREAT deal on it as well!! I don't want to tell the owners this, but they could get $200-300 more a month for this house if they wanted! But my lips are sealed because then it wouldn't be in our budget..... and we are stretching it as it is....!
On the way to Wenatchee yesterday, we stopped for gas and I saw a penny on the ground. I hardly ever pick up pennies because I don't really believe in the "good luck" thing, and usually just leave it for someone else, but I happened to pick it up this time. I looked at it and gasped! It was the year 1984!! My birth year! Now, when does THAT ever happen?!?! So I knew that we were going to be lucky that day and find the house that were supposed to live in!
Anyway, I better get going, Hannah is a whinning machine this morning and I believe is ready for an early nap!! So I will try to keep you all updated on this house and will be back soon!
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