Not quite a year ago, we moved into a new (to us) house. Any time we've moved, I've found that it really takes about a year to figure out where I REALLY want things and who I REALLY want in each room, etc. Well, I've finally figured it out for this house. =D
Architecturally speaking, this house drives DH & I batty! Weird layouts, awkward spaces, a lot of "what was the purpose of this?" types of things. It's in disrepair after years of being a tenant property as well. The banister is broken in a couple of places, and wobbles about 8 inches in either direction. Tiles are broken, carpet bleached in some spots and stained in others, kitchen cabinet doors randomly fall off when you open them, drafts around the doors, broken light fixtures, carpet in the only dining area in the house, and the basement.......well, a previous tenant decided they'd "remodel". What that really means is that they ripped out nearly all of the flooring in the basement and entirely gutted a bathroom and that's how it remains. Most people don't notice this stuff when they come in our home, not that I really care. My house is not who I am. It's only us who notice most of it because, well......we live here. lol Now, don't get me wrong.....I'm not complaining. It's a large home, approximately 5000 sf, and we have 1.17 acres. PERFECT for raising 5 (soon to be 6) sons. Is it our dream house? Certainly not! I have THAT floor plan on Pinterest along with a billion ideas for how I want to build and decorate it. But that's another conversation. (Sorry about the tangent.) Financially, we had a few really rough years in California before we left, so our credit wasn't exactly in our favor when we were looking for a new house. We were sure we'd have to rent for a few years, but God was smiling on us and we were able to get into this house because we took it "As is" and it's owner-financed. So we get to own it, and we get to fix it up. We'll take all the disrepair and awkwardness because of a few things:
1 - The yard is AWESOME!!!!! Anywhere they skimped on the details IN the house, they made up for in the landscaping. It's in need of a few years of TLC, too, but nothing like the house. I can rebuild a gutted bathroom in about a week and have it look fabulous! I can't plant a dozen fruit trees and have them mature and producing more fruit than I keep up with in 5 years! The front lawn is HUGE! We play dodge-ball, football, you can realistically even play baseball out there. There's a large triangle-shaped portion that's native vegetation (ie sagebrush and wildflowers) that will be perfect for when we're finally able to fence it and get some chickens again. There were 2 playsets already here and we brought another one with us. We have our own playground! lol
2 - The garage is huge! It's an over-sized 3-car garage, so there's plenty of room for all of hubby's tools, our 3 vehicles and room for building the myriad of wood projects you'll get to see.
3 - The kitchen is huge! Homeschooling 5 boys requires a lot of kitchen. We have a lot of kitchen now. Lots of kitchen = happy mama!
4 - There are lots of rooms! Right now we have it planned out with 4 bedrooms for kiddos, 1 bedroom for us, an office for Hubby, a sewing room for me and my sewing business, an Entertainments room, a Living Room (someday a formal dining, if we decide to go that route), a music room, family dining room/aka homeschool room, family room, 2 laundry rooms (one is a closet, one is 9' x 12'), and 5 bathrooms, and 3 large storage rooms. Phew! Lots to clean, but enough room that everyone has somewhere to escape to when they need some space. That's a whole lot more than we had in our last home at about 1700 sf.
5 - We love the area. We have beautiful views from all sides, we don't get an over-abundance of snow, we have plenty of wildlife - great to watch, not so great for my garden this Summer - the Wintertime smog inversion is slightly lower in elevation than we are, so we have clear skies all Winter.
6 - We have great neighbors. This particular neighborhood is THE first neighborhood in this particular community and a lot of the originals are still here. So we have a great mix of older and younger.
We've got a lot up our sleeves right now, so stay tuned!
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