Early last spring we decided to put our well-loved house on the market. It has two bedrooms, one bathroom, and our family of six (kids ages 5, 4, 2, 1) had outgrown it.
After a few months for sale by owner and 83 days with my husband as our realtor, we sold our house!!! And then I was freaking out.
We looked at about 50 houses in 6 different towns. We knew we wanted to be closer to my husband's work, which is now 50 minutes away. But the more we looked really close to his work (and closer to my family), the more frustrating it was. My standards are very low. But houses were either too small, the lot was too small, the home was more than we could afford, it needed way too much work, or it was on a BUSY road (there were lots of houses on busy roads!!!).
After scouring the MLS and getting really annoyed, we wondered if there were towns we were overlooking. We did a quick Google maps search and found a town we hadn't looked in, 15 minutes closer to his work. We made a list to look at the next day, which is really easy to do when your husband is a realtor.
(spoiler alert)
Our new house was the first house we looked at that day.
The more we walked through the house, the more I felt that this house was just TOO nice for us! It had everything we were looking for and things (like granite countertops) we didn't even need.
It is light gray, not white, so I hope you'll forgive me cause I'm not changing my blog name. But I do plan on adding some black shutters for those huge windows. 🙂
A white picket fence could be fun after the landscaping gets a little bit of a cleanup.
I love the details! My dad (a carpenter) and the inspector both thought this was a great, well taken care of house.
From this picture you can get an idea of the upstairs and basement. The upstairs has two large bedrooms (one girl room and one boy room), a full bath, and a door to walk-in attic storage. Then the main floor, with two more bedrooms. Then, the full basement with windows that open to the outside. Half is finished, the other half for mechanicals and storage.
Here's a closer look at that upper deck right off of the kitchen and eating area, it's huge!
We would have settled for a third of an acre, maybe a quarter acre if the house was that good. We got .57 acres. 🙂 #onehappylady
Lily was so excited about that lower deck. "WE HAVE A STAGE!!!!" 🙂
A little bit of privacy. Not that we need it, more that our neighbors will need it from us. 😉
And room to play. Room for running and kicking a ball. Room for a swingset AND our trampoline (so many houses we've seen with yards that wouldn't fit even one of those).
Great family space, everything we wanted, plenty of room to play and grow, and nothing needed to be done right away?! I could not believe that we found this house after all of the frogs we kissed! Prayer and patience pay off, God does have a plan.