Run away! I'm talking HOUSE!

Yes, we're buying a house, two miles from where we're renting, same town, same area code, and if you want the address ask me. For a photo walk-through with commentary, visit my facebook account, oh ye priviledged ones (the rest of you will just have to suffer or beg me for the contact info).

We don't close till the 29th of Feb., and there's always the possibility of "something" going wrong. But, really, the chances are slim that it will fall through, so if it does I'll know it's because it's just not meant to be. An assessor has to come through and make sure the house is valued what the current owners say it is for our loan to come through, but we're assuming that if it's valued lower, they'll just bring down the price, knowing that other people probably won't pay more considering the broad assortment of competing housing around here. We feel it's a good price already, and we bought with the idea of being able to pay the loan even without David's commissions.

We'll have to replace the roof within the first few years, and the owners are having an electrician check the electricity to make sure it's up to code (there was a handiman in the house, I guess). A couple gas leaks will be dealt with, and they are having someone in to clean the furnace and fix a gas leak there too. We know we're buying a fixer-upper, but most of the items are rather superficial. The foundation is good, the house is well built, and there is plenty of room for everything we wanted in a house, plus a little more. We're aware that furnaces and water-heaters can die, that roofs go bad, that mice sneak in when you're not looking, and many of the other warnings people always produce when you say you're buying your first house. Don't worry, we've done our best to get wiser people than us to check everything and give advice. Although, you can always give me more at the end of this post.

So... details... It's got four bedrooms. The downstairs room will be the den, however, at least till the girls are older. The downstairs bathroom is solid white tile from tiny 1" squares on the floor through the 3" square tiles on the ceiling. It will be a project one day! Upstairs, there's a tiny 1/2 bath. There is a common room on the second floor to which the doors of the bedrooms open. This will be the homeschool room. The basement can be finished, and has a walk-out door. The house is on a hill, so it's literally a walk-out, not up. It's got a nice yard for playing, fenced on two sides, and with a loose wire fence through a mishmash of bushes on the third, which I assume will be pretty impenetrable come summer.

We'll have the apartment for another month after purchase, so we'll take the time to clean, paint, and renovate a bit before moving in. Note that the timing of the following will stretch through the rest of the year or further. Paint happens right away, along with my kitchen counter and kitchen floors, beyond that it's a bit up in the air depending on how much David's commission will be in a couple months and how quickly we can finish the floors on the entire downstairs.

We're going to paint the kitchen cabinets fire-engine red (or some variation thereof). I've loved red cabinets ever since I saw an ultra-modern set of that color in a show-room. Of course, this won't be ultra-modern, which is much better anyway, since I'm not a very modern person. It will look very cool! And, as the counters now have gold starred laminate, I get new counters. (I was just going to live with them, but they offend David's eyes.) So we're going with a dark slate-like laminate and maybe a red sink. We're also going to re-floor the entire downstairs in some durable cherry-wood (? still discussing the color) laminate. (I don't like cleaning, so we want the house to survive me.) I'm just looking forward to getting to sweep instead of having to vacuum... which I despise due to the noise and having to lug a machine around with me. I grew up sweeping, and it's good enough for me. Come to think of it, I can get an industrial dust-mop! Hehehe.

In the living room we're making a library, as in a massive 10 foot windowseat in the front window with shelves below, a second windowseat just around the corner, and walls of shelving up to the ceiling all trimmed in on three walls. We found cheap plans online for what we like. We'll do fibreboard along with the smaller shelf lengths it enforces, and paint out the whole in white. The background wall will be a contrasting color. I'm going to buy wood games (to replace our current collection of cardboard) and use them as display items on the shelves when we're not playing them.(Decorative AND useful!)

David wants to tear out the wood panel walls in the front entry and put something paintable in. He wants to call it my art studio and is "offended" by the idea of a "craft room" I'll humor him and make crafts in my art studio,... *grin* though I fully intend to set up an easel so I can gradually work on a real painting... finally!

The dining room is going to be a richer, deeper red than the kitchen cabinets. I'm looking forward to seeing the result. The dark red with white trim will be striking. We're going with an elegant cafe look, though I still need to figure out how to decorate to make it feel elegant, rather than cave-like.

The den, otherwise known as the "media room," is going to be more masculine, with sketches of 1920-30 cars. We'll either have a pull-out couch and an inflatable mattress for guests or we'll come up with some solution I haven't thought of yet (what are those beds that fold into the wall called?). This means I can invite family and friends to visit and know they'll actually have a room to stay in! So exciting!

Upstairs we're pretty much just painting (according to the colors chosen by the room occupants). I'll probably put a curtain between the girl's spaces right away, but the rest of the fun stuff they want will wait till next year, most likely. I'll be customizing the closets, etc, but that's because I can't stand inefficient storage, and that's a sanity issue.

David made me promise to wait on the back entry coat-closet and shelves till after the house is painted and we're moved in... *sigh* I guess I can wait... hehe. *bounces off walls*