Out with the old and in with the new

Guess what! We sold our house! We showed our house 36 times. I think that equates to about 100 extra hours of cleaning so I'm very glad it's over. We close on the sale on December 8th. Yay! Homeless in time for the holidays.

Actually, if we're very good, Santa might be able to get us into our new house in just a couple of weeks. New house, you say? Yes, we're under contract on this lovely house in Springville.




(Please excuse the smoke bush trying to devour one side of the house. The yard could use a little TLC).

Dream house? I'm not so sure. It's about 100 years to new to be my dream house, but this is the first house we looked that I didn't think needed a major remodel. The current interior isn't exactly my style, but I probably wouldn't have liked it if I couldn't think of some projects to do. There are some things I love about the house like the kitchen--it's laid out exactly how I would have chosen to have it if I had built the house with fantastic features like big deep drawers and a cabinet for cookie sheets right next to the stove.



And there are some things I don't love about the house. The master bath for example:

Doesn't it look like it would be soothing and restful to lean your head against a wall of uneven stones?

The house has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a formal living room, great room and laundry up and an unfinished basement down. The house is on a hill so most of the basement is daylight. The future family room in the basement even has a set of french doors that walk out into the back yard. Upstairs there is a deck that spans the whole back of the house and can be accessed from the great room or the master bedroom.

The house is a lot bigger and nicer than I was expecting to be able to buy. I feel a little bit spoiled. I'll have a cold storage room! A garage! A pantry! A big, unfinished basement, just waiting to be anything I want it to be! For a while I think we'll just rattle around the house not knowing what to do with so much space (over 3x our current square footage), but everyone tells me that we shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out how to fill it up.

Now wish us luck in trying to get our closing dates to line up with each other!

A house obsession update

So, my dream house sold, and not to us. We weren't the first offer in the line, but all signs seemed to point to our offer being the one the bank was most likely to take. Don't trust the signs. Currently the house has a contractor's sign out front and really BIG dumpster on the drive, but not much else seems to be happening. I'm scared to drive by, but too curious not to.

We also made an offer on a bank-owned house in the Edgemont neighborhood. Edgemont is a good compromise between Matt and I. The neighborhood is old enough that the houses still have character, but they don't require quite as much work as my dream house. The house in Edgemont was a really good fit for our family, but it was also a really boring ranch. The yard was the redeeming factor in my eyes. The bank liked our offer, but not our closing terms. We'd set our closing date at the end of August and they balked at having it out so far. Unfortunately, that house is now under contract.

Our house has been on the market for just shy of two months now and we've had a lot of lookers, but no buyers so far. This is good and bad. Bad because it's really a pain to try and keep my house clean enough to show at a moment's notice! A lot of our stuff is packed away and I don't feel like I can start anything that will make a mess--like making bread or sewing. The good part of all this is that, right now, there isn't a house on the market that we're really interested in, so we're not feeling rushed to get out of this one. Tonight Matt and I took some video of the best options out there right now, but we've decided we aren't going to make any offers until an offer comes in on our house. We dropped the listing price of our house today, so hopefully we'll get an offer soon.


Matt's and my wants for a house seem like they would meld the best if we could build a custom house (of course). I surfed online floor plans, looking for a house that contained all of my ideal elements--a studio for Matt, a craft/sewing space for me, a good mud room that could be the main family entrance, an eat-in kitchen with good views of the yard and at least 3 bedrooms on the same level. I actually found a plan that is almost exactly what I would have come up with if I'd been working with an architect--the Lakeland Cape Cod from simplyeleganthomedesigns.com. Here's the floor plan.


First floor:

Second floor:

I created a gallery of interior/exterior photos here.

(My only complaint is that the house is a little too big. If we were really to build I might work with the architect to see if we could scale it all down a bit.)

I was really getting behind the idea of building until we started to look at lots. Lots in the Edgemont neighborhood cost as much or more than houses! How can this be? How can anyone afford to build a house--you're instantly upside down. I guess they are depending on people who plan to stay in their house forever and don't care about the market value? The lot we really like is .31 acres and would fit this house plan really well, but it's listed for $134,900. That is $10,000 more than our new listing price for our townhouse and only $50,000 less than a house of comparable size and acreage just sold for only two blocks away. Maybe we could build the garage for $50,000 and live in a studio for a few years while we save up. I'm sure the neighbors would go for that!

All dressed up and ready to sell

As of tomorrow morning, our house is officially on the market. We took the pictures and signed the contract tonight and the listing should be up in the morning. I was just done vacuuming when the photographer got here. There's no way I would have made it without the help of my sister-in-law who ended up watching the kids all day! Thanks, Jenny!

We packed up, paired down and painted to try and make our house show better. Here's a little tour:

The front--with a for sale sign!

Looking into the living room

The living room facing the window

The dining room

The kitchen

Upstairs bathroom



Master bedroom

The kids room

I think most of our rooms look pretty good in photos, except the kitchen. I would love to have had time to paint it to brighten it up and simplify the color scheme, but it's not going to happen. At the rate I finish projects I would need at least a year.

Of course, there are still a lot of little things that need to be done. Hopefully we can get to most of them tomorrow.

6/25/10 - Our listing is up!

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Matt started a new job on May 17th. He's working for HotDocs Corporation, managing their technical support operations. While he's not working as an attorney we both felt like this was the right job for right now, since it would allow us to accomplish several of our goals--particularly allowing me to quit my job and stay home with Winnie and Luke. My last day of work is June 30th. I actually gave my notice on May 5th and I think it's taken until today for it to sink in that I'm quitting. I've been there for 10 years now! I'm really excited for the transition, but somehow knowing that it's coming to an end is making everything at my job seem fresher and more interesting than it has in years. At least that should make this last month of work go quickly. Matt's been sworn into the Utah bar, so he's going to be doing some legal work on the side to keep up his skills. In fact, he's already got a case he's working on.

The other big change we're looking forward to is buying a house. In fact, we made an offer on the house that I haven't been able to stop talking about for the past year. The house is headed to foreclosure and we made short sale offer, so we have no idea whether or not the bank will accept. We're crossing our fingers and waiting. The bank has until June 30th to respond. If the bank doesn't accept our offer we'll probably try to buy the house at the scheduled trustee's sale on June 29th. It would be the biggest birthday present ever!

A Post About Nursing

I came across a blog post about breastfeeding today, via a friend's blog. I wish I had seen more posts like this 3 years ago. I spent the first two months of Winnie's life doing nothing but nursing, pumping, visiting lactation specialists and doctors, taking every galactagogue known to man and feeling depressed and guilty that I was failing at what should be the most natural part of motherhood. The last thing I needed was strange women in the grocery store check-out line chiding me for not breastfeeding. Let's just feed them, shall we?

Disclaimer: At the top of the post there's a picture of the author breastfeeding. Don't follow the link if that makes you uncomfortable.

Menus

I updated the menus on my side bar for the coming week. We threw a party for Matt's graduation last Friday and this week's menu is heavily influenced by the leftovers. If there are a lot of heavy winter foods on the menu, it's due to the fact that it's supposed to be 80 degrees Tuesday and then snow and rain Wednesday through Saturday.

Luke's First Hair Cut

In honor of Luke's first birthday (although a little late) he got a haircut tonight.

He was really good while Matt was doing it. I'm a little sad because I think it makes him look older, but he looks cute enough to make up for it!