Thursday, September 8, 2011

House.

Friends of ours are house hunting (and they've put in an offer - good luck!) and every time one of our friends starts looking, talks about moving or whatever, I always get a little jealous. Not that I hate our house or I'm in any hurry to move, but it's so much fun to plan and dream, isn't it?

So to start, I like our house. It suits our family fairly well. We bought our home with the intention of being able to start a family in it. It's big enough for the 3 of us and we could fit a 4th if that happens before our time in this house is through. Our yard isn't fantastic (it's oddly shaped) but it's got a nice fence for the dog and our kid. We're in a great neighborhood (I hate our current neighbors, but they're renters and hopefully they'll move soon) and I think a good school district (I really should start looking into that...I'm thinking of a Montessori preschool but that's a post for another day).

In any case, I've got the bug to look. And every time some one mentions "new house!" I start compiling a wishlist in my head. In our first house, we were so excited of the idea of a house and we were very naive about house buying, we didn't think to consider things like closets. That's right. Closets. Our 1st house had.... ONE closet. In the WHOLE house. We also didn't have a dog when we moved in so our unfenced yard was totally fine.

When we moved to Idaho, we had a more defined wishlist. Okay, we actually had one. We had no list, no idea of what we needed for our family, nothing with our first house. So we moved here and we had a better idea. We knew we wanted at least 3 bedrooms, at least 2 bathrooms, a fully fenced yard, sprinklers and an attached 2 car garage, air conditioning & forced air heat (our prior house had neither - imagine freezing cold winters with only wall mounted space heaters for each room that some one's anal wife refused to turn on because space heaters are dangerous). We thought a fireplace would be nice, but not a deal breaker if the house didn't have it.

Now that we're living here, in addition to the requirements above, we'd like to upgrade to:
  • at least 4 bedrooms (one for us, one for Ben, one for future kiddo and a guest room) with an optional bonus room for office/crafting area)
  • 3 bathrooms (one for us, one for the kiddos and a guest bath and/or a powder bath)
  • a tankless hot water heater
  • a pantry in the kitchen
  • some sort of stone countertop (really anything but laminate would be great)
  • upgraded flooring (some carpet, some hardwoods, some stone - again, anything by laminate would be great)
  • a nice, square backyard with adequate seating space :)
  • NO CUL DE SAC homes - never, never, EVER again
  • an attached 3 car garage with keyless entry
  • a sunroom (not a deal breaker)
  • windows with integrated blinds would be fabulous
  • 2 stories would be sweet, but I'd have to kiss outdoor lights at Christmas bye-bye as I have a hard enough time convincing Nick to climb a ladder to do lights on a single story home...
  • and on the "this would be so fantastic to have rather than to do ourselves" list: a farmhouse sink, quartz countertops, all stainless steel appliances, gas range, a double oven, a trash compactor, a beautiful, railed front porch with room for a couple of rockers....
So then I take my little wishlist and I plug it in to the internet with our price range and dream.

And then I take my dream on a road trip and I look at what we could buy in other areas of the country.

And some times I look at houses in New Zealand. :)

And then I close my searches and am content in our little house until the next time some one mentions they're moving. Then I start alllll over again.

But now that I've thought it through... we never intended to stay longer than 5 years. We're on our 4th year here.... hm... maybe it's not unreasonable that we'll be looking for a new house next year? I just got all kinds of excited... !!!

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