Our House

We've lived in our new place for about 5 weeks.

People have been curious about what the place looks like, so here are a few pics.

The 'wasted space' room. Nobody's ever gonna sit in here. It's immediately to the left of the front door. We hope to get some chairs and a little end-table in here sooner rather than later... you know... so nobody can ever sit on it.

Stairs. That's the playroom doors behind the staircase.

Our empty dining room. Someday we'll buy a table. This is immediately to the right of the front door. The previous owners have the vinyl wording up there and I haven't bothered to take it down yet.

Living room. We love the fireplace. In case you're wondering, no, we don't have curtains up yet.

The new baby's room. We've made tons of progress on it, as you can see.

Pros:

• New carpet downstairs. We had it installed right away and we love it. It's a higher pile and the color hides a multitude of sins. We have plans to re-carpet the upstairs, but that's gonna have to wait until next year. Money doesn't grow on trees, folks. 

• A play room for all the toys. With doors. That I can shut. And never have to look at the toy mess. 

Don't be fooled. It's never this clean.

Henry's little makeshift reading nook.

• Hardwood floors - they look nice.
  
• Plain, non-texture ceilings. It looks clean and I can paint ceilings if I want!

• Cellular, cordless blinds. Thankful the previous owners made this investment. They're spendy.

• Neutral paint colors. The previous owners had good taste and they left us tons of paint. 

• Huge master bathroom and a soaking tub. The kids love it, too! Paige thinks it's a small swimming pool.
  
  
  
  
  
• I never realized this, but when you buy a house the appliances are way better than apartment appliances. Our dishwasher actually washes the dishes. Imagine that.
  
• Swing set for the kids. So glad it came with the house and wasn't something we had to buy after-the-fact.
  
• Our yard. It takes Dustin like 2 hours to mow/weed (even with a riding mower), but it's really pretty.
  
  

  

  Looking to the right from the deck.

  
  

  

  Looking center/slight left.

  
  

  

  Looking left.

Cons:

• Hardwood floors - I'm scared to death they're going to get dented/scratched and they're hard to clean.

• No medicine cabinets in any of the bathrooms. 

• No drawers in any of the bathrooms -- just large cabinets.
  
• Septic systems, sand mounds, wells, water softeners, propane tanks etc. Living in the country means learning a lot of new things. I'm what you'd call a 'city girl' so this was all very, very new to me.
  
• Deck. We love having a deck, but would have preferred a Trex deck. This one is wood and is, therefore, high maintenance. We have plans to add a patio and/or expand the deck at some point.
  
  
• Vertical blinds over the sliding glass door. I really hate these.
  
  
•  A full basement that floods 31 days after you move in. No joke. We're fairly certain it was because the gutters had never been cleaned out. Dustin spent several days/hours cleaning them out and after a HUGE rain yesterday, we're 100% dry.

The dry part of the basement when it flooded.

The old carpet from one of the upstairs rooms. This soaked up 80% of the water, thankfully.

Some shallow puddles.

Overall, we're super happy with our choice. Dustin's commute is 25 minutes, which he says is fine. This was the one thing we were worried about. This house was loads cheaper than the others we were looking at, but this one was also 5-10 minutes farther away.

I have plans to post pictures of Henry and Paige's room but every time I think about getting pictures someone is napping.