Almost six months ago, we closed the door to our very first home as a married couple. This was a very emotional move, so much so, that I don't think I am even ready to dedicate a post to this milestone. This was such a special house to us.
When we moved into this home, P and I were married for almost 10 months. We were newlyweds in our mid twenties (I was 26, and he was 27). Our pets were all under the age of 5. Our sweet dog, Rory was barely one year old. In this home, we celebrated our first anniversary, we celebrated our 30th birthdays (which seemed like a big milestone at the time!), we found out I was pregnant, we brought our baby home from the hospital, and it is where are our baby girl spent the first year and a half of her life. In this home, our daughter had her first bath, laughed for the first time, said her first words, and took her first steps. What a beautiful time this was.
We spent 10 years there. Ten years. When we moved, we were well into our thirties. At 36 and 37, we were closer to 40 than 30. We were getting ready to celebrate 11 years of marriage. Our pets were all over the age of 10 (14, 13, and 12 to be exact). Where does the time go? As much as it was time for us to move, I find myself missing it. We definitely out grew the physical space, but it was such a special home filled with so many precious memories that it makes my heart ache when I think about our time there being over. It was such a lovely home.
Okay, so this is taking an emotional turn, so I am going to stop going down this road for now. My heart is seriously not ready yet. Instead, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how our house hunting criteria changed in 10 years.
For our first home, we wanted:
1. At least 2 bedrooms
2. Hardwoord floors
3. A fireplace
4. A yard (didn't have to be big)
5. Charm (the older the house, the better!)
I think that was petty much it. We didn't care if it was a small house. We knew we didn't want a cookie-cutter house in a development. In fact, that was the last thing we wanted. We actually preferred an older house because we loved the charm of older homes.
We ended up with a sweet little 1940s cape cod. It was a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom house, and it was not quite 1100 square feet. Looking back, I realize that we totally paid too much for the house. We wanted the house so badly, and we were worried that someone else was going to make a better offer. We realize now that we probably could have offered much less and still got the house. As we learned 10 years later, you need just the right buyer to purchase a 2-bedroom, 1-bedroom house. Regardless, it was a wonderful and special home for us, and I am glad we spent the time that we did there.
After having our baby, we knew that we needed a bigger place. Our criteria for our second home changed quite a bit. The biggest change was my desire to purchase a newer home. I was making myself a little crazy worrying about the possibility of lead paint in our house (even though we had fresh coats of paint on everything, this still made me super nervous). I also learned (thank you Internet!) that many older homes had lead in their plumbing, and this made me nervous. Did you know that most homes built before 1980 have lead solders? Are you impressed by my plumbing vocabulary? (Again, thank you, Internet!) I realize now that these are probably things that I didn't really need to worry about - after all, so many of us grew up in homes built before 1980 - including my husband and me. But at the time, at this time in my life, moving into a newer home was just easier for me, and I am not just talking about lead.
For our next house, we were yearning for an open floor plan. It is really tough to prepare a meal in the kitchen, when you have to keep running around the corner to check in on your child in the living room. (How did our parents and grandparents do it for all those years with all those kids?) We knew if we purchased another older home, it was likely that we would need to do major renovations, and we didn't want to take that on with a little one for three reasons: 1. We didn't have the time; 2. We didn't have the money; and 3. Renovating an older home that may have lead paint was not something I wanted deal with right now. Although we were not completely opposed to buying an older home - in fact, my dream house would actually be a renovated older home that had all the charm, but with the modern amenities - we knew the chances of us finding a renovated older home with an open floor plan was not likely in our price range. So, most of the homes that came on the market that we were most interested in were newer homes.
When it came to our second home, we wanted:
1. Preferably a new house
2. An open floor plan
3. At least 3 bedrooms, but preferably 4
4. At least 2 bathrooms
5. A functional kitchen (preferably an eat-in one)
6. Preferably a 2-car garage
7. A yard flat enough for play
8. A quiet street in a quiet neighborhood (a neighborhood where we could take walks was a must, and we didn't want the house to be near a busy road - I didn't want to see or hear any type of busy road from our house)
9. A room that we could use for an office (we were willing to convert a bedroom, dining room - as long as we had an eat-in kitchen, or formal living room into an office)
We looked at probably a dozen homes over the course of a year, which I know is not very many. I guess you could say we never searched intensively, but we kept our eyes and ears open for something to come on the market that interested us. We ended up hearing about a house that the owners were getting ready to put on the market. It was in a neighborhood that we had our eyes on, so we followed up on this news.
The entire story of how we found and bought the house is a post for another day, but long story short, we ended up loving the house. It felt like the stars aligned, and the house became ours.
Interestingly, we ended up with the type of house that we were originally against 10 years ago. It is a newer home (you might call it a cookie-cutter home) and yes, it is in a development. However, I was okay with the idea of moving into this development because the neighborhood is a dream for children and parents of young children. There are kids everywhere. Children are always out riding bikes or scooters. While children play on the sidewalks or in their yards, parents gather and talk. This is exactly how I grew up - although I grew up in an older neighborhood - the social aspect is similar.
In our new neighborhood, there are bike paths and walking paths everywhere, so you can take a walk in the woods or you can walk a path to school or to the playground. The neighborhood, although a development, is nestled in the forest (an actual forest), and so even though we don't have a large yard with mature trees, there are hundreds of acres of green space surrounding us. Our house has woods behind it, so when you are in our backyard, you don't feel like you are in a development. We actually have more privacy than we did in our old house.
The outside of our house looks pretty typical of a newer home, but the inside has what I would call charm (okay, new house charm, but charm nonetheless). The people who owned our house before us customized everything they could to make it less of a cookie-cutter. Overall, I think they did a really good job. Our house has a lot of windows with real window sills (did you ever notice how some newer homes don't have window sills?). We have crown molding throughout the entire house and hardwood floors in most of the rooms on the first floor. We have a morning room off of the kitchen, which we use for our dining room. This room is surrounded with windows, and this may be my favorite room in our house. It is a great room to sit in and watch the sun rise or the snow fall. From this room, we often catch glimpses of deer coming in from the woods to explore our yard. In our family room, we have a beautiful stone wood-burning fireplace - something that is not common in newer homes. This room is cozy and inviting, and yes, you get a perfect view of it from the kitchen (hooray for open floor plans!).
Because of the morning room and family room, we did not have a need for the formal dining room and living room. So, we converted the dining room to an office and the living room to a playroom. Having a playroom was not on our list of must-haves, but now I am so happy to have it. I had no idea that playrooms are such a big thing now, and this is a topic that I would like to revisit. Our house is not huge, but we have more space than we ever dreamed of having, and for that, we are extremely grateful.
I think it is really interesting how are criteria changed in 10 years. I guess in those 10 years, we changed a lot too. I am curious about what the next 10 years will bring.
Curiously,
Beth
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