We had told our realtor that our priorities were getting our kids in a good school district, at least three bedrooms, a fenced backyard, and no carpet in the dining area. Looking at houses was an interesting experience because it gave us a lot of insight into our personalities and our family culture.
The first house was being sold through Better Homes and Gardens, so the photos with the listing made the house look magazine-worthy. Looking at the photos, I was pretty sure the house was way too trendy for me. But when we looked at it, most of the furniture had already been moved out and we thought it was actually an interesting house. It also needed more work than you would have thought from the photos, like patching some walls and painting--not that it was a dump, because it was mostly minor things that we could fix eventually. It was just interesting how different it looked in person from in the photos.
The next house we looked at was the one Ryan had nicknamed "The Brown Box." But as soon as we saw it Ryan said he was changing the name to "The Lodge." It had been fixed up extensively after being neglected and left to be a jungle for a while. A lot of trees had been cut down and the house had recently been painted the color of newborn poop. The inside had been fixed up quite a bit as well. There were a lot of things we liked about it--the yard was huge and there was a fence around the back, the house was pretty big, it had a nice great room upstairs. But I think it was hard for us to visualize us living there. As we left Ryan said that if we bought that house he felt like he would have to start wearing flannel shirts and cooking everything over a fire and he'd have to get an antler collection to hang up in the living room. It just felt like a lodge.
For the most part the rest of the houses we looked at were what we call "ticky-tacky" houses, and if you want to understand what that means you need to learn this song:
They were all in those subdivisions that went up overnight where all the houses look the same and there's only about five inches between each house, and they have a backyard that's big enough to hold a grill and a couple of lawn chairs. There was one house that had four bedrooms and a big backyard, but the yard was just flat with grass, no trees or bushes. Ryan's comment was that it felt like if you wanted to change anything at all about the yard you'd have to ask permission from the whole neighborhood to see if they felt like it would fit in, and then if we did do anything to add character to the yard it would take ten years to feel like we liked the house.
So we went to check in to our apartment and we were feeling a little disheartened because none of the houses really stuck out to us and most of them were ticky-tackies.
Friday we drove up to North Carolina to get the basics out of our storage unit. Google thinks it takes less than four hours to get there, but we've never had it take less than six hours, so when we got there it was already mid-day and it quickly got hot. We worked as fast as we could to get what we needed out of the storage units. Mainly that was the beds, the table and chairs, some toys for the kids, and the boxes of kitchen stuff. We didn't want to get everything because our apartment was small and on the third floor with no elevator. We didn't even bring the dressers because we didn't want to haul them up. In retrospect I really should have asked a friend to take the kids while we loaded the truck, because after spending so much time in the car they were out of control while we were loading the truck, and on the way back to Georgia there was an awful lot of screaming until I introduced them to the alphabet game, and even then there was still screaming. Once we got to our apartment Ryan and I worked on bringing everything up that evening and the next morning so we could get rid of the truck as soon as possible, and it was hard work going up and down the stairs so many times.
This is how Ryan had to hold the steering wheel on the truck to drive straight:
We had contacted the realtor and gave her some thoughts about what we liked and didn't like about the houses we had seen. We had realized that the yard was a really important factor for us. We wanted to live in a neighborhood where we could have a jungle or a perfectly landscaped yard (or somewhere in between) and fit in. We wanted a decent-sized backyard with some character that our kids would really enjoy playing in.
So the day after we went to North Carolina and back we went back out with the realtor to look at more houses. The first house was interesting but not in a great school district and it had a buried pool in the backyard.
Then we went to the second house and loved it. It was on a cul-de-sac and sat on a half-acre lot. We moved on to look at several other houses, and a couple of them were possibilities, but this one really stuck out to us. Ryan said it felt like coming home.
The next house was a definite no as soon as we walked in the doorway, and we nicknamed it "The Smoker" because of the smell. It did have a pretty incredible jungle in the backyard. Another house was "The Grey Box," which was a possibility but not our top choice. We looked at several town homes and it didn't take long for us to know we weren't interested--again, because of the tiny yards and the way they looked exactly the same as every other house in the neighborhood.
The last house we looked at had just barely been listed and it was clear that it was going to sell fast. The backyard was really fun. It had a play structure, a climbing wall, swings, and slides, and it was quite large. It was an interesting possibility, but as Ryan and I were talking about it we just didn't feel like it was our house. Ryan said if we bought the house we'd be known as the people with the "cool house," and he'd feel like we had to be the cool people to match the cool house we'd bought. The second house we had looked at that day was still our favorite.
The one problem with the house we liked was that it was very overpriced and it looked like the owner wasn't really willing to budge on the price. So we thought about it over the weekend and decide to make a lower offer and just see what happened. Unfortunately, somebody else had already made an offer on the house (which was a little surprising because it had been on the market for several months already), so we had to look elsewhere. It was a little confusing because we had felt so good about the house and the neighborhood and it seemed like it should work out, but it didn't.
We talked to the realtor and asked to look at the Better Homes and Gardens house again (the very first house we had looked at), and after walking through it another time we decided to make an offer. The seller made a counteroffer that seemed reasonable, so we accepted it and the house went under contract.
Ryan said he felt like there was a reason the house we had liked so much didn't work out, and part of it was because of the school. It was in a school district that was pretty good, but not a top school district. But living in the Better Homes and Gardens house would put our kids in one of the top schools in the state. Interestingly, the sale for the other house apparently didn't work out because soon after we closed we noticed it was for sale again, and even now it's still for sale.
As time went on I realized there were actually a lot of things I liked better about the house we ended up buying. It was a little sad that we wouldn't have a half-acre lot, but the yard at our house is still pretty big and it also has a lot more shade in back, which is definitely an advantage. The kitchen is also nicer, and I'm finding that we really like the layout of the house.
Just like everything else this summer, we were able to get our kids registered for school at the last minute. The open house for the school was on August 4th, and we got the documents showing the house was under contract just a few hours before the open house, so we were able to get the kids registered and they met their teachers that night. The school had no problems with letting them start there even though we wouldn't be moving in for another month. We had a really good feeling at the school. The principal is fantastic and the kids' teachers seemed really nice. Heidi had been really worried about starting school, but as we drove back to our apartment she couldn't stop talking about how great the school was and how amazing kindergarten was going to be. We were so grateful that getting the kids in school had worked out. I was kind of in shock at how everything had fallen into place.
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