In Contract!

We are now in contract to buy a home! As promised, more details. It is in a great location in the Lakeside neighborhood. It is two block from the local high school, two blocks from a really nice park with a playground, three blocks from the Lake Walk trail that runs through half of town (for biking, rollerblading, walking), four blocks from our new daycare. Impressive, right? It looks like this:

A view from the outside.

Nice, eh? It was built in 1912, looking good for 100 years old I would say! It is 1335 square feet, 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath. It is a corner lot, so most of the yard is on the side of the house nearest in this photo, between the house and the two car garage, so it looks like this:

Looking south off the porch at the yard and garage

The main thing that made this house more valuable than the others we had been looking at is that it already has all of its updates and has been redone. It has newer roof, siding, floors, updated kitchen etc, and is essentially turn key. When we started this project we figured we had time and could fix things up ourselves, but lets face it, we are not "project people". This house has a good foundation, updated interior, and it is oozing all the charm we could hope for!

The Dining Room

The Kitchen (note the corner of an eat-in table in the front right, and there is bit more counter to the left).

That is it for pictures for now. I do not feel like the rest of the pictures do it justice, so I will just discuss the rest of the house. It has a first floor laundry room of a good size that can double as an office or storage. If we need that space for something else in a few years we can easily move the washer and dryer back to the basement (all the hookups are still available down their as well), but for now I am extremely excited to be able to do laundry so easily. The half bath is about the size of a postage stamp. I am calling it our fight against obesity, because if you are fat you will have to walk up the stairs to use the full bath and therefore get a big more exercise! LOL. Upstairs the house has the three bedrooms, the full bath, and a ton of closet space. The master bedroom is very large, plenty large for our king size bed, dressers. as well as a sitting are or nursery area to keep Benjamin in our room (I am hoping to keep him in our room through 12 months). It has one "normal" size bedroom closet as well as a small walk-in closet, and access to a crawl space storage. The second bedroom is about 10x10 square with a large under-eve closet as well as a "normal" size bedroom closet. The third bedroom is a bit smaller and uniquely shaped with a "normal" size bedroom closet and access to a crawl space. It will accommodate a nursery or children's bed room quite well. The full bath is of decent size with a typical vanity and a built-in linen cupboard. The upstairs windows are all updated, while the downstairs windows are quite old and have that "wavy" appearance. The living room and dining room both have beamed ceilings and the dining room has a built in window seat. The stairway does get pretty short (so tall people could hit their head), but it is open enough that you will still be able to get large items up.

We are set to close on June 29th barring disaster. We do not expect any surprises during inspection as my BIL already gave it his seal of approval and he has a good eye for construction problems. Pretty much the only things I expect to do immediately when we move in is paint the nursery for Benjamin (I want to re-create the nursery I had spent all the time on in Columbus that he never got to use) and maybe paint the second guest room. We really like the finished look of the rest of the house, though it will take us quite a while to reconcile it with our current furniture. (i.e. the house is very light/cottage while much of our furniture is dark woods, Asian style lamps, etc). Our first major project on the house will be putting in a fence the rest of the way around the yard, which we would hope to complete before the ground freezes for the 2012-2013 winter (mainly to avoid those COLD dog walks).

Needless to say, we are very excited. Now just cross your fingers for us that everything goes smoothly (inspection, paperwork, financing, etc).