Thursday, August 24, 2017

No buffalo roaming, just foxes skittering

Something I don't talk about much or even notice anymore is our house. Most days, its just a building that holds our stuff and occasionally irritates me with its quirks.

We live in an old house. It was built in 1920 and has lots of cool features and a few not so cool features. Cool: original hardwood floors in most of the house. Not cool: 1 1/4 bathroom (the sink in the half bath doesn't work). Cool: awesome fireplace and beveled glass and mirrors and crown molding in most of the house. Not cool: the plumbing is a patchwork and needs to be updated and a sink needs to be repaired. Cool: my built in bookshelves in our room and our original kitchen cabinets. Not cool: our electrical is also a patchwork and needs to be updated. Cool: lots of big original windows so we don't have to have lights on during the day. Not cool: lots of big original windows so the house kind of leaks warm and cold air. I don't want to replace them because they're so pretty, but man.

I could go on. I love that we've got nice sized rooms, but I hate that the layout of these rooms is so awkward and the placement of certain areas is the way it is. The kids' room, for example, has six walls, three of which are exterior walls of 90% windows. Lots of light, sure but also...it's a weird shaped room.

I knew this was my house when I saw it on the realty website in June 2010. It was priced a little above what we could afford, but it had been on the market a while and I wanted to see it anyway. By the time we got our (terrible) realtor to set up a viewing, they'd dropped the price a lot and then accepted our offer below that. We moved in in July of 2010 and have both loved and hated it ever since.

We have three bedrooms, a living room, a front hallway that's kind of useless (it's really a big room, not what you might think of as a hallway), the aformentioned 1 1/4 bathrooms, large kitchen, back hall/mudroom, laundry room, and a large space upstairs that's tricky to figure out. It could be a bedroom or a second living area. We've mostly used it for storage for the past 7 years. Out of sight, out of mind. We put long planks in the attic space at one point (I think I was pregnant with Elijah at the time) and that's become our mid-term storage: storage for items I don't need right now, but use annually (holiday decor, out of season clothing) or every couple of years (outgrown kid clothes). Also, there's some other stuff: a sewing machine, cross-stitch patterns I've already done, my high school year books, a couple tubs of keepsake items from Dad and my youth I'm not up to getting rid of yet.

We also have a house in the back that's not finished, mostly just walls, roof, and floor (though there is a bathroom out there that could be made useable) that's for longer term storage. I have a small apartment's worth of furniture, a small mountain of boxes, dining chairs, all of our outside toys, cross-stitch stuff I don't want but don't want to get rid of...y'all, I'm a borderline hoarder. But at least my stuff is about 90% organized. And I do actually get rid of tons of stuff every couple of years, donating to garage sales or the Salvation Army. I've tried to sell some things myself with limited success.

When we moved in, we were pregnant with Asher. I knew he wasn't going to be an only child, and this house is seemingly designed for two kids in one bedroom and a third on their own in the other room. We had the front room as a guest room for a long time, but after a while our guests ceased staying with us, so we turned it into a playroom for the kids. They've got my grandmother's old yellow couch, which is the most comfortable couch ever, a tv with gaming systems, and all the toys they occasionally play with, plus a toilet for their use (though they naturally run through the house, find me to inform me of their need to pee, then use the main bathroom). We want to keep that room as their play area, so then we planned to put the boys upstairs and keep the girls downstairs, either in the same room or eventually moving Eden to the front room with the private bathroom. Things were moving along great, then the boys announced it was too creepy upstairs and they didn't want to move up there.

Cue the record scratch. We've been trying to figure out the best way to utilize our space since day 1 and it's been trickier the more people we add to the household. We toyed with the idea of taking out a loan at some point and adding a bathroom in the attic and expanding the upstairs room so that could be a master suite, we talked about adding a bathroom to the master bedroom by extending into the yard, we talked about sacrificing part of the master for a bathroom (we really need/want another bathroom). We've switched the living and dining rooms twice, once when Elijah was about 4 months old and back again about 2 months ago. We've rearranged the furniture in every room but the kitchen multiple times.

Luckily for everyone, Elijah recently decided he'd be ok sleeping upstairs as long as he could take his Mario plushies. Asher, when faced with the choice of sleep upstairs with Elijah or downstairs with his sisters decided upstairs wasn't so bad after all. Now I just have to get my stuff relocated and Austin to go through his and decide what to do with it. I'm hoping we can have the boys upstairs within a couple of months.

I love the house. We've painted it and that actually helped my feelings about it a LOT. We're slowly getting it to how we need it but with four kids and a limited amount of money to do that, it's taken time. We've done something every year we've been here and I hope we can continue that as long as is necessary. This year was supposed to be plumbing, but things have gotten away from us financially because of Asher's testing and Elijah's hospital stay and a photo package we bought for Rebekah, so this year it'll have to be something small. Like maybe a tree to replace the one that died.

We love where we are. Being across and beside Serenity House has had minor inconveniences, but overall hasn't been terrible. The Red Cross is on the other side and they're quiet neighbors, too. We like being within walking distance of downtown and all that has to offer, we love being within walking distance of the church (though we haven't actually walked there much the last couple of years....too many kids). We're even walking distance to my oldest brother and my mom. I just need a grocery store closer than Ambler and a few more restaurants, maybe some more shopping downtown and I'd be all set.

We were blessed in that we both graduated college with no debt. We were able to start saving immediately for whatever we needed to so we were able to buy our first house six months after we were married. Our only debt currently are my car and our house. We're looking at buying Austin a new car, but I'm hoping once we've got mine paid off, we might be able to continue pulling that amount out of our account and put it into the house. It would take a while, but we'd eventually be able to fix everything that needs fixing, add on a bathroom, fix up the guest house into maybe a rental apartment or something.

Unless someone has $100,000 they want to give us for those purposes...lol

Little by little we'll chip away at it. Our plan right now is to never leave. It (mostly) works for us and meets (most) of our needs. It's the home we brought our sons home to and the home our daughters were born in. We've been here 7 years and already have a lot of history here. A history we hope to continue.


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