new house

Our home.

Huge kitchen, check! Breakfast bar, check! Low end gourmet stove. The room that won me over, the walk-in pantry.

Giant basement with 9' ceilings. The soccer field. Avery's room. Vivienne's room.

Open living space. The rug did not stay. Upstairs. Main floor bathroom with shower.

Rental property above the garage (score!)

The bathrooms

Second floor laundry, yes please. Master bedroom (aka the sconce room - there are 4 weirdly located sconces). Attached balcony. Walk-in closet.

Doors to the office. Shockingly, no one likes this chandelier - I even offered it to the Itens but they refused.

Home

Let me introduce you to the number 2 reason the blog is so behind...our new house. Let's just consider all of these pics the 'before' and I will eventually get to the 'after.'

Here's the story: Because of the planned construction on the empty lot across the street from our condo, we decided to put it on the market and then move into a temporary apartment while we looked for our dream house. I will add that Scott really likes to stick to the plan and we had signed a 7 month lease on the apartment and were not scheduled to start looking for houses for 2 weeks when I stumbled on this place.

I had been keeping my eye on the market for quite awhile since Denver is in a housing boom. There's always a lot of competition for good property. I had dragged Scott to a few houses just to get a sense of what we could afford in case we ended up in a situation where we had to make a quick decision. Most of the houses in our ideal locations and in our price range were pretty small and I was getting mentally prepared for the 4 of us to be sharing one bathroom with a pedestal sink. I had my heart set on a Denver square and Scott wanted a new house because we all know he is not the handy sort.

There was a Denver square on High street that I had called our agent to set up a showing. By the time she called me back, there was already 2 offers on the place and she said we could go see it, but we needed to be ready to make an offer that day. Since I knew Scott wasn't ready to officially house hunt (we had only been in the apartment a few weeks), I passed. Well, because I'm crazy, after Sarah and I had taken Vivienne to ballet I asked her if she minded if we drove past the house we had missed out on. Sarah agreed and luckily, it wasn't a love. However, when we got to the intersection, there was an "Open House" sign in the yard of the house pictured above. My first thought was that it was out of our price range (a new house in an older neighborhood? yeah, right), but again, Sarah was game and we went in. 

I knew the second I walked in that this was our house. A lot of older homes, although filled with character, are very closed off with small rooms. This house was big and open and had the same kind of vibe as our condo. Even though the house is short on older charm, it is big on space and that's what I fell in love with. I knew the house was perfect but was not sure how Scott would react.

Sarah, Vivienne and I toured the house and I knew I had to get Scott to see it. We went back to the apartment and I was a little nervous because we were still two weeks away from officially house hunting. Well, Scott was polite, but he didn't want to waste his time looking at a house we were not going to buy. Eventually, I got him through the door and I could tell he loved it as well, but he wouldn't admit it. The price was above our range, but I knew the rental property above the garage could make things work. It took some convincing to get Scott was on board, and I was so frustrated with him because I knew he loved the house but wouldn't admit it.

Obviously, things worked out. We made an offer and even got the seller to come down in price and luckily we did not have to compete with anyone. Everything came together perfectly, and despite one issue of water in the basement (there was a hole in the hose bib and when they planted the sod and started watering it, it flooded the basement), the entire process went smoothly. The fellow who built the house was planning on living in it, but they ran into some financial issues and had to sell. I want to say thank-you to his wife for the awesome stove, pantry and separate broom closet.

Every single day, Scott and I are thankful for this house. It is not lost on us how lucky we are to have found this huge house in a great location (15 minutes on bike to work for me!) and that once a month someone shows up on our porch to pay rent. We are so happy here and we really did find our dream home.