Home Sweet Home

So here's the story behind our absence/spotty posting...

We've been looking to buy a house since March. Since we live in a college town, most landlords want to know in the spring if you're going to sign on for another year. We told our landlady we would be moving--surely we would have a house by the end of July. In fact, there was one in particular that we had our eye on...but when we went to look at it, it already had an accepted offer, which means we missed it by a matter of weeks. This house seemed perfect for us, and there was not a single other house on the market that met our criteria: at least two bedrooms plus an office, some character and charm, and of course within our budget. Even the fixer-uppers were either out of reach or lacking one or more of our criteria.

The housing tax credit passed us by, and then before we knew it, it was July and we still had no contenders for our future home. Buying a home is a huge purchase, and nothing felt quite right, so as tempting as it was to settle for a house that was acceptable but not amazing, we ended up putting our things into storage and looking for short-term housing (with the hopes that the market would pick up in the fall and more houses would be listed).

Not two weeks later, we put in an offer on a house, and it was accepted! We'd gone to an open house for it back in April and loved it, but we dismissed it immediately--it was too expensive and only had two bedrooms, although the upstairs had the potential to be finished, which would add another 500-700 square feet. Four months later, we hadn't forgotten about it. At that point, the sellers were anxious to be rid of the house and interest rates had dropped significantly, which increased our buying power, so we decided to go for it. We stayed with my mom (thanks for putting up with us, Mom!) during the interim, which both flew by and felt excruciatingly slow.

We closed last Friday at 10 a.m. and moved in at 6 p.m. with the help of our amazing friends. We have most of our things unpacked, and now we're down to the last few boxes of hard stuff--you know, all the little odds and ends that we need to find a home for or else get rid of, the things we used to just leave in boxes as we moved from apartment to apartment. We have a lot of work to do to make the house our own, but we're off to a good start.

Here are some of the pictures from the MLS listing. As you'll see, it's a very special house--almost a fairytale cottage. It feels good to have a place to call home, especially a house that we love so much.