Our New Home

We have moved! It's been a crazy, exhausting, emotional week, and I was so thankful for the rain this morning to get a chance to just sit for a bit. The tricky part is that we currently have internet only on our phones, and have discovered this house is a huge black-out zone. To get a decent signal we have to step outside (a bit awkward in the rain): and this includes sending text messages and making phone calls. When the phone starts ringing I have to grab it and race for the door or I won't be able to hear who's on the other end. I found a spot in the front porch that occasionally gets 3G service, so I just have to carefully time my internet moves. As I type it keeps switching from 3G to 1x (which is nothing). In addition to the internet debacle, I'm almost out of storage on my phone, so I'm sure I'm not getting emails anymore. We'll have internet and a home phone here sometime in the beginning of August...the soonest they could make it out here. Oy.

The old rental house now sits empty, with little islands of dust bunnies marking where pieces of furniture once sat. It awaits the final cleaning and good-bye. Aidan's been at camp for a week now, and waves of homesickness have been crashing over me. I've guiltily considered dashing across an entire state just to get my big boy back.

I'll leave you with a few images of our new home, and some of the excitement that's been going on around here.

Lovely well maintained home, with charm and beautiful woodwork including pocket doors between main floor rooms. 1858 sq ft of living space, add to that a new roof in 2015 and replacement windows on main floor and you have a great value! Large open kitchen that is great for the cook of the house! Living room, sitting room, bathroom, and a bedroom/office complete the main floor. Second floor you will find four nice sized bedrooms with closets, and a store room with walk-up attic access. New electric 100 Amp Breaker Box 2016. Some furniture can be included for the right buyer.

FACTS

• Lot: 0.65 acres

• Built in 1901

That was the first description I read of the house during one of my late-night Zillow-surfing binges. I admired the pictures of the woodwork in the 115 year old house, the egg-and-dart molding, and the spaciousness. I sighed that it was over half an acre lot, and had a creek as the northern property line. How fun that would be for the boys! But the price was $15,000 over the house budget we had set for ourselves, and I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn't the right place for us. About a month later it disappeared from the site and I figured it had sold or the owner decided not to sell. 

A couple months later this house reappeared on Zillow, this time within $4,000 of our budget. We jumped to go look at it, and then prayed about it and mulled it over for a couple weeks before placing an offer. Within a day we had a signed contract with an agreed-upon price. 

Now that we can call it our own I want to give you all a tour of our new home! This is a "fixer upper" and will take some time to get the way we want, but it has good bones and a ton of character.  

The story of the scary carpet: after we closed on the house and removed the 20 car pine-tree-shaped air fresheners that were hanging everywhere and making the place smell like a cotton candy factory, we noticed a funk coming from the carpet, (particularly in the sitting room). We decided to rent a carpet shampooer and fix the funk. It did not fix it, but reactivated whatever dehydrated urine was still in the carpet. After two days of gagging through the smell, I decided to rip it out. I grabbed a utility knife and started slicing. Underneath I found gorgeous stained hardwoods! Eli thought I had cut my finger off from the screams he heard coming from the sitting room. Who in the world carpets over hardwood floors?! They definitely need some tender loving care now, but I'm determined to restore them.

I decided to take a break from the depressing carpet situation to make some bacon and eggs. Everyone needed a little bit of normalcy.

Yikes. All those yellow spots are where urine glued the carpet padding to the floor.

I couldn't wait any longer...I ripped out enough carpet to pull out one of the pocket doors! It probably hasn't seen the light of day in decades (judging by the age of the carpet).

The whole house is full of these gorgeous cast iron grates for the central heating/cooling system. This is the first time we've ever had central air.

Tossing carpet out a window into the bushes I also want to rip out.

Back to the pocket doors...I found a long buried note on the other side.

We had a tree go down, so Gavin was helping stack wood and pull branches into a pile.

 And then they found a cat. Gavin named her Violet. She is a very sweet, forgiving cat.

We discovered some kind of foul tracks in the concrete of our back garage.

The mat by our front door echoes the sentiment painted on the back of the garage wall. The mat was a gift from our realtor...I have a sneaking suspicion she picked it for that reason.

Other views of the front porch.

The top set of windows is our bedroom. The bottom is the stinky sitting room.

Found another treasure! The original front doors! They're currently nailed and duct taped shut.

Kitchen in chaos yet. Washer/dryer area in the back.

Jack and Jill bathroom, from kitchen through to the school room.

The other half of the kitchen.

Living room (will be dining room) looking into sitting room (will be living/TV room). School room door is to the right.

School room.

Bathroom looking into kitchen.

Storage room with attic stairs.

These are old photos of the attic from the first time we viewed the house (April 13). East end.

West end of attic.

Looking down the stairs into the storage room.

Spare room and walk-in closet at the top of the stairs.

Looking down the stairs.

Spare room. We finally have room for the cedar chests my Grandpa made us!

Looking up the stairs. Spare room and closet are to the right, attic room to the left.

Looking at little boys' room door.

Looking down the hall from our bedroom door to the big boys' room. Stairs to the left. (Old photo.)

Big boys' room now. My dear sister and Mom helped me rip the carpet out of here already. (They spent 7 hours one day helping me clean before we moved.) It has wide-plank wood floors that were painted tan. This room has the upper porch (balcony) to the right. The door is now padlocked shut.

Little boys' room.

The little and big boys share a walk-through closet between their rooms. 

This is our bedroom. I was determined to find an old door and repurpose it as a headboard for our bed. That idea has been effectively flushed! Look at that view! The windows need a good cleaning, but this is the next best thing to living in a tree house (which I've wanted since the very first time I saw Swiss Family Robinson, of course.) I always seem to be heading up the stairs during sunset, and I have to pause to watch it for a while.

The garage out back (needs paint and a new roof). The tree went down to the left of it and landed over the creek.

South and east side of the house. (I was sitting in that chair to finish this post...I get 4G LTE service there! Hehe.)

East side of the house.

West side of the house, looking south.

North side of the house, looking east. We own as far as you can see mowed. The creek is to the left.

The boys love the family of whitetails in our front yard. They're concrete, so they may be hanging around a while.

Southwest corner of the house. The ornate front doors are behind those black and white doors.

And finally, we live on Spring Street (Eli grew up on a West Spring Street) but apparently someone had trouble spelling it so they just left it at SPINGS. Welcome to the Berst's. :)