New House Details, not for the faint of heart! LOL

[This is the beginning of a post I started on June 30. Everything is still true, and informative, so I'll post it now. *sigh*]

The new house is a 4-bedroom, 1 3/4 baths **duplex**!! Go figure! It is in Beaverdale, the area of the city with which we are least familiar, so as far as settling in, it's almost like starting over. Gr. It's the same distance/time from the church building as we are here, just in the opposite direction....

The owner bought the house for him to live in the rest of his life (He seems to be maybe mid-50's.), but ... "It didn't work out that way." Shortly before he moved out, he purchased all new top-of-the-line appliances for the place, including front-loading washer which will save us much $$, from what I understand! Sssso fancy! The rent there is $150/mo. less than we're paying here, which was THE POINT.

The house isn't a "big" house, but it has enough space that we'll be able to function well there for some years.

Ground level has a living room that flows into the dining room, which flows into the kitchen, which is smaller than the one at this house, but at least it's a dead-end instead of a walk-through galley kitchen on the way toward everything else in the house!!!!! lol A two-car (attached) garage is a hhhhhuge plus. There is also a very nice partial wrap-around deck on the south and east sides of the house (cool evenings!!!!). Two bedrooms and the full bath round out the upstairs. Downstairs are the other two bedrooms, the largest two bedrooms in the house (Elaine's and Natasha's), a family room (also our tiiiight guest room, exercise room, sewing room, and homeschool storage room (tall bookshelves), and a utility room/bathroom/laundry room. Washer & dryer are already in the house, so our current washer and dryer will be gifted or sold. Our garage fridge is being gifted to Mike & Cassie, who have been wanting a garage fridge. Our current nice, big fridge will be our garage fridge in the new house, and the chest freezer will also go into the garage, which is right off the dining room/kitchen.

A single, older man lives in the other side. He seems remarkably agreeable. There is a yard, but (get this!) the yard work and snow removal are included in the price of our rent!!! Woah! So it's like we get the bennies of having a yard without the work! Holysmokes!

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Now, the pros/cons I listed a number of weeks back for the purpose of blogging:

Pros:

We have 4 dimmer switches(!) >> dining room, 'master' bedroom (ours, tho' it's smaller than the downstairs bedrooms), upstairs bathroom (a surprisingly wonderful and appreciated blessing), and the family room downstairs.

The door to our bedroom doesn't open all the way, which I was a mite annoyed about at first, 'til I realized the reason it's that way is to make more room in the closet. So we decided to keep the hamper behind that door! It's my new favorite place for a hamper! :) The way it all sits, most times we don't even have to move the door to deposit items!! -wow!!- :) lol!

The dishwasher is ffffancy. It uses a tiny amount of soap, and some of the racks in there push out of the way/adjust, allowing for lots more dish-loading options!

There are pull-string lights in all the bedroom closets.

All but one bedroom closet have one rod up above, and another half-length rod below.

This house came with a dehumidifier! My dream!

There are very nice-looking ceiling fan/lights in both upstairs bedrooms and the family room.

I already mentioned the front-loading washer!!

Especially compared to our previous house, built in the '50's, in this house (built in the '80's I believe) there is an outlet everywhere you look for one!

The light in the garage is motion-sensor.

The fridge is a side-by-side with adjustable shelves & through-the-door water & ice.

The stove is gas, which we like, with a fancy touch-pad control for the oven which is also a convection oven!!! (Still haven't read the manual yet! ha)

I also previously mentioned that we don't have to do lawn care or snow removal, yet he said we may plant flowers in the flower beds, and the back deck gets plenty of sun and has enough space for large containers, in which I hope to do some vegetable gardening next summer!

The neighborhood is quiet like the previous neighborhood was, but this street is level, so we can bike & scoot & roller-blade to our heart's content. :) MUCH nicer! the brakes on our bikes could not stop us on the hills in our previous neighborhood.

We live on a 'long block' of which we can see to the end, great for outdoor activity safety.

As nice as the location of our previous house was, we like this location even better. There is a small, public pool six blocks away. It is much closer to the Interstate, it is two blocks from a nice mall, many restaurants, other nice stores/car washes, etc., and our bank! It is very close to motels, for people who want to visit us for whom we don't have space, and it is a school neighborhood, so there is much 'patrolling'. There is a beautiful graveyard 3 blocks away that will be nice, quiet, street-less walking when we choose. It is closer to more church friends with whom we spend much time!

With all that said, here are cons:

The kitchen really is small. But it is also very functional, and ... less to clean! :)

There is NO pantry, at all. But Jeremy was allowed to salvage some leftover/waste wood from the church's construction project, and built AWESOME shelves for us immediately outside the dining room door into the garage; that is where we are keeping many of the items we used to keep in the pantry (frying pan, crock-pot, food processor, bread machine, canned goods, some dry goods in heavy plastic containers, coolers, etc.). It's not ideal, but 'til we come up with something else, it'll do. :) I'm THANKFUL for those shelves; without them I'd be up.a.creek.

The dining area is small. But it connects with the living room, so it doesn't *feel* small, and does allow for expanding the eating area, with a folding table or 2, into the living room, for that kind of occasion ... for which it is 'tight', but fine. We could probably seat 12 fairly (*wince*) comfortably and all be facing each other. NOT BAD for an apartment-like layout!!!

I'm not thrilled that the laundry is IN the downstairs bathroom, but that's an inconvenience only rarely, honestly.

The stairs are steep and narrow, though carpeted (traction...?) and well-lit, and there is a good hand rail all the way, thankfully!

Since the kitchen has no windows (shared wall) I can't watch birds out a kitchen window. :( Makes me sad. We *might* do some bird feeding off the deck out back, which we can see from only our bedroom.... Sounds like a lot of work for not much pay-off after the awesome bird-watching we had at our previous place. That might be a closed, pleasantly-remembered chapter.

The deck isn't off the kitchen, so now we grill out front in the driveway, 'cause the garage is right off the dining room/kitchen. It's okay, just not our preference. We have dined on our deck already, tho', twice, and it works great, just a little farther to carry stuff, but ... small price.

The master bedroom is small for a master bedroom. BUT everything did fit! Queen size beds, two night stands, mirrored dresser, my desk, and a hutch for Jeremy's books/fan/launch pad. We have about 24" to walk around the bed. It's enough! Plus, the closet in this room makes up for it. -ha

N's room isn't an official bedroom b/c it has no window. :( In a fire we have to pray she could get out of her bedroom to the egress window in Elaine's room. I pray to not ever have a fire, at all. (chest tightens, blood runs cold)

No pets, period. Yet, is this really a con...? Maybe it's a blessing!! We 'did the dog thing' for a while, and it was a good experience. But none of us seems to miss it. Our schedule is so much more flexible, we have more money, I have much more time (Jabba's haircuts!), the children don't miss letting him out and in all the time, and I have been able to expand their "Household Service" list ('chores') to include some new tasks since they don't have the dog-related ones to do! The kitchen/dining room now gets swept most every day, for example! How can this be a bad thing?? lol [We felt so great about the new home we found for Jabba, with Brian and Melissa, who live only a few blocks from the new house, so we get to go visit Jabba when we go to their house! :) Is that going to be the closest I come, for a number of years, to being a grandparent, I wonder? Get to 'go visit' him and then leave him and all his care there with Melissa?? lol]

Are we not richly blessed?? This house is a precious gift from God; I pray it continues to be, and that we get to stay in it long.