Our New House

About a year after getting married, Stacy and I finally got fed up with our apartment and started house hunting. After about 1.5 months of aggressive looking and praying, we found one. On 17 July 98 we took possession of our new home. We took some time to remodel the kitchen, and moved in 1 Aug 98.

Here's the specs:

• Built in 1892
• 3 bedrooms (11x23' master BR), 1.5 baths
• ~900 ft^2 per level. Two full floors plus a full (unfinished) basement and an attic that could be finished into a playroom.
• 9' ceilings on the first floor
• Fireplace
• Good carpet with wood floors underneath
• Newer copper pipes, furnace, water heater, and roof
• 2-stall, electrified, detached garage that opens onto a side street
• Gorgeous oak in the back yard that's nearly as old as the house (4' diameter trunk) and was professionally trimmed ever year. It took zero damage in last winter's storms.
• Termite, furnace, and water heater inspections were made every year
• 14x30' living room with a fireplace
• Lots of big windows (good light, poor insulation)
• Needs a tall fence to give the back yard some privacy from 48th
• Kitchen is functional, but really ugly. We want to remodel this before we move in.

All that for about $100-200 more per month than we had been paying for rent.

I can't wait to get my hands on that garage. It'll be so nice to be able to get a vehicle inside and still have plenty of room for a good, lighted workshop. I'm already planning how I'm going to layout my workshop.

As part of our kitchen remodeling, we decided to upgrade all the electrical wiring and add lots of low-voltage wiring. Read about it here.

CURRENT STATUS: The dishwasher got installed Saturday and Monday night, which makes the kitchen now fully functional. The window trim got installed last week and had the final coat of paint applied last night (24 Nov). The bathroom door trim was installed Monday and had the first coat of paint applied last night. The toe kicks were put on the cabinets last night to cover up the huge gaps caused by our uneven floor. The last of the cabinet doors got their last coat of pain last night, and will be installed tonight so everything looks good for the family over Thanskgiving. What remains? The toe kicks need to be painted. The end of the sink cabinet needs to be covered with some 1/4" plywood that we thought we had enough of earlier. The entry and basement door frames need to be stripped and repainted, and the baseboards need to be installed and painted. The bathroom and basement doors need to be stripped and repainted, but we're not sure what color yet.