Our New House

Well, we’ve been here a little more than five months now, so I’m almost past the point of calling it new. It definitely still feels new. If you’ve followed me for a while, you might remember a post from 2018 called eight things I love about my house. It was fun going back to read that and remind myself. I still loved all those things when we left it.

You may also wonder why we moved into a new house, which I explained in a post earlier this year – Never Say Never. The new house process is both fun and stressful.

It’s fun to pick out things but stressful when they tell you to pick out something else because they can’t get what you originally chose. This happened with our flooring and our floor tile. But now, we love what we have so it didn’t really matter.

Some of the problems we’ve had are starting to seem so long ago. Our first week here was quite interesting. And we had two houses for 11 days, which doesn’t sound like much but it had its pluses and minuses. (I’ll post about the house selling process sometime later.) In the beginning, you just want to live normally again and wonder if you ever will. But after five months, we have reached that point.

We woke up on our first day to no hot water. Some switch kept turning off. Tim manually flipped it every day but we finally had to get a new water heater.

Then, we started seeing water on the floor in our mudroom, coming from the mechanical room. Turned out, no one had changed the furnace filter, which was totally saturated with dirt/dust and was causing the air conditioner to freeze up and then melt all over the floor. It ruined the flooring in that room as well as some of the baseboards. We had to run fans and wait for more flooring because there wasn’t enough left over.

I have to give kudos to our builder, however. They were very responsive and took our concerns seriously. Other than a few minor things, everything has been addressed.

It took a while for it to feel like home to me. I felt like I was living in someone else’s house, kind of like when we go to Florida for several weeks. For one thing, we went three weeks plus with no furniture. By that I mean, no living room, sunroom, sitting room furniture, or bar stools. We had to use the chairs Tim had picked out for his music room upstairs in the sunroom to have something to relax on. You can only sit on folding and dining chairs so much.

We had the grandkids here during that time and ended up getting bean bag chairs for them to use. It actually worked out well and they loved using them. Now we have to figure out what to do with those!!

We finally picked out rugs which make it seem a little more homey. We starting hanging art on the wall. I had to focus on the kitchen which meant my craft room took longer to pull together. It still needs pictures on the wall. The office is functional but not what I would call decorated. I’m fine with that, as I’d rather wait until I know exactly what I need before I do anything big.

Tim did a wonderful job in the garage. Without a basement, he had to figure out how to use it for storage. Unlike our last garage, this one has three extra feet on each side, making it possible to store a lot. We used the shelving from our basement out there and he’s organized all the tubs and even replaced some of the boxes with see-through tubs. He had our cars in the garage in that first week, which is remarkable.

He also organized our large storage room upstairs, for things we don’t want to store in the garage. Unfortunately, he got there first, so he’s using it for a lot of his “personal” stuff!! But I get to use the bedroom upstairs for a lot of my extra storage, so I guess we’re even.

What do I like?

• The size. We went from 2100 square feet to 3300. I know that sounds like an obscene amount of space, but it’s really not. It mainly means the rooms we already had are larger.
• The openness. Our last house was open, but it always felt a little cramped, which goes along with the first item. We can have people here and not be on top of each other. We have more room for a dining table, and our living spaces are all together, so we don’t have to use the separate space downstairs like we did before.
• The colors. Our last house was dark – cabinets, wood floor, darker gray walls. It always felt cozy but still dark. This house has lots of big windows, lighter color floor, lighter cabinets and wall color. This house was made for sunshiny days.

I thought I could tell you what my favorite rooms are but I’m finding that I like all of them!! If I had to pick one, however, I’d pick the sitting room. It’s really like a little sunroom and I love the furniture we picked out for it.

Are you ready for some pictures? I was going to wait until everything was perfect and decided that would never happen, so some of these pictures show a little clutter. They also show Christmas decorations!! But you’ll get the idea. (I don’t know why the pictures are fuzzy at the bottom. The originals don’t look that way.)

First, is what I’ll call the Master Suite. I’ve also included Tim’s bathroom, which would typically be a guest bathroom since it’s right off the foyer.

I’ll call this set the living area.

Kitchen. I love the large island and the double ovens.

We have a nice foyer/entryway that highlights the red cabinet and the picture above it. When it’s not Christmas, we have a big original piece of art there, that wasn’t easy to see in our old house. The red cabinet was my mom’s.

These pictures show our mudroom and laundry room, which are right next to each other. This is also the entrance to the upper level. For such a small space, the mudroom has five doors!!

These rooms are primarily mine. As I’ve said above, the office looks a little hodgepodge, but I love my craft room. I’m finally getting to spend some time in there and everything is much handier.

The upstairs. We couldn’t survive without this.

Outside. We have a large patio with wooded eastern views. Part of why we chose this lot. I’m also showing how close the neighbors are. No one lives there yet, but soon. A lot has changed since we moved in.

That’s the grand tour. Next time, I’ll tell you more about our selling experience and what I wish I could change about our new house. Don’t worry, it’s a short list!!

Oh, by the way, I still hate moving!!