Our House

We're so excited to be in our house! It is a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath colonial on .18 acres with a kitchen peninsula, a fireplace, a one-car garage, a mostly finished basement with a huge laundry room, a master suite with a walk-in closet and skylight, and a fenced in yard. It's just great to have a 4 bedroom- it makes a big difference. Also to have the living and family room on the same floor is something we've never had and we really are happy to finally get that. Another thing that has always eluded us is a master big enough to fit our furniture-Rog insisted on a king when we got married and kings aren't very practical in most bedrooms. In this house we have room to have both nightstands beside the bed! We're also enjoying how the kitchen is open to the family room- the back of the house is so light and airy. Roger is loving the garage and he has been obsessively mowing the grass. I think he appreciates how manageable it is compared to the acre plus we had in Finksburg. We're still unpacking and disagreeing on what goes where; I want the playroom on the first floor so I can supervise but Rog feels like the kids are loud and should be banished to the basement. I want all of my bill stuff on the first floor in the kitchen desk so that the spare bedroom can just be for guests, but Rog doesn't want office stuff in his face. And don't ask me where the kids' crafts, easel, my sewing machines, my drafting table, and the piano are going yet! I'm also having a hard time arranging the kitchen b/c I'm a drawer person and this is a cabinet kitchen. I'm 5'2 as well so I like everything to be within reach, which is not possible. We'll figure it out. Roger has done alot of painting because the walls were really dirty. He's discovered the "OOPs" paint at Lowe's and Home Depot that costs $5/gallon. He's had pretty good results for the most part. Other than that I am in no hurry to decorate. I'm still burnt out from the Finksburg house. I've been rendered unable to make any design decisions! We need to get curtains but I'm so indecisive and not really happy with what is available in the stores so I think I may end up just making them. It's just hard, you know, to like something enough to buy it when you know you won't be able to change it for a long time.
For the house being a bank-owned purchase, it was in pretty decent shape. We've mostly had just plumbing issues due to the winterization while the house was unoccupied. We have had some AC issues but it seems to be taken care of now. The house also needed a deep cleaning, so thanks to everyone who's been helping with that!
Our neighbor explained that we used to have a beautiful patio under the deck and the previous owners took all the bricks, removed the shrubbery in the front yard, and put the bricks down in front of the porch. Weird. So we have like 4 trees- 2 gingkos, a flowering plum with purple leaves, and a pin oak in the back, and that's it. We'll have to change that at some point...We're really just counting our blessings to have found this great place!