Lots of changes Part 2
And we bought a house in Florida, and will be moving there in about 2 months.
In June, I went to Florida and spent 2 full days looking at houses with a real estate agent. We looked at about a dozen properties, but ended up with the house I'd originally contacted her about. We'd written it off originally, because when I called her in April, she said there was an offer in on it (it was a short sale), but by the time I made hotel and flight reservations for June, it was back on the market.
Bobby stayed home to take care of the critters, and I went armed with my old laptop, my video camera and plenty of tapes, my small digital camera and plenty of batteries, and 2 dozen copies of a form I'd created for each property (yes, Annie, it's Agel being Agel). We hashed out the pros and cons of each of the other properties (too small a house, too small a yard, too old, too far from civilization), but realized that the first one was the one for us. That Friday, we called the agent, submitted our bid, and waited.
It took over three weeks for the offer to be accepted, but it finally was. Built in 2006, it's got three bedrooms (the master has a walk-in closet as well as a small sitting area that has its own door to the lanai at the back of the house), two bathrooms (one in the master suite, one between the second and third bedrooms) and a two-car garage, and a gorgeous kitchen that opens to the great room, a laundry room that opens into the garage (no more lugging laundry up and down stairs to the basement -- yay!), and a dining room alcove that's the perfect size for our current kitchen table and Bennington Pine wall units that my parents gave us as a wedding present nearly 30 years ago. The table will need 4 new chairs (we have two wheeled chairs that we bought at the same the same time as the table, but which are from a different set -- we'll use them in the breakfast nook and will get a new small round table to go with them, which we'll place in front of the door that opens out onto the lanai. We've got a breakfast bar between the kitchen sink and the great room -- we'll get a couple of barstools to put there. Bedrooms two and three are mine -- one for a media room (which will double as a spare bedroom -- we'll get a sofa bed), and one for the birds. I'll need a new desk/hutch for the media room, and a smaller one for the bird room (so I can do what I need to do when we have company). Each room will have satellite access and a TV; my newer laptop will go into the bird room and the desktop unit will be in the media room. There's carpeting through the whole house, and I want to have it replaced with tile for the bird room.
I saved the best for last: it's on 1.14 acres! It's square footage is over 50,000 -- over ten times the size of our property now. No pool yet, and we need to set up a dog run -- the property is fenced, but with vinyl three-rail fencing that all four could easily get under. But there are two gorgeous live oaks on the property (as well as a couple of small trees that need to be removed because they'll interfere with the eventual location of the pool and patio; the shrubs around the foundation of the front of the house and alongside the garage need to be removed -- they're a haven for snakes and creepy-crawlies).
And now, we get to move. And I don't want to. Oh, I want to live in the new house -- it's the actual moving I don't even want to contemplate. We're tossing stuff regularly -- and I know the garbagemen hate us. And we won't be able to paint or do the tile in the bird room until we get there -- which will be a royal pain.
In June, I went to Florida and spent 2 full days looking at houses with a real estate agent. We looked at about a dozen properties, but ended up with the house I'd originally contacted her about. We'd written it off originally, because when I called her in April, she said there was an offer in on it (it was a short sale), but by the time I made hotel and flight reservations for June, it was back on the market.
Bobby stayed home to take care of the critters, and I went armed with my old laptop, my video camera and plenty of tapes, my small digital camera and plenty of batteries, and 2 dozen copies of a form I'd created for each property (yes, Annie, it's Agel being Agel). We hashed out the pros and cons of each of the other properties (too small a house, too small a yard, too old, too far from civilization), but realized that the first one was the one for us. That Friday, we called the agent, submitted our bid, and waited.
It took over three weeks for the offer to be accepted, but it finally was. Built in 2006, it's got three bedrooms (the master has a walk-in closet as well as a small sitting area that has its own door to the lanai at the back of the house), two bathrooms (one in the master suite, one between the second and third bedrooms) and a two-car garage, and a gorgeous kitchen that opens to the great room, a laundry room that opens into the garage (no more lugging laundry up and down stairs to the basement -- yay!), and a dining room alcove that's the perfect size for our current kitchen table and Bennington Pine wall units that my parents gave us as a wedding present nearly 30 years ago. The table will need 4 new chairs (we have two wheeled chairs that we bought at the same the same time as the table, but which are from a different set -- we'll use them in the breakfast nook and will get a new small round table to go with them, which we'll place in front of the door that opens out onto the lanai. We've got a breakfast bar between the kitchen sink and the great room -- we'll get a couple of barstools to put there. Bedrooms two and three are mine -- one for a media room (which will double as a spare bedroom -- we'll get a sofa bed), and one for the birds. I'll need a new desk/hutch for the media room, and a smaller one for the bird room (so I can do what I need to do when we have company). Each room will have satellite access and a TV; my newer laptop will go into the bird room and the desktop unit will be in the media room. There's carpeting through the whole house, and I want to have it replaced with tile for the bird room.
I saved the best for last: it's on 1.14 acres! It's square footage is over 50,000 -- over ten times the size of our property now. No pool yet, and we need to set up a dog run -- the property is fenced, but with vinyl three-rail fencing that all four could easily get under. But there are two gorgeous live oaks on the property (as well as a couple of small trees that need to be removed because they'll interfere with the eventual location of the pool and patio; the shrubs around the foundation of the front of the house and alongside the garage need to be removed -- they're a haven for snakes and creepy-crawlies).
And now, we get to move. And I don't want to. Oh, I want to live in the new house -- it's the actual moving I don't even want to contemplate. We're tossing stuff regularly -- and I know the garbagemen hate us. And we won't be able to paint or do the tile in the bird room until we get there -- which will be a royal pain.