Woohoo! Closed on my new house yesterday morning! While I haven’t moved in its hard for me to believe that its actually MY HOUSE now. The wife and I were so excited when we left the realty office we stopped at Home Depot just get some extra keys made and ended up buying a new grill for the backyard.
Its a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch with a den with a fireplace and 2 car garage. We don’t have kids, but other than the main bedroom the other rooms will be a guest room, a “cat room” (meaning a room for their litterboxes and storage) and my “man cave”. Theres also an outdoor storage shed in the backyard, which has a bench swing under some shady trees.
I went out today just to get some stuff to plant my vegetable garden in the backyard today, but a priotirt for me is to plant some grass seeds. the yard is in good shape for being unlived in for so long, but I want to get rid of the dry patches and make it all green. Man, I am so excited to be moving in there the hassle of packing up is lessened. After all of these years of haulung my stuff all across the world I finally have a house that I can say is mine!
That was our feeling too. Followed a few months later by a different feeling, when the furnace conked out and we didn’t have a landlord to call.
The bench swing and shady trees sound awesome. Good luck with the new grass – we keep trying but I think we sow at the wrong time or something, because nothing happens.
Your zeal for projects around the house will wax and wane - more wax at the beginning - but something will always come up that sounds like an exciting proposition, right out of the blue. Cleaning the garage, weeding the flower bed, fixing the paint on the baseboards. It’s amazing how much mundane stuff like that becomes fun when you’re bored - and it’s YOUR house!
Congratulations!
Just be careful when you reach over to call the apartment manager to come and fix something and then realize…
It is so much fun to move into your own house!
Word of advice - take your time “filling” the place - trust me when I say it fills itself very quickly. I remember thinking we had oodles of space for clothes and kitchen stuff - ha! Every square inch of the garage and closets and kitchen cabinets seem to fill up magically on their own in a very short time. The “cat room” and “man cave” will be a nice beige color for a long time (aka stacks of brown moving boxes) as you move and put something there “for the time being”.
Also - regarding the gardening. Before you are stupid like we were, take a drive through the neighborhood to see what is growing - and more importantly - what is NOT growing. In other words, don’t try to plant palm trees in Michigan, or try to plant lilacs in Nevada. Some things simply don’t do well in other environments, even though the local nurseries will sell you ANYTHING you want. (They ain’t stupid - just the newbies who buy from them are!) We reserved a special place for our orange tree in the backyard of our house here in Las Vegas…even found a place that would sell us one - and then, thankfully, suddenly noticed that there was not a single house in 50 blocks that had an orange tree. (Too cold here in the winter - duh!) Luckily we figured that out before plunking down the $200 they were asking for the tree back then. My SO did, however, spend at least that amount over the years, desperately trying to get hibiscus to grow in the backyard - to no avail. (Needs some shade, of which we have none there…)
But to be totally honest - there are few things more fun than buying that first house - enjoy and, seriously, take your time before you go off on any tangents; relax and get the feel of the place first. Will save you lots of money and time and effort.
