The Adventure Begins

First, some background:

For the last 1.5 years, Hubby and I have been house-hunting. We’ve both actively looked online and watched the papers. We’ve done many drive-bys and attended numerous open houses. The search has been a roller-coaster of emotions. First comes the excitement and uphill climb of finding something that “might be the one” only to suffer the screaming down-hill effect of the realization that there are major deal-breakers that make this house, in fact, NOT “the one”.

The last time we house-hunted was in 2001 when we were preparing to move from Lima to Westerville. We were sort of in a hurry because we just had a summer to get moved before school started, so we weren’t really too picky, and we weren’t thinking in terms of buying a house we’d be in for more than 5 years or so. Our main goal was just to get here. We also didn’t know much at all about the local market, nor about how to buy a house because we’d never done it before. Luckily we had a very good realtor to guide us, and we ended up in a decent house where we’ve been fairly comfortable for almost 11 years.

Since then, we’ve watched way too many hours of shows on TV: everything from This Old House on PBS to the big house shows on HGTV like House Hunters, Holmes on Homes and Holmes Inspection, and lots of shows featuring remodels and renovations. We now know just enough to be dangerous to ourselves and to the real estate market!

Last week, along with another screaming ride down on the roller-coaster of happiness into the valley of despair, came the realization that what we thought we wanted and needed in a dream house really might not be out there – at least not within a comfortable driving distance of school. Not to be deterred by that realization though, and pushed to find a solution by my tearful declaration that I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life without my piano, Hubby sprang to the challenge and found the perfect end to our house hunt. It was under our very noses! “The house around the corner is for sale,” he proudly declared! So? “So, we buy it!” Um…. Yeah….? “Yeah, and we live in BOTH houses!!!” WHAT? “Seriously, I’ve got it all figured out…” He then proceeded to spend the next half hour reading to me his list of reasons and explaining that this was really a very good idea. He was right! It is a BRILLIANT idea!

We contacted our realtor and said we wanted to see the “House of Interest”, and an appointment was set up. As we walked into this house with our realtor (the same realtor who helped us in 2001), he asked if we were interested in this for comparison purposes. It does, after all, have almost exactly the same floor plan as the house we live in now, so that was a very natural question. Hubby looked at me, and I looked at him as if to say, “it was YOUR idea, YOU tell him”! We explained why we thought it would make sense to buy it – and live in it – and our realtor was amazingly supportive. He could have told us we were nuts – that this just isn’t done – that no one he knows has ever done this! But he didn’t do any of those things. He took it all in stride and was totally non-judgemental.

That was on Thursday night. On Saturday morning, we signed an offer on the house, and by 1:30 pm on Sunday, an agreement had been reached. We close on March 23, just in time to have the keys in ours hands by Spring Break!

And so, the great adventure begins! It is an experiment in dual-house living. It is an experiment in coordination and planning. One priority is to keep this adventure from over-taking our lives to the point where it interferes with our ability to do what we need to do (or to remain sane)! Our skeptics may speculate that we are really splitting up, and this is just a nice way to do that. Not so! If anything we will have to work more closely on this than on anything we’ve ever done in 30 years of marriage. We are looking at it as a “project” that we are embarking on together, and we plan on enjoying every step of the process. This is about enriching our lives by giving ourselves the space we’ve needed. We’ve felt very much “pinched” for the last 11 years – into a house that is really too small to fully meet our needs. We have had to sacrifice some of our interests due to lack of space. No more! We will now have more than 2500 square feet of living space: 6 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 dining rooms and 2 kitchens, a 3 car garage and a glorious, spacious, well-built 3-season room! It isn’t really all that different than having a primary home and a vacation home – ours just happen to be within walking distance of each other.

I intend to blog about the progress of our adventure so that others might share in our joys. Perhaps some readers may realize that this is the perfect solution for them as well. Stay tuned…. The next step is the inspection! Since it probably won’t be Mike Holmes doing the inspecting, we will be looking over his shoulder until he swats us like noisy flies!