On Saturday, Tony loaded up his car and made the long drive out to McKinney, TX. According to Google Maps, this should have taken him 16 hours. The way Tony drives, I highly doubt it did :) He drove until he was exhausted and spent the night in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The next day, he got up and drove 4 more hours to his hotel.
Although I am glad he is positioned to do his job more efficiently being in town, we are missing him a lot right now. I have decided that the women's lib movement did not take in to account doing double the responsibilities. I cant help but cuss every time I haul the trash out or do some other "boy" job. Uriah asks about his Dada at least twice in a day. Today he asked if Dada was sleeping :)
While Tony is working, I am left here with my little one to pack up the rest of the house. Needless to say this is not going as quickly as it would with a toddler under foot. To top it off, through no fault of their own, all of my people are not able to help! My husband is in Texas, my parents are out of the country, my mother in law has been sick for a week, thus making my father in law a carrier, my best friend just had a baby, ect...Hopefully by this week, my parents will be back and my in laws will be well. We can use all the help we can get!
I digress, this post is about our future house! In order to look forward, let me tell you a little about our current (not for much longer) house. Our house is 2300 square feet, but we also have a partially finished basement with another 1000 sq ft. We have an open kitchen family room combo that we love. Our rooms are generously sized. We have hard woods on the main level of the house, and recently finished renovating our master bathroom. This house has huge closets for its age, two pantries, storage room in the basement, attic, and even closets in the bathrooms. Overall, we still love this house and it works pretty well for us. If we were to have stayed, we probably would have built a shed. Our garage always seems to be bursting at the seams. The only other negative was our small master bath, but at least we had one!
In Texas, they do not build basements due to the water table height and extremely dry soil. Apparently, people in Texas water their foundations and their flowers! Because of this, it is difficult to determine what size house we are wanting. Our current house is quite large, but it is what we are used to. We realize it is a big house, but we had planned for it to be our forever house. One our kid (and any future kids) could grow up in. We are again looking for a long term home, even if it stretches us a little more. Every time you move their are real estate fees, moving expenses, closing costs, taxes, and don't get me started on the pain and suffering! To minimize another move we are looking at about 3300 square feet and up. Tony thinks the bigger the better, but I am open to something smaller as long as it felt open.
Tony and I are open to something that needs some updating for the right price. We are willing to put in new flooring, new counter tops, new appliances, paint, minor bath remodels, ect...but not at the top of our budget! Originally we wanted a house that was done, but with our budget I think we better get used to rolling up our sleeves. Honestly, I would probably paint every room anyway.
We need 4 bedrooms, and 3.5 bathrooms.We currently have 2.5, but we are hoping to use that extra bath as a suite for our guests. We figure if we have guests, they will be staying at least a week and we want them to be comfortable. It also allows our parents the option to snow bird with us, something we would love!
You may have heard the expression everything is bigger in Texas. The only exception to this rule is their back yards! I have been shocked with how small the back yards are. I don't consider our current lot to be very large, but to be fair it opens up to a common area so it feels bigger. We are adjusting to the smaller lots there.
The rest of the wish list is just that wishes... we would love to have a pool! It never made sense in Indiana, where we could only enjoy it a few months a year, but in Texas is sounds wonderful. Tony only wants a pool if it has a spa too. I would love a three car garage, because ours at home is bursting with tools, trash, ect... I don't see this as getting better with Uriah's outdoor toys. Tony says this is not as important, because parking in the garage is not as critical when it doesn't snow. While I agree with this, it does rain and gets hotter than blazes in the summer! It is not a deal breaker, but let's just say I will not be the one parking outside :)
The hunt continues...Tony found a house he really liked on Sunday. He and I used an app called Tango so we could see it through our cell phones. It looked interesting and was a really unique lot and location. When our Realtor called the listing agent there were already three offers! This just proves I need to get my butt down there so we can move quickly. This begs a question, would you let your spouse pick a house for you sight unseen?
No comments:
Post a Comment