Houses

Scott and I live in a smallish house--about 1200 square feet--but it is plenty of room for the two of us. We are a little space challenged in that when we married, we each lived in a 1200 square house, had a garage sale, and merged the rest of our stuff into his house (and a small storage shed). Things we love about the house:

• It is really cheap: our escrowed mortgage (including insurance and taxes) is about $340.
• We have an awesome yard. We are on the corner lot, have a lot of room (but not too much that you can't mow it in about an hour)
• We've made the outside pretty. In the last couple summers we've put in garden edging, planted flowers and veggies, gotten a COOL Hawkeyes windmill, a fire bowl, and a shed so we can stop storing the lawn mower in the basement (although the shed is still to be put up, so right now it's just a big plastic covered pallet...)
• We have a pear tree.
• We've been making cosmetic improvements on the inside. Scott had nicely painted the living room and bedroom before, and we have together repainted the kitchen, bathroom, hung curtains, and put down new flooring in the kitchen.

Things we don't like about the house:

• There isn't any place for a large group of people to sit and eat together. We can get 4 in the kitchen, but it's tight. We've had more a couple times, and have had to put up a couple card tables in the living room, move all the plants out of the way, and improvise chairs.
• There is very ugly wallpaper in the spare bedroom and study (ok, Scott isn't bothered by it, but I think it's very ugly).
• When we eventually have a kid or two, we won't all fit very well.
• No garage. No storage (soon to be somewhat rectifies with the shed). No good place to store tools or work on projects. Can't even craft except in the living room.
• Closet space. Half my clothes are in our bedroom, and the other half are in the other room.
• Storage in general. I may can pears, but then where will I put the cans???
• Only one (very small) bathroom

Every once in a while we talk about buying a bigger house, and even look at places online. Since Scott will soon be working in mahaska Co. and east, and I am still going to Des Moines, it makes sense to stay where we are, right in the middle. And the cost of house in Oskaloosa is way better than Pella or anywhere else. We say that we should definitely sell our house before we buy a new one, yet we have made no effort to actually do that, and I keep thinking to myself, "what if we find the perfect house, and miss it because our house isn't sold, and we don't want dual mortgages?"

We saw a really great looking house online the other day. It is 3300 square feet, but with a low budget billing amount. It is an old house with a new addition, so i still get my "old house" fix. It has 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths. Scott asked what we would do with all the rooms...

• We can have a dining room where our whole families can come over and we can sit around one table and eat.
• We can have a living room where you can just sit and read, and a family room with a tv. and people could do both things AT THE SAME TIME.
• A bedroom for us, a room or 2 for kids, and a guest room.
• A room where we can fix stuff, paint stuff, make crafts, paint cupboard doors, put new seats on chairs...Honestly, I would love, love, love to just have a place where I could buy old ugly things at garage sales or junk stores, and them make them into cool and beautiful things. Things we could keep, give away, or sell.

I guess if we seriously want to look at this home, we should start getting our house sell-worthy.