Hiya!

The House!

After more than a year of practically begging people to take our hundreds of thousands of dollars, we finally found and bought a fantastic home in Elm Grove. Yahoo! I actually saw this property at an open house five or six months ago, but at the time we weren't really considering 3-bedroom homes and it was *way* overpriced. Fast forward to another open house in March plus a mega price drop and the three of us walked into the place and immediately had 'the feelings'. We had our agent schedule a private showing for the next day and wrote an offer the day after that. We lowballed the sellers but the property has been on the market since June of '09 (can you imagine?) so like a World Series of Poker team, we played our trump card of being able to close practically overnight. Voila! They took our offer without any negotiation and as of April 14 we were officially property tax payers again.

We have some minor and some major plans in mind for this place but the layout allows for lots of flexibility and space which is the most important thing. There also isn't anything that needs to be fixed like, yesterday, which is a nice change of pace from every other property we had seen.

The first floor has an entryway, formal living room, formal dining room, family room, kitchen, and one of the least attractive half baths you've ever seen. There is also a screened-in porch (which will one day fulfill its destiny of becoming a mud room) and a two and a half car attached garage. Attached! This will surely be the little luxury of my life.

The second floor has a cute little Dutch door and airing porch, two bedrooms, a guest/kid full bathroom, and a master bedroom and en suite full bath. The lot a lot larger than we're used to and Matt is super excited about slogging it out with the push mower for another year.

The basement is a huge blank slate and will one day house a sweet rec room and probably another bedroom. It's also roughed in for another full bath so I'm sure we'll add that too...someday.

After we closed we had our first family dinner at the house, and about an hour later the decorating and remodeling commenced.

She is crazy for this bench in the breakfast nook. We're assuming it's buh bye high chair.


Cheers!

We're painting our room, GG's room, and the family room right away. Surely you realize in Maio-land that does not mean just slapping a roller on the wall. Oh no, it means two coats on the ceiling, primer + final on the walls, and all windows and trim. Not an insignificant task. Thank goodness we've got our Crackerjack decorator on the scene!!

KJM Painting, rockin' the house

Here's a little photo-tour of the rest of the place:

From the street

Ginormous garage. Lurve it.

Darn right accepted offer

Entryway looking upstairs


Formal living room, to the right of the entry way


Formal dining room to the left of the entry way (staging furniture has since been moved)


Close up of the molding original from 1938. So cool.


Dining room and family room - view from the entry way


Family room built ins. The right one is storage, the left one is a wet bar.

More family room, with a door to the deck and backyard


Little view of the kitchen from the breakfast nook


Top of the stairs - Dutch door and airing porch


Spare room


GG's room (we couldn't get Ralphie out of there the first few visits due to terror of the hardwood floors. Brilliant as always)


Upstairs bath #1


Master en suite bath


Starting construction to install new fixtures and fans


Dad, I make these safety glasses look good


Buh??

We're officially moving in next weekend and the weekend after that will be spent getting any last boxes out of the Stallis house and all of the stuff out of storage. It'll be like a treasure hunt unearthing the stuff we haven't seen in months. Our goal is to have the house looking semi-lived in by the time the first mortgage payment is due June 1. Having already made about 75 trips to Target, I know we're well on our way. Home sweet home!