My dream house...sorta

It looks as though Nate and I will be taking the big financial plunge sometime this year: buying a house. However, there will be no combing listings and touring house after house only to find our favorite is out of our price range. We already have one in mind. The location is perfect. It sits right across the driveway from the barn where the cows are milked. Nate’s already dreaming about the day he can walk out the door and right into the barn instead of to a cold truck.

Sizewise, it could be a little bigger. It’s two bedrooms, but has an unfinished basement and room to add on. But the location is so convenient, we really couldn’t ask for more. Well, except walls. And floors. And plumbing. For the past few years, the house has sat empty, except for whatever birds or mice may have invaded. I better go a little farther back. It was built sometime in the 50s or 60s, but separated from the farm building when Nate’s dad bought them in the 80s. When the owner died, a relative bought it with the intention of renovating it. It was gutted and re-roofed, but until this winter, that’s about as far as it got.

A little birdie must have told the owner Nate and I want to move closer to the farm because he’s suddenly stepped the remodeling into high gear. It doesn’t look much different on the outside, but the interior is undergoing quite a renovation. Basically, when it’s done, everything will be new except the poured concrete basement. New walls and insulation are going up on the inside and a pile of sheet rock sits in the kitchen where the island will eventually stand. After the interior is completed this winter, the exterior will get a facelift. New siding is all ready to be put up as soon as spring hits.

The good part about knowing we will buy it is we get to offer a lot of input on what goes into the house. I’ve been paging through home improvement magazines looking for ideas. The bad news is there’s so many decisions to make. For example, we need to decide soon on what kind of flooring we’d like in the kitchen, hall and bathroom. Linoleum, vinyl, laminate, tile? It’s a tough choice, and I’ll be stuck with whatever I choose until it wears out. And depending on what kind I get, that may be a long time.

The cabinet builder would like to get started on the cabinets soon, so we need to decide on those as well. The kitchen plan looks good, so now we’ll need to pick a wood and style. Then it will be trim, carpet and many more tedious choices. There’s also a small room, larger than a closet but too small for a bed, that we’re not quite sure what to do with. Maybe a laundry room or office, but who knows. When its sold to us, the walls will be primed, but we’ll pick the paint colors. Since I’ve lived in rentals for all my adult life, colored paint is a foreign concept from basic white.

But all the work should be worth it when we can wake up to the twitter of song birds instead of the neighbor guy peeling out of our shared driveway in the middle of the night. Not to mention Nate and I may finally be able to eat meals together.