We just watched Isle of Dogs and it was one of the most Wes Andersony things I’ve ever seen. Not appropriate for little kids, but good for older ones. There were some scenes we all went “URRRGGGG” about, like cutting up still-alive seafood, and pulling out something stuck in someone’s head (the person in question was okay) (both times) (and all animated, not real-life). Dear heaven. But really good, especially if you like Wes Anderson films, which I mostly do.
Also a good movie for warming hearts toward dogs, which brings me to my next topic. A lot has been happening here. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Paul and I have been casually house-hunting for a couple of years. Nothing formal. Nothing decided. More like, let’s just scope out the sitch, just for fun. Just going to Open Houses or whatever, and then saying, “It’s nice, but not enough to motivate me to want to move” and/or “Sure, it’s good, but I don’t feel like I WANT it.” Subscribing to emails that let us know about new properties listed in our town. Etc.
We have lived in our current house for 17 years, and we bought it because in five months of searching, with me increasingly pregnant with our second child, it was the third of three houses in our area our agent could show us in our one-income range, and one of the others had water damage and only two bedrooms, and the other one had three bedrooms but an open concept (toddler access to EVERYTHING) and a terrible rickety add-on and the kind of stairs where a child could slip between steps and no real yard. So we bought this one, which had a terrible kitchen and an appalling bathroom and was so smoke-damaged by improper woodstove ventilation that you could see the outlines of what used to be on the walls—but it wasn’t about loving the house, it was about choosing the only sensible/possible thing that came along, and this one had three bedrooms and a good yard and potential for building stuff into the unfinished basement. And good thing we did, because I think we were the actual literal last people in our area to buy a house before the housing market went WHOOSHING up, and then soon after that there were condos selling for what we paid for our house, and then there were condos selling for half-again more than what we paid for our house.
Anyway, this house has served us well, thanks in large part to the heroic efforts of my Handy Supreme dad who, when we got Surprise Twins, added two small bedrooms and a multi-purpose room and a bathroom to the unfinished basement, and replaced a bunch of the squirrel-gnawed 1960’s windows that used to get a thick layer of ice on the INSIDE of them every winter, and knew how to replace the outlets that started SHOOTING SPARKS (!!!) shortly after we moved in, and quietly transferred over from his house to our house a bunch of shelves he’d built, and so forth.
And the thing is, now I DO love the house. But I didn’t mind Just Looking at other houses, because I felt like we didn’t get our fair share of Looking back when we WERE looking, and looking is fun. Here is the problem: Looking eventually led to Finding. But now that it has been Found, I have had multiple panicky weepy fits about Not Wanting To Move, Why Would We Want To Move, I Love This House, I Planned To Die in This House or Else in a Nursing Home Directly From This House, etc., combined with Wanting The Other House and daydreaming about the other house and so forth.
It is an OLD house. It has horsehair plaster walls, which I had never heard of. It has a barn; Paul says there will not be mice, because the barn does not store food, but Twitter confirmed what I thought, which is that old barns Have Mice. It has a loft so large I would never have to throw anything out; I could easily store a fully-decorated-and-assembled fake Christmas tree if I wanted to. I could store a Toyota if I wanted to. TWO Toyotas. THREE.
The house is big. The house is old. The house has a steep driveway, when we specifically did not want a steep driveway. The house has weird bedrooms, where two of them can only be accessed by walking through other bedrooms. The house has some of those weird old-house closets that aren’t even wide enough for a hanger; they would basically fit a broom and dustpan, nothing else. The house has two or three (I lost count) Weird Old Little Rooms of Uncertain Usage (to be converted to SWISTLE LAIR((S))??). It is the kind of house where you open a door and there is another room, and another room, and two more rooms, and a little staircase off that room, and a loft off that staircase, and a barn off that loft, and another room off the barn, and you lose track of what is what and what is where. (This is what I have claimed to love/want.) There are not really enough bathrooms for the number of bedrooms, but we are used to that and it’s a half-bath more than what we have now; and the electricity has been updated so there are lots of outlets. Also there is central a/c, and a kitchen island that could double as a guest bed. It is within walking distance of many things it would be nice to be in walking distance of, such as a park and a library and a charming shop I never go to because the parking is impossible.
Here are my biggest concerns, which are two sides of the same concern:
1. We will move, and we will hugely regret it. We will THINK we will know what we are getting into, but we are accustomed to 1960 House Problems, and this will be 1820 House Problems, and we will be so sorry. Any new house comes with a batch of Unpleasant Surprises, but this will be more like The Money Pit, with hysterical laughter and a bathtub falling through a floor and us basically being in way over our heads and now we can’t get out and we can’t sell it to anyone else because no one else is as foolish as us.
2. We will move, and we will hugely regret it. We will THINK we don’t want to live in this house anymore, but it will turn out it was the perfect house for us, and we will miss it SO MUCH. We will PINE for it! But it will be too late! Someone else will own our dear little house!! We cannot have it back!! They can do anything they want to it!! I had a literal nightmare about this.
We talked about it many times and I cried four times and then we got pre-approved for a mortgage in case we decided we wanted to buy it. Paul, who has been my boyfriend for 23 years, does not try to talk me out of Fret Fits. Instead he tells me Stories. In this case, here is the Story he told me: “We will not sell our old house right away. We will keep it for several months to get it ready to sell. And if we hate the new house and wish we hadn’t bought it, we can move back. It would be an expensive lesson—but we would NOT be stuck forever in a house we hated, and at least it would let us get all the floors refinished and walls/ceilings painted.” (The floors have needed refinishing for a decade. The walls/ceilings have needed repainting for about as long. But how do you get that done when you live in the house?)
There is virtually no chance we would actually move back; that would be a story like when people get divorced and then remarry a few months later. But this is just a Story. It is for comfort. The purpose is to Soothe, not to Solve. It is a Story I can tell myself when I am panicking. It works. A fear of Not Getting the House has creeped in, and is nudging aside the Fear of Getting the House.
But he wants to move more than I do. And he wants this house more than I do. And so I have made two Bargains. First bargain: if we move (to ANY house), we get a housecleaner every other week, so that the house stays clean and does not descend into the grubby clutter that makes me feel as if it’s too late to hire a housecleaner. Second bargain: if we move (to THIS house, which has an invisible fence and a dog run), I get a Dog Option. We don’t necessarily get a dog—but I get the OPTION to get a dog, with limited veto power on his part in regards to breed and/or particular dog. I have wanted a dog for years, and he has said no to a dog for years—but it’s possible that I only say I want a dog because I know he’ll say no. My new friend Morgan ran into this with begging for a cat: it was safe to do so, because she knew her husband would say no, so she begged and wheedled for years in comfort. But then one day he said yes, and she didn’t know WHAT to do. So I didn’t bargain for a dog; I bargained for a dog OPTION. I get a dog if I want a dog.
My terms have been accepted. We’re looking at the house again tomorrow.
Weird bedrooms that can only be accessed through other bedrooms sounds like a fairly ideal set-up for adult children coming to visit with grandchildren…just saying.
(Or possibly adult children who need to live with their parents because the last affordable house in your area sold 17 years ago, depending how you feel about that kind of thing.)
It really seems GREAT. We’ve pictured making a three-room cluster into a guest suit, with like four sets of bunk beds in the middle room, flanked by two rooms set up for grown-ups: that way all the cousins can bunk together, and their parents are nearby, and the kids are the only ones who have to traipse through someone else’s room.
Has Paul watched Speechless? Because we started watching it tonight and in the first episode when some family members want to move and others don’t, the dad suggests not packing up the old house because they have a few weeks of overlap with the two houses and he suggests they could always move back.
We have lived in the House on the Corner for 31 yeas now, and still haven’t solved all the quirks that come with its 1927 provenance. That said, I love it beyond reason. It’s a Sears kit house! It has a built-in ironing board in the kitchen! It has a hole in the floor (repaired but visible) where the maid call button was! We found a bag of silver dollars under the stairs when we remodeled! Your new house will be so much more interesting than your current place, and I am so happy for you and your optional dog.
I have a built-in ironing board in my kitchen! I use it exclusively for melting together plastic beads on my kids’ craft projects but it fills me with ridiculous joy to have it there.
This house has a built-in ironing board!! It is in what we think USED to be the kitchen, which we think then got converted into a laundry room.
I can’t even tell you how much I love the built-in ironing board in my kitchen. And I almost never iron clothes! I was just remarking to my husband that it’s funny how we keep the iron next to the onions in the pantry.
OMG! So much simultaneous excitement and terror. I can’t wait to hear more.
I didn’t catch what you DO like about the house and why you want to move to it, except for a brief mention of a good location. 1820s fixer with all kinds of weird layout and lack of bathrooms doesn’t sound like a good house to me.
I think there was an article about how there are two kinds of people: the kinds of people who are like “YES! 1820s fixer with weird layout! I swoon at the charm!” and people to whom that sounds like a terrible idea. I am firmly in the first camp even though I absolutely understand the logic and well-reasoned position of how those things do not make a good house.
I love old houses, at least aesthetically. I love the giant loft. I love that the house is so big. I love weird bedrooms. I love Weird Old Little Rooms of Uncertain Usage. I love the kind of house where you open a door and there is another room, and another room, and two more rooms, and a little staircase off that room, and a loft off that staircase, and a barn off that loft, and another room off the barn, and you lose track of what is what and what is where. We are used to a low number of bathrooms and in fact it’s a half-bath more than what we have now; and the electricity has been updated so there are lots of outlets. Also there is central a/c, and an updated kitchen with an island that could double as a guest bed.
Ah ha! That does sound more appealing!! Thanks for explaining. I actually really love moving to new places and finding new homes for All The Things. :)
I’m not sure about the house, but you should totally get a dog. I had 3 requirements for a dog and got all 3: small, no shedding and fluffy. Shih tzu’s are the best if you want a lap dog / couch potato type of dog!
This is very exciting! I am on board for more real estate posts!!
This house sounds amazing. And I feel your terror over moving TO MY CORE. Your bargains sound excellent.
I also have a decent amount of Barn Cat knowledge, if/when you ever need it.
This is so exciting! The age of the house would excite me and scare the hell out of me. But a good home inspection and knowledge about the house would help ease the concerns (i.e. when was it last remodeled, do you know who did it, etc). I am enthralled with the idea of an 1820’s house. Where I live, I’m pretty sure the oldest houses still around are from the 1880’s and there are few of those. Has it been owned by the same people for a long time?
And a dog!! Get a basset hound! (Isn’t it presumptuous of me to suggest a dog breed to someone who I don’t know and who may not get a dog?!?) But they are cute and not yippy and mellow and sweet and fit into a family really well (and every one that I’ve been around has gotten along or at least tolerated cats).
Do basset hounds like to wander though? My mom swears they do.
Yes, oh yes, they do. Anything with the word “hound” in its name (or description — ask me how I know!) likes to wander. Wants to wander. Has to wander. Only suitable to a new dog owner if said dog owner has a really, really, really good fence.
We’re trying to figure out from old records how long it’s been owned by the same family; we’ve traced them back at least to the 1930s. (We can ask the seller about that, too, but are waiting to be nosy until we have a more solid reason to be nosy.) There’s a nice metal plaque with that surname on it; we’re thinking we would leave it there but add our own surnames on additional plaques.
Mice like fields with tall grass and lots of places to hide. If area around the barn is like that, it may have mice.
And we were in a similar house hunting situation last year. We were casually looking, which was fun and then we saw THE HOUSE and it was at the same time exciting and terrifying. Long story short, we are now living in THE HOUSE and yeah, it has it’s own issues and I’m glad we had money set aside from the sale of our old house so we could deal with those. But even as it’s annoying to deal with those issues and finish putting the house together (we will get pictures up eventually…) and I think about how I wouldn’t have to deal with those things if we were still in the old house, I still don’t regret moving. This place is a better fit for us – the extra set up/fixing up is just aggravating.
Oh, and as for Paul’s Story – if you can buy this house without selling your current house first, I highly recommend it. It’s much easier to stage and keep a house “show ready” that you’re not currently living in.
DOG! OPTION!
Getting a semimonthly housekeeping team changed my liiiiiife it is so amazing. I would cut a lot of things out of my budget and become an Uber driver (my absolute nightmare job) before I would go back to cleaning my own stovetop and dusting my own ceiling fans.
This cracks me up, because I’ve recently considered hiring housekeepers again. Yes, again. We had them when we were both working and even after our first child was born and I stayed home. After our second, I realized that once a luxury, the housekeepers were now an expensive nuisance. They always seemed to arrive at a time that interfered with baby’s nap. (Baby One slept best in a stroller or car seat, but Baby Two only slept in her bed. So this was a new challenge.) And, I had to do so much cleaning between their visits that it just didn’t seem worth it. Baby Two is now in preschool a few mornings and I’ve noticed my cleaning isn’t quite as constant. Plus, my outside obligations are picking up as the childcare demands aren’t so all consuming. Maybe it’s time to outsource a bit again.
Ooh I will be following these updates with great interest! I am VERY INTERESTED in house-buying these days. We just closed on our house last week, and at some point during the process our realtor mentioned that most people move within 6-7 years. As someone who lived in the same house her whole childhood/teenagerhood, that seemed crazy to me! But I see what you’re saying about the length of time in a house increasing the pressure of staying there.
And I totally get why it would be hard to think about leaving your house. It’s hard for me to think about leaving our RENTAL, even though it is tiny and has a terrible kitchen/bathroom and no closet space. I, too, tell myself Stories about how if the commute winds up being too far (it’s only fifteen minutes further west!), and it turns out to be absolutely terrible to live across the street from a middle school, then we can move after a year. Even though I think I gave them every single dollar I had for the closing costs, so NO, we will definitely not move after a year. But the Story is comforting.
I am also very interested in house buying updates. We have been in ours for 12 years. It has one bathroom and there are currently three people living here. But we got married in this house! I’ve always thought that I would die here and haunt the place, but lately I’m less sure.
It sounds like Paul really wants it. Is it because it’s bigger? It’s kind of sweet that he tells you nice stories to get you out of a tiz. My husband just stares at me like a deer in the headlights when I get worked up.
It’s also nice that he’s willing to meet your requests. We have a cleaning person who comes every other week (my niece lives with us rent free and the cleaning person is her rent) and I love it so much I don’t think I can ever go back.
Our house had tons of mice in the yard which was covered in ivy and I guess my cats killed them or they ran off because I never saw one after we moved in. That’s not as much of a concern as the age of the place. If you make an offer when you get to inspection and big , expensive stuff comes up you can always back out.
Paul wants it for the size increase, and also for the barn, and also there’s a workshop and a larger property and he loves older houses. Plus, he likes to be able to walk to places, and our current house is too far away from everything for that.
Wow, I am so charmed by the idea of an 1820s property within walking distance of coffee with a BARN. And it’s been updated enough for central A/C and an island. Lots of love was poured into that house. Not that it can’t also be a Money Pit (I love that movie).
As for mice, well, any old house and certainly any old barn will have them. Cats and dogs are great for patrolling. If you have birdseed, put it in a tupperware thing, etc. It can be overcome.
So excited you’re in the house-looking phase. Yaaaay!
I LoVE looking at houses and imagining my life in different homes. It would be sad to end that chapter, even with the excitement of starting a new house adventure.
I hope tomorrow is wonderful! And if you can share any photos while keeping privacy, I’d love to see that. (Can you SEE the horsehair? Is the horse hair from horses that were in that barn?!)
The horsehair isn’t visible at all; the walls just look like plaster, slightly uneven but in what I’d consider a charming way. Ooo, maybe it IS from the horses that were in the barn!
Thank you for such a detailed update because we are also JUST LOOKING, but have been in our current home for 10 years now. When we moved in we had one baby and now we have three big kids, three cats, and different needs. The open floor plan and lack of stairs seemed ideal. I can see the baby from anywhere! No need to worry about stairs or get gates! Now, there are children everywhere and I can hear them from anywhere and I just want a MOMENT OF PEACE. So. All that is to say, I can’t wait to see what you decide and how everything goes if you do decide to move.
A soothing story I have told myself whenever I’ve moved, or imagined moving, is to picture myself in ALL the places I’ve lived, what I liked about those places, what was dear to me, and how I couldn’t picture living anywhere else. Then, remembering the actual move, what was cool about the next place, etc. This helps me get in the right head space.
Also, I love the dog option! I was at our local pet store (run out of an addition onto their house) today and their lovely dog wanders the store at will. He’s such a GOOD BOY. I know he’s a mixed breed they rescued, something Golden Retriever for sure, but beyond that I couldn’t guess.
Last year my family moved from a Fisher Price My First Home: a boring house that was the most reasonable choice of the houses in the market in our price range, a nice sensible boring 1970s ranch house. We moved to the turn-of-the-century farmhouse that is a pretty exact match for how I would have envisioned my dream house since childhood. There was some angst about moving: the time was not right, and yes it was a huge pain in the bottom to move, and we had not yet reached the point at which our family NEEDED to move, and it was more than we were really hoping to spend… but in the end I prevailed on my spouse in saying that this house was the house we had always imagined and that we would always regret not going for it because it was a unique opportunity that would not likely present itself again. So we did it.
I am stupidly in love with this house, the spouse is equally stupidly in love with this house, and we regret nothing. It was completely and utterly worth the pain of moving. One year in and no bathtubs have fallen through the roof. I know that a 1900 farmhouse is not the same as an 1820 house, but I grew up in a house from 1838 and that too is still standing and well. I think there’s often been a selection process with older houses where only the ones that are very well built and reasonably maintained make it and that is a comfort to you when you contemplate that the time at which your house was built the closets all had windows because there was no electricity.
I don’t think old house ownership is for everyone, but it fills me with deep peace and daily happiness. Even the clutter looks better in the old house because it just has that shabby chic charming old farmhouse feeling. It’s kind of like how the Weasley home in Harry Potter has the giant pile of wellington boots on the porch. Having rodents is also part of the charm. Also, you have cats and that helps discourage rodents from contemplating the human living areas. You can consider adopting a semi-feral-type cat in a barn cat adoption program, at least if something like that exists in your area.
(The only person who is dissatisfied with the move is my preschooler, who has decided that 1970s ranch architecture is “so cute” and “much prettier”, which is great because it will be very easy for her to find the house of her dreams someday.)
I live in great and lasting sadness that you have pursued anonymity on the blog in re your location because it means that I cannot enjoy looking at your prospective choice’s house listing, and there is nothing I love so much as a good house listing.
Oh and I feel like I need to foist a sprawling weird layout dream off onto the readership of this post. Our old house is a foursquare layout so it is all very square and cubish from outside to inside so there are no rooms off of other rooms and in fact no weird nooks anywhere, but as someone contemplating ownership a house with a more interesting layout you should know about the existence of companies which make doors for SECRET ROOMS.
Such as for example http://hiddenpassageway.com/ –
I tend to think of this thing as being exactly suited to the sorts of houses that have sprawling weird layouts where one would not notice that the outside layout doesn’t quite match the inside layout.
I can’t decide whether a Narnia closet or a bookcase or a rotating fireplace or a mirror to step into is preferable, because they are ALL SO GREAT.
OMG I WANT. And there are MANY places in this house that would work for that!!!
With many places you would not even have to choose among the entries and purposes! Narnia wardrobe family game room, mirror of Erised into your writing studio, secret bookcase into room filled with unsightly and overly modern exercise equipment and television, revolving fireplace into the unsightly emergency food storage and emergency preparedness center!
I live in a Foursquare too! In the middle of a city, so there are no mystery rooms. And I do love the occasional dream about finding a new room in a rambling house. My husband always tells me dream houses represent me: my life, my mind ;) Always expanding, or something like that!
Please tell me you have read Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, which begins with her move to a large old house in Vermont. If you haven’t, you must.
I HAVE, and I LOVED it, but it’s been a long time so I just put in a request for it at the library so I can read it again! What a happy thing to look forward to! Re-reading it with this new level of appreciation!
Isn’t it funny how much regional differences in the US impact so much? Even language. I couldn’t stop thinking BARN CAT while reading your post. This is a term I’m not sure I had ever heard before six years ago. Horsehair plaster sounded so odd and then I had a house with it. Find a stud to hang pictures (I mean an actual wood beam to put a nail through, but if you have a hottie to do house chores, even better) and embrace the charm it adds to all paint.
So exciting! So terrifying! So exhausting! So fun!
Because of your children’s ages, this does seem like the perfect time to move.
I’m interested in knowing if your handy father is excited about the possibility of New House Projects.
Hmm, could Swistle blog about her house makeovers in a way that is profitable like Young House Love in a way that isn’t so millennial grey with sparkling light fixtures? I’d be much more interested in your searches for say fox bathroom art or something.
Instead addition to the Dog Option, may I suggest you negotiate for a Chicken Option, too? You have a barn. Just in case…
My Handy Father is not excited about it: he has a 1960 house, so he was already familiar and comfortable with a 1960 house and how they work and what needs to be done and how it can be done. He is not as keen on old houses, nor as experienced with them: we did live in one for awhile when I was growing up, but we were only renting it.
I was going to negotiate for a Chicken Option but it turned out Paul was already totally on board with that, so I didn’t have to waste a bargaining chip on it!
Yes! Paul can totally pull off being the Pied Piper of Poultry, like my husband.
Yasss, chickens! They are surprisingly full of personality, and fresh eggs are delicious. Chickens, turning your kitchen scraps into eggs since… since chickens.
Also, Swistle, didn’t Paul paint one of your bathrooms an awful color you hate? Think of this as an opportunity to move away from that bathroom.
My instinct is to say DO IT DO IT DO IT!!
But that’s because I’m not you. I love old houses (I live in Britain so that’s good news). I love things being walkable (ditto) and it’s a huge priority for us as we househunt. I really like the sound of the king-sized bed-esque kitchen island because we are big into cooking. But mostly importantly in the face of change vs standing still, I will almost always pick jumping blindly with both feet and regretting it later on. That’s just who I am I think.
Which isn’t to say I don’t feel regret. We just moved 200 miles and the euphoria lasted until about 2 weeks after the move, at which point I sank into a trough of depression and regret that lasted another fortnight. I came out the other side though! In large part because this move gets us closer to dog ownership…
Things I would say in favour of the Old New House:
– Random quirky rooms are great for adult kids. My own parents have found that far from downsizing, as their 3 kids have grown up, married and had babies, they’ve needed even more space than ever before.
– If this will be your new ‘forever’ home then walkability is very practical as you get older. You never know when you might not be able to drive for a while. It happens in old age.
– A dog will help keep you young anyway! You’ll be walking miles with it every day and meeting all the other dog owners in the neighbourhood and it’ll cement you into your new life really quickly
Change is uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be I think? But it doesn’t mean it’s not right.
New Old house sounds completely and utterly charming. What a fun next chapter in your life!
I would like you to move if only for all of the super entertaining blog fodder. It sounds super fun! I actually don’t mind moving. And unpacking is like opening a house-full of Christmas presents. What’s in this box? Where do I get to put it? This cabinet will be great!
Stimey. You have to come over and help me move. I am MUCH more of a “unpacking is like opening a box of chores” mover, and I have been agonizing over the chore of needing to figure out where to PUT everything—but reading your comment, I felt as if with constant bolstering and maybe a mini-cupcake reward every five minutes, I could see things more The Stimey Way.
I will come help you move, too!!
…yes, and the whole de-cluttering that happens as you pack. I. Love. That. Any excuse to chuck things. There’s a new trendy name for it, right? Swedish Death Cleaning? Gaaaah.
Oh I am so excited for you! We actually moved from our old house (which we loved the style of and the house but not the property or the neighborhood) to our current house (house much more meh but we have 8 beautiful acres and 100s of acres of national forest beside us and a barn and a view and with all this are still semi close to town!). And my husband did the same exact thing as yours – we actually rented out old house and he promised we could move back if we wanted to. We have been here 5 years now and just sold our old house for about 30k profit. So yeah. That was nice too! I will say we underestimated the amount of yardwork required but you have 3 boys at home to help so that’s nice. Our 8 and 10 year olds can work a weedeater better than most grown men so I just look at it as a good character building activity. Please keep us updated on all this!
And we make the 1 girl help with yardwork too, so we have FOUR free yardworkers!
As someone who has moved many times over the years we’ve been married, yes you will miss certain things about your old house. BUT! The prospect of decorating a new house and planning what will be done with those extra rooms is what I’ve found gets me on board pretty quickly. (All those Target/Bed Bath and Beyond/Home Depot/Homegoods trips!)
My current new-to-me house has a spare room that I’ve made into a craft room and it’s amazing! Also I negotiated a kitten into this move! Worth it!
I can just imagine the fun of decorating all those little rooms off rooms and oooo the endless possibilities. How fabulous to have the opportunity for a secret library.
Think of this, if that house was bought by someone else tomorrow and you couldn’t have it anymore, how would you feel? If you’d be absolutely devastated then it’s meant to be yours.
I have to say that the dog OPTION is genius! Don’t paint yourself into a corner, but open the door to the option!
Moving is So Much Work (I say, having moved from MA to FL three months ago), but think of all the fun decorating things you can indulge in: Marshall’s/TJMaxx/Homegoods, here you come.
Possible New House! So Exciting!!
If you get a house cleaner, it may just change your life. My mom is so firmly on Team House Cleaner that when my dad was a doctor for the Public Health Service in the 70s, making relative peanuts, and she stayed home with two little kids, she paid a high school girl to come scrub the kitchen & bathroom.
I’m not a person who would buy an 1820’s house but I can tell you really love it!! I think you should go for it!
I don’t deal well with projects or house issues, so this house sounds like my worst nightmare. But you know yourself enough to know if you can deal with the headaches of old home ownership. (If it tells you anything, our house is late 60s and very well maintained/has been remodeled and yet I dread every little home issue because there are still some issues fixing a 50 yr old house vs a 10 year old house.)
YES to the housecleaning help either way. We have someone help once every two weeks and those are my favorite days. I will say—we straighten up a LOT before she comes over so she can focus on real cleaning vs just straightening. I hate deep cleaning tasks so that is what I like her to focus on. Having my house spotless for a few minutes twice a month is amazing. (And sadly short lived with little ones!!)
It sounds magical!!!
Oh my goodness I have a Story that will calm your tiz!
We moved recently. We are having our first child in 3 (or please Lord fewer) weeks, and we lived in a tiny house with 2 enormous disgusting dogs (but still, get a dog). We had been casually house hunting for several years, but we had stupidly specific geographic and size/layout requirements that don’t exist, and suddenly my husband found The House shortly after we found out we were pregnant and maybe really should move. Only it wasn’t for sale. So he goofily left a note in the mailbox expecting nothing to come of it AND TWO DAYS LATER THESE PEOPLE OFFERED TO SELL US THEIR HOUSE. And then I freaked the freak out and went into several tizzes because I don’t like change and our tiny house was so perfect and we had renovated every square inch of it and what if the new house is the worst, etc, etc, etc.
And yet we bought The House, which is triple the size of our old way in a way that is ridiculous for the current 2 of us, and that has cracking plaster ceilings and a wall that has sunk several inches lower than the rest of the house, and weird brown industrial tile in one of the bedrooms. And also 1.5 acres of yard my husband has to cut, and a weird layout that involves walking through bedrooms to get to bedrooms. AND WE LOVE IT. Do I occasionally miss the old house? A wee smidge. Do I miss the things that drove me absolutely bananas about the old house? Oh my gosh no no no no not at all. I never have to smell the moldy dirt under the deck again. I never have to look at the stupid tiny European washing machine that leaked on the floor every time we used it but was too expensive to replace.
All of that to say. Buy The House! But then don’t worry if the first two weeks you live there, you cry every day about how dumb of a decision it was and how you hate it. Because maybe really you just hate CHANGE and soon you will live The House.
Sorry that was a long Story. The end.
Great story!
I feel like this type of voluntary moving is kind of like having a baby– yes, it’s a lot more work than staying put, but living in this house will be more rewarding in the long run. And yes, there may be unpredictable complications, but you will figure them out, just like you’ve figured out everything else life has ever thrown at you. Assuming you get an inspection and nothing truly terrifying turns up, go for it!
When we moved from our first house – the house we came home from our honeymoon to and brought our first baby home to – I felt so much angst, despite the fact that we knew that wasn’t our Forever House and this is. We loved that house and it was in a great location. But, we kept First House as an investment property, and I told myself that maybe we would downsize to it some day. I spent all day yesterday there preparing to put it back on the rental market. I looked around and thought I still love this house, it’s still a great location and I absolutely can not see us living here again. If I needed to sell it tomorrow, it would be ok. I have great memories, but they don’t go with the house.
I’ve lived in a house with horsehair in the walls. Actually, I’ve lived in a house so old –1850s?–that (some of) the walls were log cabin underneath the drywall, which was SO COOL. My dad let me have one wall of my bedroom stay as a log cabin wall and I loved it. This house also had birds living in the walls, though. You could hear them faintly chirping at times. I found it oddly soothing.
For me, the concerns about an older house–foundation, electrical, plumbing–would need to be addressed early, but would be far outweighed by the charm, the original features, the yard and barn and walkability. And the housecleaning alone would sway me. I vote do it!
Oh, and! Yes, chickens are great (free eggs etc.). But if anyone has an decent amount of land and is looking for animals, I always recommend goats. Low-maintenance, but they will essentially mow you’re lawn for you. And you can get cute pygmy goats!
I love love love looking at houses! But, as a super scaredy cat who grew up in a beautiful, very old, and sprawling Victorian, I am very happy with my smaller and sturdily built mid-century home. No creepy extra rooms. BUT a bigger yard is always wonderful! Plus walkable! And a possible bunk room! So many perks. If you are not a scaredy cat :)
I am drooling over the nooks and crannies. I LOVE NOOKS AND CRANNIES!!!
I love old houses and walkable neighborhoods and dogs. I don’t love having the opportunity to hang on to stuff I don’t need, the cost of buying & selling houses, making decisions based on imagined scenarios, or the prospect of having a bigger house as my at-home family is getting smaller.
But I really, really love dogs.
Thinking of you as you work through the hard parts of making decisions and dealing with financial stuff, but otherwise I am super excited for you! :)
Here is what I would consider:
1. Will this move take you further away from your friends that are tied to your current neighborhood? We moved last May to a house that’s 35 minutes from our old house, but might as well be on the moon in terms of actually seeing any of our old friends. I have tried so many times to have plans to drive out and meet up with friends, and it inevitably falls through–their kids stayed up late the night before and they all decided to sleep in, or they have doctor’s appointments that suddenly crop up or whatever. I hadn’t realized how heavily those relationships relied on its just being a quick walk over or happening to see each other when we were out and about.
2. Will the new house facilitate meeting new friends? Our new house is no good for this, which is why I’m thinking about it. It’s a large property in an area of large properties, and the nearby neighbors aren’t so nearby that I’ve ever seen them close enough to say “hello” to them. I really want to meet people, and I am beginning to believe that I’m going to have to wait 3 years (for kindergarten to start).
3. Is the new house one that your kids will want to come back to, when the main draw is seeing you, Paul, and their siblings? My aunt stayed in the house that her kids were teenagers in after they all graduated; my mother moved to a different state after we all graduated. The scene at my aunt’s house at Christmas was COMPLETELY different than the scene at my mother’s– my cousins’ friends came by to see them and joined the holiday parties, my cousins were able to go out and see their old friends on trips home to see their family… it just seemed like a lot more fun for my aunt and my cousins than it’s been for my mom and our family. We do go to see her, but– the visits are very quiet and there’s not a lot to do. I’m pretty sure that my brothers truncated what would have otherwise been longer visits for that very reason.
4. Can you be okay with whatever timeline actually happens for any needed repairs/updates to the new house? I am currently living with half the house in shambles, and it sucks–my husband was certain he could finish all the repairs/updates by the end of June. I questioned it, but believed him… and he worked for a bit on things and then stalled out. We have a range of “this room is completely unusable and actually unsafe” to “this room is incomplete, but we can use it as-is, if we don’t step there or look at that.” I never wanted to live in a project, and it’s grating on me. If I could hire contractors to come out and just finish things, I would. But I can’t.
Dude, you and I could talk for uninterrupted HOURS on this topic. I really wish you lived HERE so we could walk around and around the lake and talk about this.
We just did a version of this – moved away from my husband’s family farm to a different hobby farm. The saga continues and like I said there are HOURS of details to go over and share in reaction to your pros and cons on the possible new house.
But here is the one thing I have learned after moving many, many times:
You don’t miss the old house after you’ve moved. That only happens in advance. You might have a twinge here and there, or miss a FEATURE of the old house, but #2 does not happen. There is no pining. You are far too busy with all that’s required to get settled in the new house. #2 is not a thing.
The Potential New House totally reminds me of Dawn’s house in The Baby-Sitters Club, which I would find quite endearing. I am mystified and intrigued as to how a kitchen island can double as a guest bed, though I suspect there may be a regional nuance or some other feature I’m missing.
Ha–no, you’re not missing anything, I’m just being silly about how gigantic it is!
Oh good gravy, my bad! That sounds great!
I love old houses with weird rooms. As a kid I had a friend who lived in a 2-story building that was once a hotel or boarding house in the early 1900s. The first level was a tavern at the front and a 3 bed/2 bath at the back. The upstairs was used only as storage, which always seemed crazy to me. It had large rooms opening into other large rooms, I guess like from the hallway you would walk into a sitting room with a bedroom off that. If they had added a bathroom up there, it would have been awesome for a couple huge bedroom situations for the kids. As it was, it made for some crazy fun hide-and-seek games.
That said, we thought we bought our forever home, but we are tiring of our 1911 house – me for the odd situations that have lost their charm and my husband for its location smack in the middle of town with neighbors too close for comfort. We have been casually searching for a property outside or on the outskirts of town with a newer house or ample space to build a new house. I keep telling myself I will cook more and keep a cleaner house if I didn’t have to work around the awkward corners…. I also tell myself that moving will force us to get rid of all the clutter we’ve collected the last 15 years. Easier to put it in a pile for garbage or donation than pack it up, unpack it, then find a new place for it.
But a barn is so handy! My husband’s aunt commented that she thought our house would never sell because of “that big ugly shed.” Ha! It was a huge bonus for us. It is now filled with his precious lawn mower, tractor, ATV, tools, work bench, old furniture we don’t yet want to get rid of, and miscellaneous doodads.
Okay, I have many OPINIONS on house stuff because I LOVE that kind of thing and have both renovated and custom-built new myself, but I can’t figure out if you’re downsizing or not, don’t know your neighbourhood, etc. so my advice would probably not be very useful. Instead… the DOG OPTION!
So I was the dog holdout in my family. My kids wanted a dog desperately, and unbeknownst to me my husband wanted a dog but was trying to mostly hold the unified parent line on the topic. I finally gave in with the stipulation that we get a small, non-shedding, hypoallergenic dog and we ended up with a 3 year-old Morkie… and guess who her “person” is? ME! She LOVES me, and I LOVE her! I even have two different shirts with her face on them! I maintain her own Instagram account (@darwyndoggo if you’re curious). I cannot recommend the small, non-shedding, hypoallergenic options enough. She doesn’t need a ton of walking for exercise at her size, she doesn’t leave dog hair all over the house, she’s easy to pick up after during walks, everyone we encounter smiles fondly at her, and our friends offer to dog-sit if we go out of town. Not a day goes by that one of us doesn’t gush over just how CUTE she is!