We are going to be home owners in one week! We close on May 3.
The house is a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath with a study. It's the biggest house that we've seen at 1800 sft and it's in Skip's favorite neighborhood Oak Hill.
It's on a beautiful corner lot with tons of trees and almost a third of an acre. I never thought that we would be able to get a house like this.
It was build in 1974 and I seriously believe that the decor has not been updated ever. There's green floral wallpaper in the kitchen and orange and pink floral wallpaper in the kids bathroom. There's more wallpaper in the dining room.
The kitchen sports avocado green counter tops with matching stove and oven. All of the windows are covered in heavy blackout curtains.
With four bedrooms everyone gets a room. The girls will have their playroom and Skip and I will each have our own office. One (or both) of the offices will double as a guest room so for our all out of town friends and family, please come visit!
The formal dinning room is going to be our library. There is also an in between space that the listing agent called a study. We'll be using that area as our TV room. I thought that we wouldn't be able to get any of these things in our first house. These were all long term goals.
We have BIG plans for updating basically everything. We'll start painting as soon as we get the keys. The paint colors I'm looking at are bold. We'll also be replacing the carpet with laminate in the main living areas. All the light fixtures, window treatments, etc need updating. At some point will also overhaul all the baths, knock down some walls and the update kitchen but probably after I go back to work full time.
But the part I'm most looking forward to is the garden. I've been planning my garden for at least 10 years. In the front I'm going to plant naive plants in the rocks above the stone wall. I'll add some more plants to the borders in front of the house. It's difficult to tell from the picture but there are roses all along the front. They're blooming right now. I'm going to take out the holly bushes and add at least one Pride of Barbados and some other plants TBD.
The only part of the yard that gets full sun is the right side. I'm planting my vegetable garden there, at least for this season. We're going to get a tree service to check on the health of the trees and cut back some so that I can get some more sun in the back yard. Then I might be able to move the veggies back there.
I've never grown veggies. I've been doing a lot of reading and feeling overwhelmed with information. I think it's going to be one of those things that you need to do to get it. It's late in the yard to plant many things but I'm going to try to grow snap peas, chard, kale, spinach, okra, cantaloupe, eggplant, watermelon, carrots, asparagus and lots of herbs.
Next season I'll be adding more to the list. I'll also try to replace our lawn with slow growing grasses mixed in with some ground cover. Still looking into this. I wish that Buffalo grass would grow in shade. Mowing the yard this summer is going to be interesting.
The backyard will have a playground and kiddie pool for the girls. We're going to hang a couple of swings in the front yard from the oak trees.
We are going to make our property a certified wildlife habitat. It's actually very easy. Along with all the native plants animals will also find lots of birdseed to munch. I might make a brush pile. There will be some kind of bird bath. We'll have at least 3 or 4 bird feeders, and some bird houses and a bat house. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but I'm planning on updating the blog as I go.
