A Room of One's Own

So we bought a house! I am still reeling from the sticker shock, but we're so happy. I tried to believe when we lost the other place that "what's meant to be will be" and this kind of confirms it. I know hindsight is 20/20, but when we first looked at the last place I told D that I just didn't "see" us there; I can totally see us in the place we've got - which I guess is a good thing since we are indeed going there! It doesn't have quite the same cuteness factor that the other place did, but at its heart, it's a better house. The neighbourhood is closer to where we are now, it's not too near a busy street, the basement has a higher ceiling, and the kitchen is much bigger.

In the three months we've been househunting we honed in on one style that is very typical for the area since that is pretty much all we could afford. I think I have seen about 40 of these two-bedroom bungalows - all of them variations on theme. They are all square boxes with four main rooms: living, kitchen and two bedrooms. They all have oak flooring in the living area and cedar in the bedrooms (unless some one covered it with carpet, or, ugh, replaced it with laminate.) Small things change: the placement of the bathroom or hall, the existence of an eating nook, or the exterior siding, the yard. I've gotten really good at looking past the staging and noticing whether it has our "must-haves" - entry closet, storage space, room to grow.

So the plusses on this one are:

• big, new kitchen - it might not have been done the way I'd have chosen (I think it's IKEA) but still, nothing to do there;
  
• high basement height, means there are real possibilities down there, a guest room and 2-piece bathroom downstairs (plus a studio suite has a separate entrance and is rented out to assist with the mortgage);
  
• big closets and cold storage (YAY STORAGE!) and
  
• a view of the mountains;

The biggest plus as far as I'm concerned is that it's right next to a giant park with a play structure and kiddy pool and lots of kids running around in it. The minusses are all quite fixable:

• ugly windows, driveway that abuts the house (we'll rip it out);
  
• yard not completely fenced in;
  
• no garage (but space for one);
• a bit of a mouldy corner in one corner of the house but we can fix that quite easily.
  

I feel very lucky that we can even contemplate owning a house in this city. Many of our friends are settling permanently in apartments or moving outside the city limits. The real estate market is insane. We bid $25,000 over asking to secure this place and because there were multiple bidders, we could not make it subject to inspection, financing et cetera - all that had to be done beforehand. Within less than 24 hours after the offer was accepted I had to somehow liquify $4oK for a deposit even though we haven't yet sold our own place and therefore have no access to the equity we have in our condo. (Um - yay line of credit, credit cards and bank of Mum and Dad). That money's not anything close to our full downpayment, that's just a part of the downpayment that we have to pay immediately so that if we back out on the contract they can keep that. We spent all of 3 hours in the house (including the inspection - done before the offer) and we're now going to be moving our whole life there! Oh and I just found out someone was stabbed down the street just a few weeks ago - woops!

This city is crazy. But we are still really, really happy. We have seen enough houses to know that we did good.