Didn't you know I was indecisive? HELP ME!
First, please ignore the Great eBlogger Debacle down below. I would erase it all but am afraid of rousing the Gods again (ssshhhhhh...nice Blogger) but really, Blogger hates me anyway, obviously, so it's all in vain, I'm sure.
Regardless, goooood Blogger.
OK. Now I am completely unable to make decisions without remorse. I over-analyze. I fret. But mostly, I ask for people's advice incessantly, so that's what I'm going to do here.
I have a friend who was pregnant at the same time I was pregnant with Adelyn. We both had scheduled C-Sections, and she decided to have her tubes tied. Vincent and I talk about maybe having four children, so I wasn't ready to commit. And, while I feel a little sorry that she decided to stop at two, I am a bit jealous of her as well. Because she made the decision to move on and never look back, and she has no remorse. I shiver at the thought of tying tubes after number four, if there is one. Basically, I am not wired to make big decisions like the one I'm facing now.
Once I wrote a really long post about our alleged home addition that was supposed to occur last Spring, but, alas! I got knocked up in the back seat of my car and we had another baby instead. We adore her, so that worked out. Of course, Blogger deleted the entire post, so no one read it.
Do you detect a theme here? Gooood Blogger. Nice Blogger.
Anyway, we didn't do the addition, and we are supposed to start this Spring. We have lovely plans that include a master bathroom suite with jacuzzi bathtub, a gourmet kitchen/great room and a first floor powder room, which we do not have now. We have paid for the plans, twice (long story), and are all set to go.
But, and here's where it gets tricky...there is a house for sale in the neighborhood. It's about 500 square feet larger than our house with the addition, and it has an EIK and family room (though not together), plus charming touches like a back staircase into the kitchen and a fireplace on the porch. It does not have french doors between the kitchen and dining room, like my house has, or built-in bookshelves in the living room. The lot however, is almost twice the size of mine - it's ginormous. And we could build a deck there, and play volleyball, or have a pool someday if we wanted.
Oh, but there's no air conditioning in this house, and it has radiator heat. We, on the other hand, just spent ten grand on a new heating and air conditioning system in September.
I could go on and on, but it's really comparing apples to oranges - french doors, back staircase, deck, private patio. Financially it's about even, except that we would sink lots of money into the new house (if we bought it) somewhere down the road, in order to get that gourmet kitchen. I'd probably never be able to have a master bathroom suite or my laundry on the second floor, or air consitioning, but there'd be other perks.
Mostly though, I love my neighbors, and I'd miss them,ven though the new house is only two blocks away from mine now. We wouldn't be able to get out the baby monitors on warm summer nights and drink beer on our porch after the kids went to bed with our friends, and I wouldn't be abl;e to see that there are twenty kids playing hide and go seek right now just outside my door, and, hey! let's go join them! Even at two blocks away, it would be different, because there are no kids that are immediate neighbors.
I need to bid tonight, if we're going to. It's an estate sale, and they are reviewing bids tomorrow. There are at least two others, possibly five others, and one of my neighbors is going to bid too. She showed up apologetically the other morning, cluthing a Wawa coffee and talking about how she didn't want to ruin our friendship but hey, she loves the house too.
So what do I do? Bid? Build? Run screaming??
HELLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!
Regardless, goooood Blogger.
OK. Now I am completely unable to make decisions without remorse. I over-analyze. I fret. But mostly, I ask for people's advice incessantly, so that's what I'm going to do here.
I have a friend who was pregnant at the same time I was pregnant with Adelyn. We both had scheduled C-Sections, and she decided to have her tubes tied. Vincent and I talk about maybe having four children, so I wasn't ready to commit. And, while I feel a little sorry that she decided to stop at two, I am a bit jealous of her as well. Because she made the decision to move on and never look back, and she has no remorse. I shiver at the thought of tying tubes after number four, if there is one. Basically, I am not wired to make big decisions like the one I'm facing now.
Once I wrote a really long post about our alleged home addition that was supposed to occur last Spring, but, alas! I got knocked up in the back seat of my car and we had another baby instead. We adore her, so that worked out. Of course, Blogger deleted the entire post, so no one read it.
Do you detect a theme here? Gooood Blogger. Nice Blogger.
Anyway, we didn't do the addition, and we are supposed to start this Spring. We have lovely plans that include a master bathroom suite with jacuzzi bathtub, a gourmet kitchen/great room and a first floor powder room, which we do not have now. We have paid for the plans, twice (long story), and are all set to go.
But, and here's where it gets tricky...there is a house for sale in the neighborhood. It's about 500 square feet larger than our house with the addition, and it has an EIK and family room (though not together), plus charming touches like a back staircase into the kitchen and a fireplace on the porch. It does not have french doors between the kitchen and dining room, like my house has, or built-in bookshelves in the living room. The lot however, is almost twice the size of mine - it's ginormous. And we could build a deck there, and play volleyball, or have a pool someday if we wanted.
Oh, but there's no air conditioning in this house, and it has radiator heat. We, on the other hand, just spent ten grand on a new heating and air conditioning system in September.
I could go on and on, but it's really comparing apples to oranges - french doors, back staircase, deck, private patio. Financially it's about even, except that we would sink lots of money into the new house (if we bought it) somewhere down the road, in order to get that gourmet kitchen. I'd probably never be able to have a master bathroom suite or my laundry on the second floor, or air consitioning, but there'd be other perks.
Mostly though, I love my neighbors, and I'd miss them,ven though the new house is only two blocks away from mine now. We wouldn't be able to get out the baby monitors on warm summer nights and drink beer on our porch after the kids went to bed with our friends, and I wouldn't be abl;e to see that there are twenty kids playing hide and go seek right now just outside my door, and, hey! let's go join them! Even at two blocks away, it would be different, because there are no kids that are immediate neighbors.
I need to bid tonight, if we're going to. It's an estate sale, and they are reviewing bids tomorrow. There are at least two others, possibly five others, and one of my neighbors is going to bid too. She showed up apologetically the other morning, cluthing a Wawa coffee and talking about how she didn't want to ruin our friendship but hey, she loves the house too.
So what do I do? Bid? Build? Run screaming??
HELLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!
posted by Stolidoli at 9:39 AM
4 Comments:
You asked so here it is! You described sitting on your front porch with your neighbors drinking beer, watching the kids play....that was what did it for me. That is the kind of neighborhood I have always wanted to live in. I think you should stay put and add-on to make an already perfect home even more so.
Good Luck with whatever you choose....and if you move, let me know..I might have to put in an offer! *kidding* I'm too far away damn it!
With our last house, we bought a townhouse far from the center of town. I regretted it the whole time we were there and told my husband that my criteria for our next house was that "I had to be able to walk to the ice cream."
That's kind of a metaphor for being able to be right in the thick of things. Now we live in a great neighborhood. I care less about a bigger yard than I do about being up the street from a great park. I'd rather be at the park than my backyard because that's where you meet the other kids/families. And I like having a small yard because I can always tell when the neighbors are out and a lot of last minute dinners happen in the summer because you to see each other in the yards.
Not sure if that helps.
Just checking in to see what you decided.
Let us know!!
T.
I just stumbled on your blog (sadly from a comment at Julia's) and am enjoying it. I laughed outloud when I read your description as uber-fertile... me too, if you didn't count some challenges I've had along the way. I'm curious to hear what you decided to do about the house. I just blogged about this same topic... we ended up going through the demoralizing prospect of bidding, only to be outbid by someone by a few thousand dollars. In hindsight, we realized that we just got caught up in the frantic bidding war, and more importantly that our current house is much more "home" to us ( not to mention with the tax situation in CA it's a better deal to do the addition we're planning rather than buy a new home that needs the same work done to it).
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