Home is where you hang your hat… and coat… and bag…

We have finally joined the rest of the home owners and are now the proud owners of our first mortgage… I mean house! It is the house we have been renting for the past year and a half. We were already house-hunting when we found out that the owners were putting it on the market. It eventually occurred to us that we were comparing every house we looked at with this house so it just made sense to stay. However like any house built in the early 1960s there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done (although my “needs” list could be debated). The kitchen and bathroom are outdated and we have an oven that I am sure was built around the same time as the house. The oven sits over the stove and the big element that is the most used is right at the back which makes cooking extremely difficult and frustrating. I have on a number of occasions threatened to throw it down the stairs.

My first and foremost wish is to add a big deck to the side of the house. This means we will then also build a new fence around the property because the one that is there now hasn’t been updated since the house was built and it is falling down. We will also eventually build in underneath the house which will add a fourth bedroom/study, second bathroom and a playroom for the kid/s.

We were extremely lucky to be blessed with fantastic neighbours, Doug and Gladys. They are an older couple and we have been good friends with them from the moment we moved into the house. They were very worried that we were moving away when we started talking about looking for a new house. We had dinner with them a while ago and told them that we were buying the house and they were very happy.

The house is in walking distance to two train stations and five minutes drive to three shopping centers. There is a large park down the road where we take the dogs for a run around.

So there you have it… we are now officially broke for the next 25 - 30 years.