The House (!)

It's an American Foursquare, built around the turn of the 20th century located in the town next to Nowhere.  The floor plan is pretty standard for a foursquare. The first floor has a giant front room that runs the length of the house and half the width. The remaining part is the kitchen and dining room and there's an addition on the back that includes a bath/laundry room and a fabulous mudroom.  My excitement over this mudroom is pretty high, although I have a distinct lack of excitement over the fact that we're going to have to replace those windows before the next snow falls.

The second story is four bedrooms (foursquare!) and a small bathroom. Our medium term plan is to combine two of those rooms into a larger master and renovate that bathroom (there's no shower in it at the moment) into an en suite. We'll have a guest room, an office space, and a bonus room for right now. Let's call it the sewing room. Ha ha.

There's a huge unfinished attic and a "finished" basement that I will only ever be going into to get the Christmas ornaments and to wait out tornado warnings because it's creepy.  The unfinished attic will hopefully get turned into a workout room someday in the far, far, far future.  In the meantime, maybe we can store the Christmas ornaments up there to save me a trip to the basement.

As it stands, the curb appeal is mostly bleh. Imagine it with a front door that's red and some hanging baskets. Maybe a cheerful Detroit Lions* flag hanging there on the flag pole on the right? 

This is a larger house than we had anticipated on purchasing, but YOU GUYS. There's a detached two car garage, a shed, and a mudroom. There are wood floors throughout. There's a kitchen without an island (have we talked about my hatred of islands? - maybe next time). It's located within walking distance of a library, post office, farmers' market, and community center. WHAT MORE CAN A GIRL ASK FOR?

There are a couple of things that came up in the house inspection that we're going to have to deal with in the short term (the windows are mostly new except those pesky windows in the mudroom, the electrical system has some quirks because it's a turn of the century house), but the sellers are paying for a one-year home warranty and we're going to use the hell out of that.  The financing is a done deal and we're basically just waiting this out until closing.

But the yard is a jungle. There's a backyard with about a dozen beds of one sort or another and the right side of the yard runs the entire length of the house and it's a disaster. I foresee my entire summer spent weeding, pulling out paver stones, and scraping and painting. 

And I can't wait.

Any tips on moving an excitable almost six-year-old fuzzy cat with attitude? 

*Ha ha. Not going to happen. We're a divided household, my friends. Dr. BB roots for the enemy, the Chicago Bears.