Junior and I have been slowly getting into the house-shopping thing for a couple of months now. We started small, cruising the internet. Window shopping through Windows. Getting into the groove of what we both want in a house, and adjusting to the concept of making it real and permanent between us at the same time.

About a month ago, we graduated to window shopping through actual windows. We’d print out a list of likely addresses and cruise on by. Most of them we could eliminate without even slowing down, like the fairly nice house surrounded by falling-down shacks on all sides. Yeah, not that one; moving on. Every once in a while we’d pull into a vacant driveway and peek into the front windows of a house, and that eliminated some more.

We found a couple that were worthy of calling a realtor about, but invariably, those ones were already under contract. One guy said we were welcome to have our own realtor show us the place in case we wanted to make a backup offer. That house was a little out of our price range anyway, and needed too much work to boot.

But the looking process helped us resolve what qualities we’re both looking for in a place to live for the next 20 or 30 years. We both wanted something fairly rural, although we were just not finding rural and livable and in our price range all in the same address. Junior wanted a shop, or at the very least, room to build a shop, for his woodworking tools. I thought I’d like a place where we could have a couple of horses, or where Seamus could raise a 4-H animal. We both wanted a little room to breathe, where the next-door-neighbor’s dog isn’t barking in your ear at 5 AM, and where the train doesn’t rattle the dishes out of the cupboards. Since we have four kids, it would be nice not to have to double them all up too much. And a pool would be cool, for child-entertainment purposes.

We had another list going, this time of places we’d like to actually go inside, so we finally bit the bullet and called a realtor this week. I explained to the lady what our basic wants were, and she got all excited. Well, of course she did; she’s a realtor. But she said she had the perfect house for us, and had to call another realtor to schedule a showing. We figured out which one she was talking about, and it turned out to be on our short list already.

So the appointment was made for yesterday morning, and we walked through the place. And we really liked it. It definitely feels like a place we can live for a long time. It’s got five bedrooms, although their definition of “bedroom” might be a little stretched for the two small ones without closets. It’s got a two-car garage attached to the house and another finished detached garage that they were billing as a shop. It’s got a pool; kind of a boring shape, but at least it will hold water.

I like the kitchen quite a bit; it has a huge amount of storage space. Since the place is a repo, it’s both within our price range and below market value for the neighborhood. It hasn’t been treated quite as badly as some repossessions we’ve seen; at least most of the fixtures are still there and there aren’t any holes knocked in the walls. There are a few odd things missing, like the dishwasher and the range hood and most of the shelves in the closets and pantry, but it’s fixable.

 

It sits on a little more than an acre, in the same neighborhood, more or less, that the boys live in at their father’s house. I’ve been familiar with that area for even longer than they’ve lived there, as I used to ride my horse in those undeveloped lots. The houses there hold their value, it’s full of kids without a ton of traffic, and it’s the best school district in the county. The boys would be able to take the bus; the girls go to school in another county.

 

On the downside is the location. We’d really hoped to split the difference between our commutes. I have to be pretty close to my job, so it was going to slide my way anyway, which is too bad, as I’m the one who doesn’t mind driving like that. But with all of the looking we did, we just didn’t find anything even close to suitable located between our jobs. This neighborhood is by far the best one that we’ve seen to live in and to raise a family in, so Junior chose the family over the driving time, and we’re settling down this way, most likely, whether in this house or not.

 

It also backs up to a highway, but it’s not a very noisy one. I drive it every time I take the boys to school, and it’s just not that busy. The previous owner put up an additional privacy fence delineating the usable backyard from the rest of the acreage out back, so with the developer’s fence, that’s two, and they cut down on the noise pretty well. On the upside of that is the gate cut into the back fence so we can get the trailers or equipment into the backyard. It’s a triangular lot, so nothing big is coming in through the front.

I’d planned to start off the actual with-realtor shopping events by taking photos of each house we looked at, so we could go back and remember which house had which features. Even by looking online and at the street views, they were all starting to run together. So I snapped away at this one, taking such memorable shots as the well pressure tank and the brand of pool filter.

But I don’t think we’re going to have a big collection of house pictures. We’re going to make an offer on this one.