Home Tour
Well, I am finally getting around to blogging about our new home (that we've now lived in for 6 months). Timeliness was not my thing before I had a kid, and you better believe it's even less of my thing now. I did not want to post anything until our house felt fully settled in and "finished." But I think I have come to accept that I am always going to want to change things and, unless one of the trees in our backyard starts growing money on it, we simply are never going to be able to afford the things we would like all at once. That, and one of my favorite designers recently posted photos of her home "as is" (i.e. not curated for a magazine spread) and I was brought back to the reality that we all, in fact, have rooms (or entire homes) in progress.
So, here we are. We LOVE our new home. It is just the right size (1450 square feet, 3 beds, 2 baths), has a 3-car garage (THREE CAR! and we only have ONE car parked in it... surprise, surprise), and is right across the street from a park. The home search is different for everyone, but for me, layout was king. We looked at 2 different homes that had the master on the main floor and guest bedrooms on the second floor and that was a total deal breaker for me. Lyla was 7 months old at the time and I could not get my head around climbing stairs in the middle of the night for feedings, illness, what have you. Not to mention future visions of my tiny tots stumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night if (when) they need us. We walked into our house and it had such a good feeling about it--it's a ranch-style with an open floor plan (all hail the open floor plan), 9-foot ceilings and great natural light. It was the middle of winter on a rainy day in the dreary Willamette Valley and our home was bright and happy.
Shockingly, this all trumped location. Since moving here from San Diego 4 years ago, where I spent an hour and a half in the car each day commuting to/from work, I was adamant that we would not commute again. But home prices in Corvallis are expensive (nothing like San Diego, but expensive for Oregon), so the choice was to buy a fixer upper that we could not afford to fix, or to buy a move-in ready home in a neighboring community about 20 minutes away. We picked the latter and the truth is, Jake's commute wasn't affected at all (just mine--lucky me). I might also mention here that we always thought we wanted a fixer upper. Well, might I encourage all of you who feel that way to live in an old rental that needs work :). That said, if we had the money and the time and no kids, we still might have made that choice. BUT, we have finite resources, we both work full-time, and we have a very busy small child (and plans to grow our family), so it just did not make sense for us at this juncture in our lives. There are little things we'd like to tweak (someday) in our house, but nothing NEEDS to be changed or fixed. And that is a beautiful thing! (Did I mention we did not even have to paint a single wall??)
This is your typical suburbia, folks. I'm not going to lie. Our neighborhood is just that--a neighborhood. We are not really close to grocery stores, shops, downtown, or anything really (except a bowling alley and mini golf up the street). We're in a large subdivision with walking trails, a park, lots of dogs, lots of babies, and lots of minivans. And I will tell you now, unashamedly, that I love it. I feel like a traitor to my own generation, with all of this talk about how millenials want to live, work, and play all in the same spot. It's not that we didn't want that, we just had a budget and had to make choices--we prioritized a newer home, more space, and a family-friendly neighborhood over distance to work. And we have no regrets. So with that, here's a look around our home!
Entryway:
The main open living area is in the center of the house, with the two smaller bedrooms and guest bathroom on one side, and the Master suite on the opposite end of the house.
So, here we are. We LOVE our new home. It is just the right size (1450 square feet, 3 beds, 2 baths), has a 3-car garage (THREE CAR! and we only have ONE car parked in it... surprise, surprise), and is right across the street from a park. The home search is different for everyone, but for me, layout was king. We looked at 2 different homes that had the master on the main floor and guest bedrooms on the second floor and that was a total deal breaker for me. Lyla was 7 months old at the time and I could not get my head around climbing stairs in the middle of the night for feedings, illness, what have you. Not to mention future visions of my tiny tots stumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night if (when) they need us. We walked into our house and it had such a good feeling about it--it's a ranch-style with an open floor plan (all hail the open floor plan), 9-foot ceilings and great natural light. It was the middle of winter on a rainy day in the dreary Willamette Valley and our home was bright and happy.
Shockingly, this all trumped location. Since moving here from San Diego 4 years ago, where I spent an hour and a half in the car each day commuting to/from work, I was adamant that we would not commute again. But home prices in Corvallis are expensive (nothing like San Diego, but expensive for Oregon), so the choice was to buy a fixer upper that we could not afford to fix, or to buy a move-in ready home in a neighboring community about 20 minutes away. We picked the latter and the truth is, Jake's commute wasn't affected at all (just mine--lucky me). I might also mention here that we always thought we wanted a fixer upper. Well, might I encourage all of you who feel that way to live in an old rental that needs work :). That said, if we had the money and the time and no kids, we still might have made that choice. BUT, we have finite resources, we both work full-time, and we have a very busy small child (and plans to grow our family), so it just did not make sense for us at this juncture in our lives. There are little things we'd like to tweak (someday) in our house, but nothing NEEDS to be changed or fixed. And that is a beautiful thing! (Did I mention we did not even have to paint a single wall??)
This is your typical suburbia, folks. I'm not going to lie. Our neighborhood is just that--a neighborhood. We are not really close to grocery stores, shops, downtown, or anything really (except a bowling alley and mini golf up the street). We're in a large subdivision with walking trails, a park, lots of dogs, lots of babies, and lots of minivans. And I will tell you now, unashamedly, that I love it. I feel like a traitor to my own generation, with all of this talk about how millenials want to live, work, and play all in the same spot. It's not that we didn't want that, we just had a budget and had to make choices--we prioritized a newer home, more space, and a family-friendly neighborhood over distance to work. And we have no regrets. So with that, here's a look around our home!
Entryway:
Play room (in place of a formal dining room):
Doesn't everyone keep a bar cart in their play room? ;)
Kitchen:
The glorious open floor plan kitchen-dining-family room:
The main open living area is in the center of the house, with the two smaller bedrooms and guest bathroom on one side, and the Master suite on the opposite end of the house.
Guest bedroom:
Guest bathroom:
Lyla's room:
Master bedroom and bathroom:
Laundry room:
Garage:
Backyard:
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