Before I delve into more about plans for the new house and my general excitement for living in a house all by ourselves, I wanted to spend a moment and dedicate a post to our current place. Even though I am extremely excited for our new house and all its potential, that first moment of finding out our offer was accepted was a little bittersweet. Our current home (the upper apartment to our duplex) was the first house we owned and thus the first place we really got to decorate and take care of as we wanted. I am really going to miss it. In fact, tears may or may not have been shed about our little apartment somewhere in the purchase process as I thought about all the good times we had in it already, all the potential that would go unfulfilled, and the projects that would be left unfinished. But really I think that's a good thing- it means we made the right choice when purchasing the last house and despite its flaws, I loved living there. If there was no regret involved that would mean something would have been unpleasant about our living situation, or worse, our life, for the past 13 months.
**Read the following list with Trace Adkins' "You're Gonna Miss This" playing for full emotional effect.
I will miss most about our apartment...
- our large (for city standards) backyard with the 6' wooden fence. I know not everyone likes fences between yards, but with houses as close as they are in the city I don't mind a good privacy fence, especially if it hides neighbor kids and dogs from our two pups and ensures a little more peace and quiet in the neighborhood. Also I don't need to be out grilling our dinner 15 feet from our neighbors with nothing in between us, no matter how much I like our neighbors. Along those same lines I am also saddened by the fact that we will never get to enjoy properly our lush new yard.
- our large bathroom. I once said it had room for a dance party in there, and it really does. Not that you really need that much space in a bathroom, but it certainly was nice while it lasted. It made all those times there where 2 humans and 2 chihuahuas were in there trying to get ready a lot more comfortable.
- the open shelves/ linen closet in the bathroom. Now, I am super stoked about having a built in linen-closet, but there is something about having open shelves, and in the bathroom no-less, for convenience that I also adore. It helps that I painted the inside of the shelves a fun color to match the shower curtain (this was actually the only space we deviated from the beige color in the rest of the house in order to save effort on re-painting when we went to rent out the apartment).
- our attic bedroom. Specifically how open and big it feels with the high ceilings (for an attic). Our new bedroom is technically not much narrower (only a foot I think), but the whole layout will be a lot less traditional and functional even though there is overall more square footage. I will also miss my "walk in" closet. Yes, it took away from having a reading nook, but it was so convenient to be able to see all my clothes at once when getting dressed (in fairness to our new place, I may end up with the same "walk in" closet set up if the other closets don't pan out).
-the sun porch, especially because I just got it cleared out in time for the cold and we never got to properly enjoy it. It had so much potential for weekend mornings and fall evenings with a cup of hot chocolate.
- the gallery wall leading up to the attic. I'm sure I will find a place for such a wall at the new house, but I love the setup of the frames now, going up the stairs.
- the gray exterior. This one might seem exceedingly silly. But I was truly excited to pick a paint color for the outside of the house and then to pick an accent color to paint our front door (which would have been yellow). I painted our patio table to match what would have been the accent and now it won't match at the new place. And I really really like the shade of gray I picked out- I think it was the perfect middle between light and dark, warm and cool.
- the open kitchen. Even if the table had to be stuck in a corner and we didn't have quite enough storage or a dishwasher, the "open" kitchen was very user friendly for such a small space.
- our proximity to 35W. Our new place is actually slightly closer to work for me, and just 1 or 2 minutes farther for David, so this shouldn't seem like a big deal. However, moving exactly (seriously google map that) 1 mile away now means we will logically have to take Hiawatha (Highway 55) going most places, especially going to say, visit family that all live in the southern suburbs. And I. HATE. HIAWATHA. I hate the lights and the trains, I hate having to drive on it and I even hate just having to cross it. It is just the worst road every constructed as a major throughway through a city. There might be some exaggeration here, but not much.
- the nearness to the bus line. There were some obvious downsides to being so close to the bus stop, but for convenience's sake you really can't beat living a block away from the bus stop that you take to work (at the Dome) or just to downtown in general when you don't want to deal with parking. It helps that we get bus tokens from work, so riding the bus was also always a cheaper option.
- the "security" that came with sharing a house with someone. This one also might be silly as well, but I always felt, especially when I would be home alone for that night, that sharing a house with someone, even if they were in another apartment, made me safer. I rationalized that if something were to happen they would be able to hear the commotion or hear me scream, and that criminals would be less likely to break into a duplex for those reasons (also because they could not tell who was home if there were cars in the driveway)... though that last part is probably giving most criminals too much credit. The noises of our tenants (and neighbors at our first rental duplex) may be a nuisance, but they could also be comforting.
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