We have a new House!
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Picture of the new house from the original listing.
It has been a while, but I am back with a surprise. We bought a house!
It is a 1970’s ranch that is roughly twice the size of our previous home. We are moving from roughly the average square feet per person in urban China, to about the average in Sweden*. We will still have about half the average square feet per person that is normal in the US, but the new house feels huge to us.
Why did we decide to move? Well, as you can imagine, with the kids getting bigger and bigger, our prior home was starting to feel a bit crowded. Add to that the fact that Fire Beard will be finished with law school and back at home full time soon, we were reaching the limits of what our tiny home could handle.
So we started looking for a new house that would fit our growing family. Our list of requirements was pretty short, after living in such a small house for so long our expectations were pretty low. We wanted affordable, near our current house (due to child care arrangements), and 3 or more bedrooms that were big enough to comfortably walk around once the bed was in place. We also had a few things that we wanted, but were not deal breakers, like a fire place. We expected the house hunting process to be pretty easy (low expectations PLUS a depressed housing market), but it wasn’t. It turns out that houses in our price range are selling pretty quickly, and as soon as we found something we liked and tried to make an offer it was already under contract.
The house we bought is not like those houses we were initially so excited about. It is actually much bigger, has been very well maintained, and is made from much nicer materials (ex. All brick instead of wood). It also has not been redecorated since it was built, and is extremely dated. It had been on the market for nearly half a year when we decided to buy it, and we got a good deal.
So now we have a nice new home that is pretty true to its 1970’s roots, and a lot of work to do. Over the next few years we will be doing a lot of very budget friendly updating, making our new house more modern and more reflective of our collective personality. I hope to keep you all periodically updated on the progress, and may even put up a tutorial or two if we do something really interesting.
