It was in fall two years ago. My family was almost becoming homeless. We put our townhouse on market to check the water. It was sold in three days! Oops, we didn't expect that would happen in the tough market.
Our serious house hunting began. My husband and I knew what we wanted... not a new construction, something with character and room to convert it to our home. We spent a good amount of time browsing the Internet. One day, I found a listing matched our criteria - the number of bedrooms, the size of the yard, the squire footage, the location, and so on. It was listed as a Colonial built in 1925. Its exterior didn't look exciting. "Hum, we can change it as we like as long as its structure is good..." I started looking the pictures inside. Even in the small photos in the listing, the house showed its lovely woodwork on the window trims and built-in cabinets. I fell in love with the house. "This is it!"
We went to see the house one cold evening. When we got there, the owner was there. She was a small old lady. We could tell she concerned who would buy her house since she loved the house so much. The house was well maintained. We were so impressed by that. It was a full of charms. As we saw on the pictures, the woodwork was beautiful. The doors had original hinges. The spacious basement exposed field stone foundation. The house looked much better than the pictures.
We, however, looked around other houses to be sure that was the one. We saw Capes, Victorians and Colonials in our target area. One Cape was nice, but it had an odd layout and not much room to change things out. One Victorian was gorgeous, but the house was standing at the bottom of the hill in its property. We were not thrilled with its parking either. One Colonial had a nice sun room. We could imagine we hand out there in a warm winter day. But, the second floor was too tight... Another Colonial had a ginormous antique safe in its basement. That was so cool! But, that didn't convince us enough to make an offer.
Finally, we went back to see the one I fell in love with again daytime. The house was in the historic district. There were old houses along the street we couldn't see last time. The yard looked good. The garage was nice and big. We made an offer.
We moved into the house two weeks prior to Christmas. It reminded me the movie, A Miracle on 34th Street. The house was a big Christmas gift to ourselves... even it came with a mortgage. We found a house we love, and that is ours! It's our home!
And, the Smitten Home starts its story...
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