The Open House Crashers

For the past few weeks, my mom has semi-seriously started to look at new house listings.  My husband and I are not quite sure why since we love our home, but she's definitely on a kick to see what's out there.   For almost five full years now, my husband and I have been living on one side of our duplex house, and my mom lives on the other.  I have lived in this home since I was three (I can't believe Little Lewie is only a few months away from this age), and while I lived on one side with my mom, my grandparents had lived on the other side--the side that we now inhabit.  Of course, I didn't always live here--I moved away to college and grad school, but I did return home when I was 24.  (I'm now um...okay I know I announced this in a previous post--35.)

Okay, so it's safe to say that I've lived here for a few decades, and to be honest, not much has changed.  Our house is still green, our yard is still the same (with the exception of a few flower gardens I've started) and the rooms are still the same (other than different carpeting and color wall paint).  It's a place that gives me security, and yet, I know my mom's right when she says it's a little too small.  Since both our kitchen and living room are small (we have no dining room, den, or family room), we have gotten used to entertaining only two adult guests at a time, and usually we have them eat in the living room, since again, our kitchen is quite tiny and crowded.

So, I'll have to admit, my mom has now gotten me a little more excited about looking at new homes too.  We started doing drivebyes a few weeks ago, and this Sunday, we had the pleasure to discover that one of the homes we wanted to see was holding an open house.  Score!!

The only problem is that this house was a little bit out of our price range.  Okay, it was a lot out of our price range.  It was a $700,000 home marked down to an affordable $599,000.  (If we sold our current home, we'd still have an over $300,000 mortgage--a mortgage that we simply couldn't swing with property taxes, etc.--no way!)  Still, we looked at it, and since I've always had expensive taste, I fell in love with it.  The house had a balcony that overlooked the family room.  The family room had a fireplace with vaulted ceilings, and there was a four season sun room attached to the family room that went out onto a Club Med type deck.  Oh yes, the kitchen was spacious with granite counter tops, and the laundry room (no kidding) was the size of our current kitchen.  (Right now, we have the pleasure of being able to sit on the toilet and take clothes out of the dryer at the same time--too much information, right?)

So, because I loved this house so much, I overstayed my welcome. Little Lewie came on the tour with us, and as soon as he saw the swing set in the backyard, I knew we'd just have to stay a little while longer. Oh, it was so much fun playing on the swing set and pretending like we owned the house. For a minute there, I could envision us enjoying the yard on a warm summer day and having tons of people over to enjoy the deck, the stone patio, the four season sun room, and the gardens.

Oh, we didn't get yelled at, but I'm sure it seemed like we may have gotten a little too comfortable on the property. So, for one day, we became open house crashers instead of wedding crashers (although that sounds like fun too). It was so much fun pretending to live the high life, and yes, I could tell that Little Lewie loved this house, too. Why wouldn't he? He'd only have two huge playrooms to enjoy instead of our living room that he has to share with us filled with his playthings.

I'm sure we may look at a house or two again in the next few weeks, only this time I told my mother that we needed to stick within our price range...maybe.