After having our little orange house on the market for 8 months, we finally sold it, and we’re moving to our new home in one week. We moved into our first home on August 25, 2009, and it’s served us well for the 10 years we’ve been here. However, it was time for an upgrade, and the whole moving experience has invoked a smorgasbord of emotions for me. First of all, excitement, and for many reasons. The new house is bigger, so we will have the space we desperately need. Also, let’s go ahead and appreciate the fact that it’s not orange. 😆
There is a main level, full basement, and attic space for storage. Not that we’ll need the attic for storage because the house is almost 4,000 square feet with 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and extra rooms here and there, on 1.5 acres.
We really wanted 5+ acres of land, but anything we saw with that kind of land within our budget was out in the middle of nowhere, and with a grocery store currently less than a mile from my house, the idea of driving 15 minutes to get to one was a big negative. With us working from home, we also needed really fast internet, which was missing from all the homes we looked at with 5+ acres. With our long list of requirements for the new house, we knew we would have to compromise somewhere. While it’s not 5 acres, at least we have something with a little privacy.
The new house is just 10 minutes from everything, so we are really excited about that. The area offers way more than our current living area, so I can’t wait to explore and see what we have. We are also looking forward to quieter traffic. We currently live on a very traveled road with a constant drone of cars going by, and many people seem to think the stretch of road in front and beside our house is a race track. 🙄 We also live at a stop sign that people feel the need to peel out at on a regular basis, and let’s not forget the people who randomly honk their horn when I’m outside doing yard work, on display for everyone driving by to see. It will be so nice to do yard work without people watching. We are looking forward to a quieter place with less traffic – and no wrecks! We’ve probably seen 15+ wrecks happen on the quarter mile road in front of our house, including the latest where a woman took out our huge white crepe myrtle with her SUV last November.
With our current home, we do not have access to our basement and garage from the house. We have to go outside to get to those, and our washer and dryer is in the garage area. So you can imagine I am beyond excited to have the washer and dryer in a more convenient area where weather outside doesn’t dictate how often I do laundry. 😆
There is much to be excited about and look forward to, but excitement is far from the only emotion I am experiencing.
I have spent the past 4-5 years working really hard to get the yard as nice as it is, so I am also having feelings of extreme sadness. 🙁 I am an avid gardener, and leaving all of that hard work and all of my plants behind is killing me just a little.
The vegetable garden has been a little neglected, so it’s not in the best shape, but this whole area of the yard has come a long way. My little 6×8 greenhouse is being left behind. 🙁
The above is just one of many areas I improved within the last 5 years. The new house may have more acreage (almost an acre more), but it doesn’t feel like it since a lot of it is wooded. We will need to get rid of quiet a few trees, especially in the area where I’d like to set up my next greenhouse and garden. There are currently 4 trees in that area that will need to go ASAP so the plants I take with me will get enough sunlight.
We’d like to get rid of the sparsely scattered trees in the backyard as well, leaving the denser area as a sound buffer for the road.
Over the past month, we have been slowly packing and purging our house, getting ready for the move. I don’t know about others, but it’s been a stressful chore. You don’t realize just how much stuff you have until you have to start boxing it up, and I don’t hang on to a bunch of junk or hoard anything. At least I didn’t think so. But there’s so much! We are slowly but surely getting there, and with this move, we’ve hired movers to do the loading and unloading of everything. Alex and I don’t want to risk throwing our backs out in our old age. 😆
The whole experience has provoked feelings of being overwhelmed as I think of all the stuff we’ll need to do or setup, or work on. We’re starting over. This is both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. We’ve spent the past 10 years making our current home into a more efficient living space and work space, since we both work from home. We’ll be starting from ground zero with this house, which is overwhelming because there is already so much I want to do, I don’t know where to start! On the flip side, this is exciting because we have a blank slate in which we can apply lessons learned from the previous house.
With our current house, we didn’t get any of the rooms painted until 2015, when a pine tree limb came through the guest room ceiling and promoted some work. Below is a picture of the original colors (with splotches of paint where I was testing out which shade of gray I wanted it painted).
I wish we had painted sooner because I am in love with the master bedroom colors. The walls are Behr’s Graceful Gray (PPU18-12) eggshell, and the ceiling is Behr’s Lemon Drops (340B-4) flat.
I don’t plan on waiting 6 years before starting the painting process with the new house, especially since the previous owner painted everything (walls, trim, and interior doors) the same color throughout the entire house. I took a few pictures during our last visit to the house for the inspection report.
It’s not the worst color ever, but it’s not my favorite.
I have already decided the master bedroom will be the same gray I used at the current house – Graceful Gray by Behr. I won’t be painting the ceiling yellow because of the texture, so that will stay white. I also plan to do some work in the master bathroom (painting and retraining the cabinets).
The first room I am going to tackle is my “craft room.” Ugh… the color is horrible! And I haven’t actually decided how I want to set this room up just yet. I had planned to use it as my craft room, but I don’t do a LOT of crafts. I would like to make some stuff to sell on Etsy, but I don’t know if my heart is really in it. I will store some of my crafting stuff in here, but I need to figure out what direction I want to take this room. I do know one thing though: it will be the first room I paint, since I’d like it painted before I start configuring and setting it up. Excuse the current mess since the previous owner was still in the process of purging and moving out.
I just LOOOOOVE the fact that it has a sink!
It is exciting yet overwhelming to start from scratch. One little step at a time I suppose, but patience was never really my strong point. I want to get everything done NOW.
Anxiety is also on the list of emotions because of things unknown. Are the neighbors noisy? I like peace and quiet. Someone currently around our area likes to play music at night from time to time, and we can hear the base at our house. I. HATE. THAT. I hope to God we don’t have that issue with the new place. So, will noise be an issue? Where will I put this? Where will I put that? Nothing we currently have matches the color scheme of the house. Will Alex and I argue over where to put stuff? What other unknown issue will arise? Those are just a few things I worry about; we will find out soon enough. I do worry too much. 😐
And of course, there is a little dread – because we have to move five cats.
The 45 minute ride they will have to the new house is going to be miserable, for all parties involved! If anyone has cats, you understand! When they are taken outside of their home, they act like it’s the end of the world. Our 5 minute ride to the vet is the longest 5 minutes ever because they meow constantly as if this will magically put them back into the safety and security of their home. So I can’t imagine how well a 45 minute ride will go with 5 of them… 😐 Once they arrive at their new home, I think 2 of them will handle it okay, but three of them will feel like their world has been turned upside down for a few days and may try to hide. We shall see.
Excitement, sadness, stress, anxiety, dread, and feelings of being overwhelmed. I am ready to be in the new house so it can be over! Wednesday the 10th is the big moving day!
I do plan to be more active on my Instagram account during the move and ‘renovations.’ Make sure you follow me –> @aprilthegemini I will also use this blog to share the changes I make to the new house.