Our (Soon-to-Be) House

As many of our friends and acquaintances know, Kevin and I have been trying to buy a house for awhile.  We've actually been looking at houses off and on since the spring of 2009, and finally decided on a house on which to place an offer this past November.  After a couple of hurdles, as of this past Friday, we received word from our bank that we are finally "clear to close."

It seems a little unreal to me.  I asked Kevin if anything else could wrong at this point, and it doesn't really seem so, short of the sellers trashing the place before the final walk-through, which doesn't seem likely, as I'm pretty sure they want to sell their house even more than we want to buy it.

So now, I feel safe enough to actually write some stuff about the house without jinxing anything.

One of the reasons Kevin and I took so long to settle on a house is because we both have very different ideas about what our ideal house/location would be.  Ideally, I would like a house with a modest yard on a side street in a quaint little town, of which there are none in Central MD.  So, my second choice is a house in Roland Park, a historic upscale neighborhood in Baltimore City.  Quiet, tree-lined streets just blocks away from kitschy shopping and dining.  Kevin, on the other hand, would like to have a house in someplace similar to the middle of Montana, minus the rest of Montana. But on the East Coast. In other words, Kevin wants a lot of property, and to not be able to see our neighbors.  You can see where our two visions are not exactly compatible.   

Since I know Kevin would truly be miserable in the city, and I have been known to enjoy the outdoors and open fields, we agreed on a few acres outside of the city...a little north, as anything with multiple acres closer to the city would be out of our price range (yes, you can get a house with an acre or greater lot in the city, just be prepared to spend over a million dollars and $10-20K per year in taxes!).  So, we're buying a house with around 3 acres about 20 minutes north of Baltimore in a small, cul-de-sac neighborhood. I admit to being a little nervous about the cul-de-sac neighborhood with no side streets - it's the kind of street that I grew up on and was not fond of.  I'm hoping that as an adult, it will grow on me.  A cool thing about the neighborhood, although it is definitely more suburban than urban or even rural, is that it is not cookie-cutter at all.  It seems like most of the houses in developments going up nowadays all look pretty much the same, and even a lot of older developments, like my parents', built in the 50's, only had a few designs to choose from.  With this neighborhood, it seems like there might not have been a builder for the neighborhood, so there is an array of styles on the street.

I've been obsessing about how to decorate.  Be on the lookout for posts about some ideas I have!  Photos of the house in its current state are on the way, too.