Yeah, it’s pretty big – about 2200sqft (though I think it looks bigger than that from the outside). The options here seem to be limited to 4 bedroom colonials just like this one, or split levels which we really didn’t want. So colonial it is! We’re lucky that the housing market is bad and interest rates are very low or we could never afford such a great house.

We were definitely looking for as much land as possible, but we thought we’d be limited to 1-2 acres, especially this close to work.

There isn’t much of a backyard – the patio goes almost right out into the woods (with a bit more yard on the sides of the house), but the front yard is a good size for letting the dog out unsupervised (and obviously running around the woods with supervision will be so much fun for it). I think we’re going to go the electric fence route in the front yard. I don’t really like them, but I also don’t want to fence off the whole front of the house. I figure with a puppy we’ll have to walk it all the time anyway and we won’t be getting a dog til next year, so we have some time to plan.

I can’t wait to hang out on the patio! The front porch will also be great if it’s raining or something. This weekend we stopped by an estate sale and ended up with 11 folding chairs, made of solid wood. They’ll be perfect for having lots of people over and sitting around the firepit (there’s actually a firepit!) and they only cost us $5 for the bunch!

Thanks, Brittbritt! We wanted to buy our “forever” house, rather than a starter house, and we hope to live in it for a very long time. Of course, if we have to move for work or something we’d have to sell it, but as long as we’re living in the area we wanted a house we would love for a long time.

Here are a couple more pics

Kichen. It’s a good size and I like the white cabinets. You can see the bunny’s room ahead – it has horrible wallpaper and paint. Maybe Hannah can help rip down the wallpaper

This will be my “library” and the formal living room will be our tv watching room (at least that’s what we think we’ll be doing). The formal living room is currently a play room with bright yellow walls, so it was hard to get an idea of how we’d lay it out, but it seemed better for tv watching (which is fine with me, since I can’t wait to set up this room for hanging out and drinking a cup of tea while looking out the huge windows at the woods). I would personally rather spend more time in here than the other room, but there isn’t a good spot for our tv and the bunnies wouldn’t be able to get to it (it only connects to the kitchen and I doubt they’d come all the way over)

The current owner is a wood working fan and made the built-ins himself (and I think they had the fireplace stones installed after they moved in). They did make some really nice choices, like the patio and everything they did to the “library” room, but the wife made some odd decorating choices – 3 out of 4 bedrooms are pink. I get it for the little girl’s bedrooms, but the husband’s office is in one of the rooms and is pink with ugly wallpaper on the bottom. And that bright yellow playroom – that’ll have to go! I was going to wait to decide on paint colors, but I might have to get some white and do that room right away just so I can live with it. Haha. Oh, and the hallway when you walk in is bright teal. She certainly wasn’t afraid of color.

Sarita, the pink paint in the office was strange since the guy works for our company (though in marketing or something else non-technical). All the furniture in that room was manly but those pink walls and girly wallpaper were strange. The rest of it is in fantastic condition though, and the expensive things like the kitchen and patio don’t need to be changed, which is what we really hoped to find.

The white thing next to the house is just kind of a trellis/walkthrough thing to the side yard. I might take it down, but then it might be fun to grow some vines up it. We saw it in May, so there wasn’t much growing yet.

Pam, we’ll be in NY now, but only 30 min or so from CT 🙂 So much closer to work though! We’ll go from a 60 mile round trip commute to only 10 miles. We’ve spent a lot of time in this area with friends (and we work here) so it’ll be nice to move in and already know where things are, where to eat, etc.

One of our friends was jealous that we could afford so much more house than him, but we pointed out that interest rates are at 4.75% now instead of the 6%+ he paid 5 or so years ago. Makes a huge difference! Back in 2005 the sellers could’ve gotten at least $50k more for the house too, so it would’ve been completely out of our price range. I’m scared of all the money, but a townhouse in the same area is only $50-70k cheaper, so it was totally worth it.

I think they’re the first owner – at least according to Zillow it only lists one person buying it in 1999. They might have had it built even – I’m not sure, but I think they just bought it brand new.

MB, come and join us! We can have a bunny utopia.

Thanks, Tate! I have a lot of kitchen stuff, so I hope it all fits – I’m kind of overflowing my current kitchen which is slightly smaller and without the island, but otherwise a similar size. It does have a big double door pantry next to the fridge, so I can fit a lot of pots and pans in there

Hahahaha. We have room for all! Bunnies included! The cage fight thing made me snort. Everyone let me know what color you want your bedroom painted of if I should just leave them all pink.

LPT – I don’t know about the horse thing yet. Most of the property is wooded, but there is a large cleared field on one side (unfortunately not visible from the house) where we plan to garden and it would be good for horses. I don’t see it happening soon since the cost of installing fencing, a barn, etc would be so expensive, but I’m really glad we got a property where it might be a possibility in the future. For now we’re thinking of getting some chickens and a dog and going from there. I’d love to get some other “farm animals” that are easier and cheaper to keep than a horse, like maybe a mini donkey or some sheep or something. For now I’ll just have to research local barns and start taking lessons again! I think there’s a place nearby that offers indoor polo and you can rent their horses for the season if you don’t have your own, so that would be a lot of fun.

Here’s a picture of the property lines so you can see the field I’m talking about. We’re at the end of a cul-de-sac and we have all of the land down to the rail trail, which you can see on the bottom left. It seems like we don’t have that entire field, but we have enough of it and I don’t think the neighbors have done anything with their part. There are also some smaller cleared areas right behind the house that will be good for chickens and things.

DH is calling the cleared area: Field of Dreams

We’ve looked long and hard for the privacy thing! It’s been a long search, but I do feel very lucky that we’re getting the house that we are. I’m currently in a townhouse and my porch looks onto about 30 other porches – at least nobody goes out on them much, but I hate feeling like I’m sitting in the middle of a circle of people. At least none of them go out in bikinis unless they’re going to the pool (which I try not to look at as I drive past – haha)

Indoor polo is awesome! I played a little bit in college and it was so much fun. I’m not very coordinated with a mallet, but it’s something I’d like to get better at. Especially now that I find jumping kind of scary and don’t feel the need to ever jump any higher, it would be fun to get good at a new horsey skill.

Sarita, it seems like everyone in Utah has a horse in their backyard, which seemed weird to me when I was driving through. Even people with less than an acre still had horses.

We’d definitely check out zoning before doing anything. We won’t be getting anything other than a dog for at least 2 years, so we have time. I imagine we’ll just get chickens, but even those are subject to zoning. There are some horse farms nearby (just small ones) so I’m sure there’s some way to have livestock-type animals – we’d just have to find out the rules.

Thanks, luvmyhunybuny! We’re actually in CT now, but our new house is in the Hudson Valley area to be closer to work. It’s a similar vibe to my current part of CT though.

Thanks, K&K! I’m super excited that we were able to find a place with so much land and so close to where we want to be.

We had three houses fall through even after getting accepted offers – it’s crazy out there! The market here isn’t even that good and there was nobody bidding against us – the sellers were just crazy and screwed us over. I’m so glad to finally have a house and everything is settled now so I don’t see us losing it. In the end I like this house more than all of the others we had accepted offers on, so it all worked out in the end.

I’m just dying to move in though! It’s been almost two months since the contract, so this is when we would want to be moving, but they put the closing date off until August.

I wish BBers lived closer so you could all come over and hang out on my new patio!

We haven’t actually started packing. Eek! I have things that I took with me from college to my first apartment, then onto this apartment and I really need to get rid of them. I don’t dislike throwing things out and I’m not a packrat – I’m just too lazy to actually do it. Haha

We’re going to try moving the smaller stuff by ourselves (we figure we can pack up our cars and drive to work, then drop the stuff off in the new house on our way home). Our friends moved recently and recommended some great cheap movers to do the heavy stuff for us. I’m definitely not looking forward to it! I bet we have a lot more stuff than we think we do.

Sitting on the back patio with a bunch of bunnies around sounds like tons of fun!