The New House

Surprise! We bought a totally different house instead! And we are absolutely thrilled with our choice. All the details on what happened are in the previous post (just published).

The new house, which we are now in contract for and scheduled to own by April 5, is a beautiful townhouse built in 2007. It has apparently never been occupied. It is in the same complex as that beautiful townhouse I fell in love with early in our search.

It has three bedrooms plus an office, three full bathrooms, and 2663 square feet. It is located on a quiet dead-end street and overlooks a greenspace with fantastic walking trails. The final price was the same as the house we almost bought, but we do have homeowner association fees of $200/month on top of that, so it's a bit more expensive.

We visited the house again yesterday - since we had only visited once before we bought it! - and it was even better than we remembered. Here are some pictures:


Neighborhood view. There's lots of street parking, which is great. The other house had almost no parking.


Front view. Only a few steps up to the entrance!


I am quite smitten with this modern metal banister.


Stairs to top floor.


Just inside the front door on the left is an office (probably David's)...


...and the main guest bathroom.


Then you arrive at the kitchen, which is one of the biggest and prettiest we've ever seen.


It has that nifty central vacuum system where you just sweep right into this slot!


Detail of sparkly mosaic backsplash in the kitchen.


Kitchen and dining room.


Dining room and balcony.


Living room with nice view of trees.


Living room fireplace. Unfortunately it's electric, but it does put out silent heat.


The laundry room, which is on the top floor next to the bedrooms. It may not seem too exciting, but it's just one of many ways this house is better than the other one. The inspector had commented on the importance of a drain pan under the washer to help prevent flooding, which the house didn't have. But we have one here! Also, a sink and the choice of gas or electric for the dryer.


Master bedroom


Master bathroom


The master tub - wonderfully deep, which I've found to be very rare.


Back on the main floor again, looking towards the entrance from the living room. Those are bamboo floors - very earth friendly. Now we'll go downstairs to the basement level.


At the base of the stairs is a nice-sized storage room, which will be great for all that oversized Costco stuff, plus some general storage.


Next door is a bonus room, which will probably be an exercise room and maybe additional storage.


The garage - not super big but bigger than the one at the house. And what a nice view.


Back of the house with comparatively long driveway. This is a really great feature. We might be able to plant things in the barkdust area - since it's not a condo, we do own the property - but we haven't seen the neighborhood regulations yet.


View and walking trail right behind the house. A major selling point for us!

For all photos, see my gallery at Flickr:
http://flickr.com/gp/sacred_destinations/z841ev