House Hunting

With our house sold, the search for our next home continued in earnest. I was hoping to stay relatively close to our current home, but homes nearby are generally way outside of our price range, and/or need too much work. While we clearly aren't afraid to remodel a home, adding two kids to the mix made it less interesting this time around.

Miss Maddie all dressed and ready to shop for her next home!

We searched all throughout Johnson County, KS, and north of the river in Platte County. Joe's biggest concerns were that we stayed close enough to downtown so that his commute wouldn't double (or triple). Our good friends Scott and Tricia live north, so they were a strong factor in looking north as well.

There is a beautiful lake community in the northland, Riss Lake, that we had always liked but the homes generally seemed outside of our price range. The downturn in the market seemed to hit that neighborhood hard, and we realized that there were some smaller homes at the top of our price range, so we took a look.

And found our next home!

The house sits at the back of a small cul-de-sac, and has one of our big wish list items - a 3 car garage! It's actually not a whole lot bigger than our current home, as far as square footage goes. There's approx 2600 square feet on the first and second levels, split between the kitchen, living and dining rooms, 4 bedrooms and laundry room. Oh, and the half bath on the main level, and each bedroom has a bath attached. For reference, our current house is about 1900 square feet on the main and second levels. The big space we are picking up, though, is the fully finished basement, which adds another 1200 or so square feet, between a family room, wet bar area, full bathroom and 5th bedroom! 

 The previous owners spent a lot of money fixing up the backyard, and installed a beautiful stone patio with a firepit, deck and huge fountain. We are excited about being able to spend a lot of time outside this summer and fall, even though we will definitely miss our screened porch.

We also got lucky in that there's a built in basket ball hoop off the *flat* driveway, a 12 foot trampoline and large built in swingset left by previous owners. 

The area also backs to the Parkville nature preserve, and since the previous owners moved out last fall, the deer have taken over the yard! Every time we've been there, deer have been hanging out, drinking out of the fountain and eating the landscaping. I'm not sure what Molly is going to think about seeing the deer, but since the yard isn't fenced, we hope she doesn't go after them!

The biggest issue with the house is that it was built in 1997 with a cedar shake roof that isn't in great shape. We are hoping to get a few more years out of it, or be in the position to have insurance cover a replacement roof if a storm damages it. Otherwise we'll have a big ticket item to replace which won't be fun at all.

Now we are finishing up the details to close next week, on June 26th. Time to pick paint colors so we can start making the space ours!

And we will be Missouri residents once again, so hooray for in state Mizzou tuition down the road ;)