Meet Our Fourth Home
My friends, after 8 solid months of stress, heartache, anxiety, and so much waiting, we have officially closed on our new home. It’s the fourth home Corey and I have owned together, and I’ll be shocked if we ever leave it. I know it sounds dramatic, but this is the perfect home for us, and we can truly see ourselves growing old here.
Plus, after all the stress of this moving situation, I swear I’m never ever (EVER!) moving again!
If you followed along with my little House Hunters game last month, you might be surprised to know that House #3 was NOT the winner! I fooled many of you by talking about how it was in our favorite neighborhood (which is true!) but what I failed to mention is that we fell head over heels in love with House #2 before we even stepped foot in it. I knew just from the listing photos that it was the one for us. It has everything we were looking for – a generously-sized lot with tons of mature trees, so much space for entertaining, with charm and potential oozing out of every corner.
I know you’re dying to see every detail, so let’s jump right in.
Our New Home Video Tour
If you want to get a feel for the flow of the house, I recommend you start here. The video really shows how unique the layout is, and it’s really the only way to fully experience the house!
Our New 1970’s Home: The Exterior
For our little photo tour, let’s start on the outside. You’ll immediately notice that it’s a 1-story home, which is huge for us. We’ve always loved the idea of going back to a 1-story, but it is really hard to find one that has the kind of space we need. We really lucked out here because this house has everything we need and then some!
The exterior is really charming and feels very Central Texas. There are mature trees all over the place, tons of flower beds waiting to me to fill them out a bit, and so much space to spread out.
I’m obsessed with the long driveway that leads to a detached 1-car garage. We really wanted to have a 3-car garage, and this setup (with a 2-car attached and a 1-car detached) is so unique for our area. It’s really perfect for our needs, though. The main garage will be my workshop (I’ll park in the driveway), and the detached garage will be used for Corey to park, as well as for some storage space.
The backyard is huge, with so much beautiful landscaping and an already-complete patio. It was really important to us to find a home that had some exterior work like this already done, because working on this sort of thing is just not our passion. We knew if we moved into a home with a blank backyard, we’d put off doing anything for years. But, we love this space just as it is and I’m really excited to get back there and make it our own.
The Main Living Areas
Now, let’s move to what I mentally refer to as “the main house”. It’s pretty obvious when walking through that the original home consisted of just this part – the three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the kitchen, dining, and living room. The house is L-shaped, and we believe that the other side of the L is what was added on years later.
The dining room is the perfect size for our giant dining table based on the measurements – we haven’t gotten it in there yet, though, so we’ll see how it feels in practice. I’m really excited for the double ovens in the kitchen, having an eat-in kitchen again (two dining spaces was a must for me!), and all of the wooden shutters on the windows are so charming I can barely stand it.
I love the vaulted ceiling in the living room, and Corey has already asked me how many days I think I’ll wait before ripping off some of that fireplace tile to see if there’s brick behind it (wouldn’t that be so exciting?!).
Many of you moaned with me about my lack of a decently-sized (or shaped) pantry in our last house, and you’ll be happy to know the pantry in this house is ginormous in comparison! I can walk into it! There’s so much space in there I’m not even sure I’ll know what to do with it all.
The Bedrooms + Bathrooms
Our new home has four bedrooms, technically, but one of them we’re not using as a bedroom. In the main part of the house, there are three. Our bedroom is right off the living room (with an ensuite bathroom), and the boys’ have a small hallway that leads to a shared bathroom and their two bedrooms.
My one complaint about the layout here is that there isn’t a powder room, so guests will likely end up using the boys’ bathroom most of the time. The third bathroom is at the other end of the house, so it won’t make sense most of the time for guests to use that, unless we’re already hanging back there. It’s definitely going to be a good opportunity to teach the boys how to keep their bathroom clean! Long-term, we have dreams of possibly adding a half bath near the kitchen (using up a bit of garage space to make it happen), but we’ll see where we land.
The bedrooms are all great blank slates – I love that our bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, and I love that the boys’ bedrooms are so light-filled. I could see us adding another window or two to our room eventually, and our bathroom is going to be a total gut job. But, it’s all workable for now!
The Bonus Rooms + Offices
Now, let’s head into the addition, where you can see the rest of the home! When my brother in law visited for the first time, he stepped back into this part of the house and said, “sis, did you know you have a whole other house back here?” and truly – that’s such a good way to describe it. The house feels complete when you walk through the main part, and all of this extra space feels like such a bonus.
The first room off the kitchen is what we’re calling the Lego room. The boys (all three of them) have been dreaming about this room for ages and they’re so excited. The idea is that it’ll be a space for them to create, display LEGO sets, and have a LEGO city in the middle of the room! We plan to also set up a long desk area for the boys to do art, homework, etc. It’ll basically be a big hangout space for creativity and play!
There’s a long hall connecting this room to the movie room and my office. Along that hallway you’ll find the HUGE laundry room (with the dreamiest vinyl tile wallpaper that makes me smile every time I see it). There’s a window and a built-in ironing board and a sink and cabinetry and it’s truly the laundry room of my dreams.
Right next to the laundry room is an oversized storage closet that we’ll be turning into Corey’s office space!
At the end of the hallway is the movie room and the third full bathroom. This will be where we snuggle up for family movie nights, and probably where the boys do a lot of their playing and hanging out. The bathroom off of this space is really nice with a steam shower function and a built-in bench! The steam shower doesn’t work right now and we probably won’t be fixing it anytime soon, but someday it sure will be nice to have.
And finally, right off the movie room is the sunroom, which is my office. MY OFFICE IS THE SUNROOM, Y’ALL. Does it get any better than that?! I think not. It’s full of windows on three of the walls, but it’s shaded from the giant tree outside so it won’t feel like I’m baking. It has wood flooring and a vaulted ceiling and I truly don’t think I could have planned it any better myself.
One of my favorite details of my office is that I have my own door leading to the backyard, with a small patio right off the door. I plan to put my big cozy egg chair there and it’ll be the perfect place for me to relax when I’m taking a break from work!
I can’t tell you how antsy I am to get into this house and start to make it our own. It truly is my dream house, and I can’t imagine anything that would be a better fit for our little family. The boys have already started making plans for their new bedrooms, I’ve got some epoxy floor for the garage ready to go, and after months of waiting we are more than ready to get in there this week.