One thing that is different between DF and myself is the number of times we’ve moved.  I can count on one hand, at least right now, the number of permanent homes I’ve had (I can count on two hands if you include temporary places I’ve lived for short months here and there).  DF, however, has moved so many times in his life he can hardly count them.  But, we both agree that we don’t want to move a lot in our life together. So, we set out to find our ‘forever home’.
We had a few criteria for our home, and initially we weren’t expecting to ‘seriously’ look until January.  But, we did feel it was important to look at places together so we would get a good handle on our likes and dislikes – we’d both looked at places in the past, but never together.
Our first trip out was quite productive and there was one place that was interesting to us.  We started talking about putting in an offer, but felt as though we should look some more.  It turned out that an offer was already accepted on that place. BUT, on our next trip out to look at places there was this one place. It was rough around the edges – a one owner home it is definitely ‘retro’.  But, it had a LOT of potential and met our criteria
So we took a leap and will own our home in a few short weeks!
So what criteria did we have for our home?

1. Reduce my commute – I don’t foresee myself changing hospitals so minimizing my commute is important. DF could easily change locations for his job.
2. Bright sunny big yard – big enough for kids, a dog and LOTS of gardening.
3. Good community feel – in an ideal world close to certain friends so we can build community together, but also within a neighborhood that is community-focused.
4. Quiet street – I want to feel relatively safe letting any kids we have (or friends/family’s kids) outside without one of us having to be close by at all times.
5. Potential for what we envision in our future – as mentioned above.  We did not want a ‘starter’ home, but rather a home that could grow and expand as we need it to.

So, how well does our home fit the criteria?

1. Right now it takes me ~30min to drive to work.  I try to walk out the door between 45-40min before I have to be there, to give me the time I need, especially with parking away from the hospital on weekdays.  The new commute drops down to about 15min.  The surprising thing is that this new place is only ~1mile from our current place. It’s amazing how a small distance can make a huge difference.
2. The place has a big, sunny, yard – it’s on a corner lot so there is lots of space and no one on one side!
3. The neighbors have already been quite welcoming, and are happy to have a couple move in (we are more community minded than the cranky 90 year old who lived in the house prior to us).
4. It’s a dead end street, and our end is apparently used for street hockey and games regularly.
5. There is great potential – if we need more space we can build on without losing too much yard, and with 4 bedrooms and 2 floors we have plenty of room for a long time to come!

We cannot wait until we close! Less than 2 weeks to go!