Why are we moving again?

The process of cleaning up, packing excess stuff, and staging the house has revealed that the house we live in is kinda awesome. Regardless, we are committed to the new house and it is coming along nicely. I still need to decide how to go about moving... twice and where to stay for the month (likely) between selling the home and buying the new one.

I guess the answer is that after 15 years in one home, we're just ready for something different. 

Making progress on the new house

Fingers crossed for an offer completed on the current house.

Progress on the new house.

I just remembered that my current house was framed on the 4th of July and we moved in on the 31st, and surprisingly, there has been no real structural issues in this house.  I don't expect the new house to go up quite that fast, we still have 3 months to go, but I still have a feeling the builder is going to offer us an earlier closing... of course, we will need to have the current house sold first.

Oh poop, Hurricaine Irma and a new house build

I wasn't really worried about the state of the house. It was in the beginning stages and I knew that anything that blew down could be put back up. What I was worried about was the projectiles that a house in progress could cause on the rest of the neighborhood.

The good news is that only a couple pieces of wood blew away and did not ruin anyone else's house that I know of. The bad news is that the construction workers probably needed a fresh toilet.

eww. 

At home, we in the NE suburbs of ATL lost trees in the neighborhood.  My yard is a mess. A shutter is kinda in a precarious position and we lost power for an hour. Most of our friends and family lost power for 24 hours. Some lost power for two whole days... one person is still out. 

Old and New

As my old house gets closer to ready to sell, I am becoming nostalgic as it is a particularly beautiful home.  So why am I moving?  It doesn't work well for us as a family.

My "old" two story foyer at Christmastime

It doesn't work for a 4 car family. We have to constantly shuffle around cars every morning and evening. You could say that it only temporary as my children will fly the coop before long, but whenever my grown family will come home to visit or whenever we have visitors, we will have the same annoying problem.

Photo of "old" great room

Another reason it doesn't work is it doesn't flow to fit the way we live. We walk in, kick off our shoes, put down our bags and go about our business... the foyer door and kitchen door become littered with, shoes, and bags, and mail and stuff like that, and with 4 adults in the house, it gets a bit overwhelming to stay on top of.  With a proper mud room and foyer closet, the new house will hopefully work better with the way we use the house.

Finally, we needed to move because I was having a safety issue with the stairs.  I have very big feet (and the stairs are quite small) and a numbness problem with my leg. I had taken to falling on the stairs regularly. My first inclination was to get a first-floor master, but instead, we are getting an upstairs laundry room, right outside the master closet, so that will mean I don't have to carry clothes up and down the stairs. Plus the new stairs are bigger and wider.

On the negative side, the old house is far more dramatic than the new house with its two story foyer and great room and soaring ceilings, but we just don't live for that anymore.

The new house, on the other hand, feels so low maintenance. The type of counters and tiles, the wall to wall hardwood floors I have chosen, and the simplicity of design. All in all, it will be smaller than the old home, but the two main floors are bigger in the square footage because there are not two story rooms which can cause a loss of square footage.

Btw, my realtor friend took aerial photos of the house in progress... Isn't that cool?