Life lately

Life has been super chaotic lately and I haven't had much of a change to blog. I've tried blogging on my mobile app but it keeps coming up with an error every time I try to create a post so alas new posts have pretty much been pushed to the back burner.

I haven't posted to much in the last few months for some good reasons:

DH had jaw surgery back in early January and was out of commission for a month and a bit. Of course during this time frame we decided to be crazy and list our house for sale!!!!!! So not only was hubby recuperating, he was also getting the odd jobs done around the house and prepping the house for the many showing we had.

When we decided to list our home it was definitely a sellers marker (which also means its not a good buyers market). We ended up selling our home for a decent chunk of change which meant we were able to get into a bigger and better home ourselves.

It took us a few months to find a house that suited our needs and wasn't a million dollars (no exaggeration there). Homes were literally coming on the market and selling with no home inspection in like 3 days for upwards of $100k over asking.

Our list of requirements for a new home were:

- must be at least 3 bedrooms
- must have a second living room or rec room space
- 2 bathrooms
- ensuite (I wanted but ended up not getting)
- walk in master closet (I wanted but didn't get)
- large yard with privacy
- off a busy street
- garage
- nice entrance way
- fireplace (I always wanted a fireplace)

When we came across our new home we looked at it initially but it didn't quite feel like home, nor did I love the location. Fast forward to a month later and our realtor told us to come back and look at the home....we weren't going to but decided what the heck.

Hubby was sold on the home when we came back for a second showing, but I still wasn't. After much talking it over we decided to put in an offer on the home and it was accepted.

We moved into our new home in June 2016 and started renovations right away. We were lucky enough to have made enough money off our previous home to have cash in hand for all our renovations to date.

The list of renovations we have done to date include:

- Remove wall paper from the 2 spare rooms (luckily it was just a small border type wall paper lining the middle of the walls).
- Pulled up all the carpet in the basement (the former owners owned 2 dogs and you could definitely smell the dogs) and put in a faux wood laminate flooring which we absolutely love.
- We put new hardward in the basement suite kitchen and replaced the kitchen faucet
- We completely gutted the suite bathroom and laid new flooring, put in a new vanity and light fixtures and painted the bathroom.
- We painted the entire basement including our master bathroom
- We installed new energy efficient pot lights in the entire suite.
- We closed off the basement suite bedroom and turned it into our master bedroom, put new flooring in and painted
- We turned the basement 1 bedroom suite into a bachelor suite
- We took out the closet under the stairs and made an entry way into our master and added laundry for ourselves
- We installed a new hot water tank
- Upgraded our electrical to 200 amp
- Put in wiring for a hot tub (hopefully down the road)
- Got rid of the oil tank and put in a heat pump
- new laundry machines

Reno's left to do include:

- Replacing our kitchen counter tops (they are currently a green color)
- Add a backsplash to our kitchen
- Paint the remaining walls in our kitchen so they aren't green
- Get a new light in the kitchen (currently its a huge ugly California style light)
- Replace the vinyl to something a little more modern.
- Put in a new gas fireplace
- Replace the staircase carpeting
- Fix our carport by enclosing it and making storage and a gym
- At some point rip out the tile in our bathroom and put in a tub surround and put new flooring in
- Maybe down the road have our hardwood floors refinished
- Put new cupboards in the suite kitchen and redesign the kitchen layout

Now that we have been in our home for 5 months I absolutely love it. It definitely suits our needs and we have so much more space!!

Here is what we had in our previous home to what we have now:

Old home:
- 3 bedrooms
- .17 acres lot
- 2 bathrooms (an ensuite!)
- older kitchen
- 1260 sqft
- no garage
- no extra living space
- busy street
- no fireplace
- one level living

New home:
- 4 bedrooms and a suite
- .27 acre lot
- 2 bathrooms (although one is in the suite)
- newer kitchen, still a bit outdated but easy to fix it up without a major overhaul
- 2260 sqft (so we basically doubled our house size)
- no garage but we have a carport
- we have our master bedroom, and 3 other bedrooms (one is an office, one is a guest room and one is currently my walk in closet). We can also easily not have a suite and have a whole extra basement rec room should we choose.
- we have separate laundry
-separate entrance way that doesn't open right into our living space
- we live on a cul-de-sac
- we have a fireplace!!!!
- we have a huge deck (half is covered and the other half is uncovered.
- we still have fruit trees except now they are 2 apple trees instead of a peach and plum tree
- we also have a separate utility/storage room which our old house didn't have (well we had a separate space in the back of the house but it wasn't heated and you could only access it by going outside). Our new utility room currently has to be accessed by outdoors only but when we take the suite back over we can access it through the main house.

I will definitely have to post before and after pictures of our new home!!