A Giant Weight has been Lifted!

After 2 short days on the market, we have sold our temporary house! What a relief! 

We actually had multiple offers and ended up choosing the one with the least conditions. 

We needed to close this house quickly in order to make life easier for when we move into our forever home.

I always thought a multiple offer scenario as a seller would be the ideal situation. Now after experiencing it, it's terrible. We felt so bad for the people who we didn't choose. They sent nice notes, some with pictures, saying why they wanted to buy our house. I wish I had more houses to sell them!

 

Here are a few "before and after" pics of our temporary house:

Before 

 

After

 

Before

 After

Before

After 

 

 

Before

 

After

 

Before

After

 

 

Our house in Lucan has officially closed as of yesterday and we don't get our forever house until October 3rd. For the first time in over 2 years, we literally have NOTHING to do!! We can laze around with no guilt. What a feeling!

We might even watch a movie tonight! Haha

We're pretty excited for our new house now that we don't have to worry about having 2 houses to pay for. We're going to put together a game plan for when we take possession so we can get what needs to be done done as quickly as possible! Stay tuned!

A new dream... That involves even more dirt!

We have abandoned ship. Aborted the mission. Given up. The Upper Thames River Conservation Authority has won. 

We will NOT be building our new dream home on 10 acres on the Thames River. 👎🏻

Shocked? Us too. 

We had made 'being able to build' a condition on the purchase of the property, so we were able to back out without penalty. Phew!

Although we have spent over $5,000 on house plans, site plans and we even applied for a minor variance with the municipality. Ugh... I guess it's better than being stuck owning a very expensive camp site!?

We've actually changed courses a little bit. The property on the river was 10 acres of beautiful trees and of course the river. But it was also quite hilly and had a pretty steep slope, so although beautiful, the land was kind of useless. 

We've decided to shift our focus to more of a hobby farm. Jake wants to have some goats and sheep, the girls are dying for ponies and I want a gigantic garden and lots and lots of bees and chickens! 

We've been looking at farms and acreages for the past couple of months and are happy to report that we have found our forever home! Yay!

 

The house is absolutely beautiful, from the outside! The inside needs a bit of an update. It was built in 1995 so there are pink carpets throughout along with beautiful green accents. Nothing a little elbow grease and a few gallons of paint can't fix. 

Although we're looking forward to updating the inside, the majority of our focus is going to be outside on the acerage surrounding the house. 

We have plans to have a few acres of permaculture orchard as well as a large pumpkin patch, chicken coop, pasture for some goats, sheep, and ponies and of course a giant garden my grandpa Brand would be proud of. 

We've chosen the name Root & Rooster for our farm and are working on designing the layout of the orchard. We need to get the trees planted as soon as possible because they will take a few years to reach a mature harvest. 

Wondering what permaculture is? It's a form of sustainable agriculture that works WITH nature as opposed to trying to get nature to do what we want with chemicals and modifications. It will produce the best food you've ever tasted!

Once we're up and running, you'll just have to come see for yourself! 

Temporary Solutions

I am pleased to announce that Jake is happy with the house "we" picked to live in for the next year! Yay!

By the time he got home from camping I had not only bought us a house but had already planned all of our remodeling activities :)

I know, I know, we've got enough to do. But I can't help but put our own stamp on this house to really make it feel like home. For a year. 

First things first, that kitchen. Eeek. We've been seriously spoiled with our current house. We have more drawers and cupboards than we even need. There are even a few empty ones! We'll certainly be downsizing! The new kitchen is a small galley kitchen with very little cupboard and counter space. And it's oak (Pronounce O-Ack for my Yellow Platoon peeps 😜). We thought about just repainting them but the door design just isn't my style. So we're planning on keeping the cupboard boxes, painting them and replacing the door and drawer fronts to a shaker style. 

New counter tops, sink and an updated backsplash should bring this little space into 2016! 

 

We are planning on moving the fridge for a little bit more counter space and building a large pantry for functionality in the "eat in area" since there is a full dining room as well. 

 

If we were staying here, and if I got the house for our original budget, I'd be tempted to take down a few walls. But we're trying to spend as little as possible.

The rest is just a little painting here and there. It's mostly neutral colours already, so that's a plus for me.  We've had our fair share of painting already and there will be plenty more in our future. 

I'd like the update the front of the house a tiny bit too. Nothing too drastic. Replace the horizontal siding with shakes, beef up the posts and maybe at a bit of craftsman touches to the peaks. 

 

We have to move the fence back a bit too to fit our vehicles in the driveway... 

So that will get a little update by default. 

Let me say, city living isn't really our thing! 

We have way too much stuff!!

We actually spent the last 4 days purging. Jake took 300kg to the dump, and there is still more! We're planning on having a massive garage sale in the next week or so too. 

It feels good to have less. Really good! 

It should hopefully make moving twice in the next year easier. 😬😬😬

So there you are, all up to speed! We get the house September 1st so there likely won't be much to report until then! I hope!

Hurry Up & Wait

The blog has been pretty quiet these days, but we certainly haven't been!

I'm just going to give a quick update on where we're at with house stuff. The last few weeks have been pretty stressful, and I didn't want to report only negative stuff, so I waited until I had something positive to share.

This would be the world's longest blog post if I wrote it all out, so point form it is! 

- House Plans: they're almost complete. Our timber frame guy and house designer got together today to work out some last minute details. Yay!

- Site Plan: Complete!! So now we know where the house will be on the property. The only issue is that we had to have the house set back 20m from the lot line in order to accommodate the slope/walkout basement. 

The bylaw is a minimum of 25m set back for Rural Residential properties. This means we need to apply for a minor variance. Just one more thing to do!

- Minor Variance: We've applied to Thames Centre. It was a pretty straight forward application asking what we're requesting and why. Unfortunately for us their next meeting for this type of thing isn't until September 19th. So now we wait some more. And this puts us into a winter build again which we said we would never do again. So... Now what?

- Now What: Where are we going to live?!

Our current house closes in 9 weeks, our new house won't be ready until a year from now if we wait till spring to start... Eek! Not the greatest situation to be in. 

So we decided to buy another house for the year. We thought about renting, but it seemed like such a waste of money. And we need every penny! 

Jake has been away camping for the past 3 days without cell reception, so I bought this house on my own. Talk about stressful! We had set a maximum budget, and Jake did have a chance to go through it before he left, but things never play out as you plan. I went over budget (oops!) and I'll find out tomorrow when he comes home if it was a good move or not. I'm sure he'll be fine with it. We just wanted to make sure that we didn't over pay so when we sell in a year, we're not out a bunch of money. 

I sent him this so he'll find out we got a house when he finally gets cell reception!

 

(Rylan is at Girls Rock Camp this week ☺️)

It's a cute little house in the neighbourhood of the girls' school. It will be nice to drive less for the next year. And the girls can walk to/from school!

But if anything a year in the city will REALLY make us appreciate 10 acres in the country even more!

Last but not least... 

- Upper Thames River Conservation Authority: We dropped off our application last week. The next day I realized that we never left a cheque for the application fees so back we went the following day to drop it off. 

Turns out we got ourselves a little impromptu meeting with the "thou shall not build" officer. She told us that we need to have all of these studies redone and resubmitted and they only charge $1000 a piece to review them. Ugh. 

Anyone and everyone we've spoken to about all of this thinks it's absolutely nuts that they're asking us for all of this. The property is zoned for residential use. We're not severing it, or changing the zoning. We just want to build a house! So frustrating. And annoying. I could go on venting my frustrations about the UTRCA for days... But I'm trying to focus on the positive. 

The previous owners really pissed them off, and now I think we're taking the brunt of it. 

At least now there isn't as big of a rush, we've got somewhere to live! 

That is such a huge relief. Maybe now I'll start packing! 

Step 1 is STRESSFUL!

Building a new house is a lot of chicken before the egg scenarios.

But first let me tell you a little bit about the place we'd like to call home...

If we ever crack the mysterious chicken before the egg dilemma, "home" will be 10 acres of mature forest on 700' of the Thames River between London and St Marys. 

The property is absolutely amazing and everything we've ever wanted, and more!

 

The trouble with this property is that its beautiful landscape and unbelievable setting makes development a bit of a challenge. 

We will need the approval of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) which looks like it could be a bit of a hurdle. And if you're 5' tall like me, hurdles are hard!!

There is a bit of history with our new property. The previous owners had severed it off of their farm in 1998. Their intent was to sever the severed parcel into two 5 acre lots and sell them. During the LONG drawn out process, the owner got sick and decided to stop. But also during the process the UTRCA asked for an Environmental Impact Study... What is that? It's a large document that either supports or discourages the impact development would have on the land. Did you know that someone's job is to sit out in nature and count species? Who knew?! Sign me up!

What did the Environmental Impact Study say for the property we're hoping to live on for the rest of our lives (for real this time)? It says we have "Significant Woodlot containing the near extinct Butternut trees and threatened muscle and snake species."

So now we need to show the UTRCA that these things won't be affected or disturbed while we build a house here. We really don't want to disrupt any wildlife here, it's what we love about the property! 

But it's unfortunately inevitable. We will need to remove a few trees in order to build the house and put in the septic tank/bed. 

We met with the Woodland Conservation Officer this week, and he didn't see any issues with what we wanted to do. Yay!

Then once we have the approval of the UTRCA, we'll apply to Thames Centre for a building permit and then we can start!

Our current house is officially sold and will close mid-September. We need to get moving!

 

 The girls checking out their new backyard!

There are acres of Sugar Maples which means Maple Syrup!! There is even a (dilapidated) sugar shack on the property with all the equipment needed to make our own syrup... It just needs a good cleaning... And maybe some new siding. And the roof patched up. We'll be making syrup in no time 😬. 

 

We've been working on house plans over the past few weeks and are ALMOST there! Just a few revisions left to do and I think we'll be all set! I feel a bit rushed this time around, so I really hope the floor plan flows as nicely as our current house. 

Here's a sneak peak of the front... This was our first drawing. It's a bit different now!

This house will be a Timber Frame hybrid with Structure Insulated Panels... More on that later! 

Basically it will have exposed beams, cathedral pine ceilings and hopefully a relaxed cottagey atmosphere! 

 

Oh boy... Here we go again!!!

Well... Remember in my last post I had mentioned we wanted to be 100% finished this house by mid-May? There's a perfectly good reason for that... We're doing it all over again!

That's right, we're building another house.

Are we crazy?! I think so!

We love this house. We love Lucan. We love our property. But we don't love the distance between the girls' school and home. So we want to move closer. Right now we're about 25 minutes door-to-door. The drive to and from school isn't bad. The issue is when the girls have activities after school, but not until 5:30 or 6:00pm. We don't have time to come home in between and we end up just killing time in the car... for hours! And I don't know how we'd even deal with the distance when one is in high school and the other one is still in elementary school with two different start times. We hadn't really thought all of this through unfortunately. 

So after LOTS of thought and lots of tears, we've decided to sell our pride and joy. 

The first few weeks after our decision didn't feel real, but now that we've posted our house for sale on Facebook and people are coming through it, it has started to sink in. I know we're making the smartest decision for our family, but it's going to be really hard to leave this place. I thought of every square inch of this house in great detail and spent so much time and energy on planning our perfect home. 

I'm sure the next family that moves in here will enjoy everything there is to offer, so that makes it sting a little less. 

When I start feeling sad about selling our house, I try to think ahead of yet another amazing country property. Except this one is way closer to school!

 

 

Here we are... nervous and excited smiles!

I'll fill you in on more, once we know more! We're still working on floor plans and site plans and we're actually excited to do this all over again!

Finishing Touches... Finally!

I wish I had about 8 months worth of work on the house to write about... But we've been moving at a snail's pace! Maybe even slower than a snail. 

The weather is warming up, so we're diving right in. 

Over the winter we did manage to install our backsplash. We decided to go with a 3"X11" faux marble tile with white grout. I love it! We have purchased all of our tile, including this one, from Tile Town on Hamilton Road. They have such cool products, great prices and the staff is so friendly and helpful! If you've never been, go! They even lend their tools for free when you buy tile. 

 

We had a change of plans about halfway through which resulted in a tile shortage and some waiting until we could get more. 

Initially we thought we would just keep the backsplash at the same height all the way around, even the wall without upper cabinets. But once I saw the tiles up, it just looked unfinished to me. So we decided to order more tile and take the backsplash all the way up to the ceiling! 

 

 

 

 Excuse the mess!

And here it is! Finally finished!

 

 

We're so thrilled with how everything has turned out. 

I also finally installed the last of the closet organizers... No more digging through garbage bags of towels and linens! It's only been a year. 😂

The mudroom is close(r) to completion as well. It's organized! 

 

I'd like to build, or maybe buy, lockers to hide the upstairs laundry rough-ins like these...

 

Image courtesy of www.ana-white.com

 

Of course Jake's detached garage took up a bit of time as well. It's not done yet either... But it's close!

 

 

We've even put up a few pictures on the wall! Haha! This is huge actually. We worked so hard on those walls that it's hard to put holes in them!

 

The plan for the next 2 weeks is to tackle the lawn and our huge list! We need to re-do our front landscaping thanks to two puppies. One digs holes while the other eats plants, including a whole tree!! She chomped it down like she was a beaver! Hopefully we can get it back looking like this, ASAP! 

 

Our bedrooms and bathrooms are all done too. We had been putting off caulking and painting trim. Cleaning primed only trim is such a pain. Everything sticks to it! So this weekend I painted, and painted and painted! 

Rylan's room:

 

Tatum's room:

 

Our room:

Master Bath:

 

 

Girls' bathroom:

 

 

We worked all weekend and finally decided to call it quits when the sun went down!

 

We want the house to be 100% complete by mid-May... Because it's going to be for sale! 😬😬😬

Details coming soon!!