True Story: Patrick and I are Zillow stalkers.
Patrick and I perused Zillow on a pretty regular basis the entire time that we were in our first home and had no real intentions of moving. We just like looking at houses, seeing what’s out there, and planning for the future. But once we found out that Baby #2 was on the way, we knew that our 5-7 year timeline in our first house had just been shortened and it was either move right now or wait until June 2021 to move.
And then the perfect house popped up on Zillow.
When I say perfect, I mean perfect. Patrick and I had quite the list of what we were looking for and it involved a lot of compromising between the two of us. Patrick wanted to live somewhere that had some land, was more private than not, and wasn’t a neighborhood where every tree had been torn down to build the houses. I wanted to live in a newer house, in a nice neighborhood that had plenty of kids for our kids to play with, in a great school district, and with little to no house projects. We both knew that we’d be headed further from downtown Columbia to Lexington and we had a general area selected to look for a home. He kept looking in the older (pre-2000s) neighborhoods while I was drawn to the flashiness of the new construction homes.
We met in the middle when we found the perfect house.
It’s on a cul-de-sac and we have a big wooded lot (that will never be developed) directly behind us with neighbors at least 200 yards behind that. It’s quiet. The house itself was built in 2007 and the people who lived in it before us did a huge remodel/update of it in 2019 so it’s like moving into a brand-new house. But for Patrick, the house is not a slab house and is built on a crawl space (super important to him). The neighborhood is developed (no construction) and there are so many kids from newborn through high school seniors. Our particular street has 3 high school girls that we’ll be introducing ourselves to as soon as COVID dies down because hello, babysitters! There’s a community pool, sidewalks to walk on, and we’re in the best school district possible for Riley & Baby #2. There’s a massive front porch. We have a deck. Our master bathroom is enormous and has two huge walk-in closets (that are honestly bigger than Riley’s room at our old house). It was truly a move-in ready house. We even love all of the paint colors the last owners selected.
Whew. Enough of me telling you about the house. Check it out for yourself! These are the listing photos of the house (so it’s all of the previous owners’ stuff and décor) but you’ll see pretty quickly why we fell in love with it… and had an offer on it within 10 hours of it being on the market. Shout out to our realtor, Jessica Roberts, for helping us snag this house so quickly!
Y’all. This kitchen. It might have been what sold us on the house.
A gorgeous fireplace and beautiful built ins! & can you see through the window that there is a DECK?! I've always wanted a deck and y'all, I finally have one.
A master bathroom that Patrick and I can both use. I'm no longer sharing with my toddler!
A laundry ROOM. Not a closet. Not a little tiny room. But a legitimate could-have-been-a-bedroom-sized laundry room. I may or may not have requested two brand new drying racks for my birthday in anticipation of this room.
A deck! With a big, fenced in backyard! All of my backyard dreams coming true with this house.
Seriously, this home was immaculate and move in ready and everything we could have asked for in a new home.
The best part is that Riley fell in love with this house the first moment that she stepped foot inside the front door. She went nuts. She ran all around the first floor. She found the carpeted bedrooms and flopped on the floor, rolled around, and squealed. I was so worried about moving her away from the only home she has ever known, and that girl was like “whatever, mom. This house is way cooler.”
As for Patrick and me, we’re just excited to be in a new house that doesn’t have a mountain of house projects. We don’t worry every time it rains. We’re thrilled to have neighbors that are friendly and who stop to say hello. We love being able to walk around in the yard barefoot without worrying about stepping on broken glass, old plates, random pieces of silverware, a million rocks, or whatever else our old yard was hiding from us. He has a seven minute commute to work and thanks to this pandemic world we live in, my commute is only 15-20 minutes instead of 35-45 that it would have been in February of this year (waiting to see if that changes over time but for now it’s wonderful).
