Oddly enough it was January of last year when I wrote this post about not renovating our kitchen and the reality that we may eventually look to sell and move.
It’s interesting to me that nearly a year later, here I am again writing about this subject, only this time, we haven’t moved and are talking ourselves out of that again.
Yes, I am a bit crazy.
But hear me out: In the spring we started going to open houses and really started looking at the market. It became clear that within the price range we wanted to stay we can find some nice, larger homes in nice neighbourhoods close to where we already are.
We saw some beautiful ones – many just weren’t the right fit in the end, many were simply over what we should allow ourselves to want to afford (for us, affordability doesn’t mean how much mortgage the bank will give us, it’s about day to day enjoyment and not being ‘house poor’).
This fall we came our closest to finding something we really saw that could be a home. It was older, but so well maintained with upgrades galore and within a good price range. But we weren’t really ready to put an offer in anywhere and it sold within days. Far too quickly for us.
Then a funny thing happened. We started talking about how we like to spend our time. As a family, with him hopefully working less (not more), travelling, eating well (and by well I mean organic, fresh, fancy on occasion and out) etc. We liked the freedom we have (and remember, I’m a stay at home mom, and while I make some income online, it mostly gets rolled into that business).
So we started looking back at our 1867 square foot town home with a pair of eyes like we did last year. What can we do to maximize the space? The layout is quite nice; open and not cramped. It’s almost 9 years old, so yes, there will be maintenance to do. But if we invest some equity and make it really amazing for us now, it is still less expensive than buying a new home and gives us the flexibility to spend the time as a family we like to do. I don’t want a bigger home so that the kids and I can be in there alone (and I have to clean it!) and Andy has to work more. That makes no sense to me.
Let me tell you a bit about my home, and what I thought (or will one day want) in a bigger home.
Pros of my current home:
3 good sized bedrooms and 2.5 baths (including an ensuite with tub and shower)
Location (minutes to the school, green space and parks ample, close to bus route, close to grocery/shopping, nice neighbourhood).
Open concept
New maintenance free backyard (we did this in 2007. It’s small, but there’s no grass, beautiful garden and space to enjoy outdoor time).
Hardwood floors on entire main level and in master bedroom. (if we buy new, we’d have to change carpets anyway at the new place)
Huge master and ensuite. (Seriously, when looking at open houses, we really fell back in love with our current bedroom)
Large basement window and finished basement (some basements have no light, and since it’s our playroom, we like the light!)
What am I looking for that it doesn’t have?
A single home means larger yard. More running, more sprinkler space, more play space. BUT we have parks very close by and the sprinkler is still used in our current yard.
The fourth bedroom. So, this may be my biggest hang up. I want an office space. I want space for Andy’s guitars and the music stuff. I want a place for crafting or creating that I can shut the door and the kids can’t get at.
More storage. The townhome with single garage doesn’t have a huge amount of space. BUT we also know we aren’t using the space we have very well.
The other thing is that when we built this home, we left some things out because it was going to be a 3-5 year home (at most!). Welcome to 8.5 years later 😉
Anyway, this is a tale of indecisiveness and perhaps over planning but that’s exactly who Andy and I are. We are pretty sure we can make this place work, and it means that we can go to PEI again this summer, among the many other trips and plans we like to make.
So, dear readers, tell me how crazy I am. Did you move from your small space into bigger and loved it? Regretted it? Have you renovated yourself? If so I’d love to see pictures and hear details!
Be prepared for future posts about this including my ‘if we stay here’s what we are going to do’ planning.
Also, I’m madly pinning stuff on Pinterest about the home (and other fun things) so feel free to follow me there.
Thanks for your input and still reading! (ps: Andrea over at A Peek Inside the Fishbowl is doing renos and blogging about them. I am following with great interest!)
Ha! Well, you know where we stand on this one. 🙂 Our home is quite small. It’s older, 1943ish, back when people didn’t have as much stuff as they do now.
We are slowly packing our things in preparation of moving out for the reno. Funny thing is, it seems BIGGER now that we have less stuff lying around. 🙂 A reno is a very large and expensive undertaking. It sounds like you love your home. Can you convert part of the basement into a fourth room for crafts and stuff?
Thanks Andrea 😉
Andy and I wish we had character – it’s the problem with new (when we bought) suburbia. But I’m also sentimental – this was the home I brought my babies to! It was the home we came back to after we were married. So, this all plays into it.
I will take pictures and have a whole journey with this 😉 The one closet/storage space could be converted, low ceilings but workable. I’ve been to other models of this home that the room has been turned into a home based business (was an esthetics place). Very cool.
Looking forward to hearing more about your renos! We don’t plan on doing structural changes hopefully.
Lots to think about!
Three years ago we moved from Cambridge to Mississauga. I was 7.5 months pregnant with a 20 month old toddling around. Our house size didn’t change much; in fact, we felt like we had more useable space here than at the old house. Our backyard size decreased considerably but so has the yard maintenance so that was ok too. Since we moved in we’ve done a major Reno to the basement. It was unfinished and now we’ve finished with a sewing room for my business, a guest room, bathroom and playroom. I love having the extra space the basement provides. The only thing I don’t like is having 50% more house and a mother bathroom to clean.
All of this is to say that I don’t think you are crazy to stay put. We moved to decrease a commute from an hour to twenty minutes. Finding the absolutely perfect house is a tough job. No need to rush it!
I will say having our basement finished and used as a play room significantly opens up this home! If we were thinking to move to save commute etc. that would be a different story for us too.
Oh, my goodness. You sound like me. Mind you, I’d actually like to downsize to be less house poor, but I really, really love my home (it’s roughly 23-2400 sq. ft.). The layout is the issue for me. It’s not open. I have a galley kitchen that’s hard to fit more than one person in. We have only three bedrooms and no actual office space, though one of our bedrooms currently fills that role.
On the other hand: It’s got the big backyard (big!) and we don’t use our dining room, so we’re selling the dining set and moving our office out of one of the bedrooms. That doesn’t solve the kitchen issue, but it does add years of time on how long we can stay.
Our 8 hour car drive to Windsor also involve this discussion 🙂 I LOVE the idea of changing the dining room to an office if you already eat in another area (we don’t have that option). And having a big yard sounds fantastic.
We have 4 kids and we lived in a modest home. I wanted something bigger and roomier in a better location- so we bought an expensive, great big high-end house in a fancy neighborhood. I could not wait to move into that house!
On the day we moved in, as I walked through the front door, my stomach sunk. I knew I had made a mistake. It was too big, too expensive, too much to maintain, too much to clean. I never did get atached to that house, and it never felt like home.
One year later we moved out of that big fancy house and back into something moderate. We’ve been here 5 years, and my hankering for MORE HOUSE has disappeared altogether.
I found out the hard way that bigger and fancier does not a happy life make!
:0)
thanks for your honest comment. I’m so happy to hear you find something you love and that’s great to hear that ‘bigger wasn’t better’
we are three (well 4 if you consider the 100lbs dog!) living in a 1000 sq.ft house (not including the basement) with one bathroom. we considered moving into something bigger when the hubby gets a fulltime job (any schools need an incredible jr teacher? seriously, at the end of his last contract the parents bought him leafs/sens tickets because they loved him so much, but i digress). but we live in an incredible neighbourhood, downtown, close to everything. yes a larger house would mean more room and more land (which is something we thought we really wanted) but we would have to move so far out of the city to be able to afford something and the subburbs just don’t fit us. becoming house poor is something i am not interested in because when we finally become a two income family we want to be able to do some fun stuff like trips! so we have decided when that second income becomes permanent (please this year!!) we will do some significant renos, including the kitchen and putting in a second bathroom. and once we figure out our storage issue (houses built in 1948 weren’t big on cupboard space!) i thin it will be great.
good luck and i look forward to seeing your renos updates!
I really like hearing about all these character homes (ours was built by us in 2003 so no history – which is hard for two history lovers – but I guess the character is in the fact that we built it?).
So agree re: house poor. I have no desire for that.
Hubby and I lived in our first home for 16yrs. It was built in the 60s and it was a high ranch (ugh stairs). It was about 1000sqf plus the basement and we were okay with it, but I *hated* the stairs. You could not get in the house without going up stairs. We started looking in the fall of 09, just casually. Because it was a nice to have, we knew we could be picky and find the right one. Which we did this March.
I have not regretted it for one second. It is *home* we do not miss the old one, and we still will turn to each other and just say, ‘I love this house’ so my vote is not crazy. *g*
It’s good to know I’m not crazy 😉 The one lucky thing with this house is that there isn’t anything I hate! Just things I need to improve maybe?
I have gone back and forth for the last year. We will moving this Spring (we don’t know where yet – yikes!) and with baby #2 on the way we know we need more space. I thought I needed a lot more space but have finally come to terms with a small place, just 1 step up from our current terrace-type home. All I need is a basement or den for a playroom and a back yard (which we don’t currently have) and I’ll be happy. I think if you can make some changes to your current home it is worth the reno! I have gone from wanting brand new to looking at fix-er-uppers. I just want something to make my own 🙂 Good luck and I look forward to reading along!
This is such an ongoing conversation for us, at some point we have to make some decisions. Once upon a time I wanted a huge house, but times have changed and so have my priorities. I want time with my family, including Andy. Good luck with your hunt! A finished basement/playroom is one of the things that make this house very workable for us!
I had a small home. And I mean a very small house. It was 2 bedroom, 1 bath, one mud room which I used as an office/playroom and a very scary unfinished basement that we used as storage and laundry. We had 2 closets, 1 in our bedroom (definitely not a walk-in) and a small coat closet in the kitchen. We knew when we bought it that we would eventually grow out of it. Only when you are buying a house, 5 years seems a very long time away. So when we did grow out of it 5 years later it felt like we had just moved in. What I didn’t realize was just how cramped we were. We were never far apart from one another. With only 1 small living room/kitchen area we spent most of our time tripping over each other in that space. Once we moved though to a house that is probably 3 times the living space of our old house, it felt like freedom. All of a sudden we weren’t yelling at each other as much. We weren’t constantly frustrated when one of us was trying to work/cook/watch TV. The kids now have a basement full of toys. My husband now has a TV area in the basement where he can yell all he wants at his buddies fighting zombies. I have my very own living room space conveniently located beside our nice big open concept kitchen. I can do laundry on the main floor now. No more cringing everytime I had to crawl in to the basement to switch the wash over. No longer do our books and off-season clothes smell moldy from sitting in an unfinished basement.
And the list goes on. Moving to a bigger house was the best solution for us. A marriage saver in fact!
Living in a 2-bed bungalow with two growing children and never having enough space, especially storage space, has us looking and looking (and planning renovations) and still, we are here.
This post resonates completely with me. I revisit my own dilemmas yearly (at least), but for now, we’re stuck.
I look forward to more posts on this subject.
Glad to see someone else struggling with this issue, though ours is the reverse.
We sold our comfortable 1800 sq ft. suburban semi-detached to cut our 1 hr. commute each way to less than 1/2.
We spent more money and bought a smaller, older home to buy more family time and less highway time.
With some reno’s the new house will be modernized but at about 1300 sq ft. is still significantly smaller than our old place which in terms of size and storage was perfect!
I am terrified that i’ll be frustrated within months about the size but I am determined to make it work because I really want it to have been the right decision.
The previous owner had 5 children and said at one point that 8 people lived in that house. Surely we can make it work with 3 (and hopefully one day 4). 🙂
We moved, but not really to bigger. We moved from a townhouse after 3 years because it was in Vanier. And although there are a lot of changes happening I didn’t feel the same way as when we bought it before we had kids. Having to explain to your 3 year old what that person is doing is something I don’t feel necessary – they find out soon enough. We now live in a split, same square footage but walking distance to school and a nice neighborhood. It’s older and I wish it had some of the fancier things we had in our new town home, but houses are always a compromise as we managed to buy at a budget in a new and better neighborhood with the same mortgage amount each month, which allows for living.
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