I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who handles unexpected change well. I’m 36, and I still can’t decide into which camp I fall.
There’s been what news folks call “a development” in our house renovation plan. To recap, we recently retained the services of an architect and a builder to help us figure out what it was going to cost us to add another ~700 sq. ft. to our home. The dollar amount was a bit daunting.
So, Leah and I were talking about the situation one day recently, and I reminded her that we’d once half-joked with one of our neighbors — who lives in a bigger house — that we should exchange houses. Ha ha. Good one. But was she serious? Were we? I e-mailed her, and it turns out she’s into it. To the tune of doing the exchange as early as this spring.(!) She’s single and has more house than she needs, and we’ll start bursting at the seams a bit if we can manage to have another child.
It’s an exciting possibility. The house was built the same year as ours and has much the same feel. There are three bedrooms and 1.5 baths, which would meet Leah’s space requirements. It has radiant rather than forced-air heat, but that’s fine with me. I’ve already identified a corner of the basement for the server room.
We’re in fairly serious (but genial) negotiations right now. We’re having our place reassessed tomorrow morning to make sure the home’s value is up to date. And I imagine there will be inspections of both houses done before too long. We’ll still need a new mortgage to be able to buy the new house, but we’ll be saving money over our renovation plan.
Keep your fingers crossed. If each party can agree on price, we could be moving in a matter of months.