Cube with a blocked view.

The new house

J and I have purchased a home. It's a spec home that still isn't built. In fact, at the time of signing the papers, it had a basement. It's further along now and looking fantastic. But there's a story behind why we bought this house.

We'd started out looking at one that backed onto a small pond. That house was fantastic. A little bigger than we'd planned, but it had a large(r) garage, granite countertops, hardwood and tile rather than carpet and lino and it backed a wetland. Then we looked at things like the high water mark (6.5m into the backyard!) which concerned us. We still loved the house, however.

They had a slightly larger one in the same area that we hadn't really looked at. As it was, House A was bigger than we wanted! Who wanted one even bigger? And house B didn't back water (ugh, more neighbors!).

One day, further on in our deliberations, we went in to visit the showhome and were almost prepared to say "Yes" to House A. Then we learned they'd changed cabinet suppliers and the cabinets in House A had been changed.

Yes, this is a petty point. They'd changed the cabinets from a wonderful, rich dark brown to grey. Today, I certain the new cabinets in that house will look fantastic. I'm positive they will. But I'd had my little heart set on the dark ones and that change was too much for me.

Luckily, they hadn't changed the ones in House B. They're still a nice rich brown. And this is what made us look at House B. We drove to the showhome for that model of house. We decided that we could deal with the extra space in the larger house (oh, the tragedy). We rationalized the lack of a pond in our backyard (we didn't really want to deal with floods anyway) and the neighbors behind us were now down a slight hill and the backyard sill maintained it's privacy.

And we bought the bigger house. Yes, we did it for cabinet colour. I did it for cabinet colour (J shall remain innocent in this). Really, the cabinets were simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

The best part? House B was the same price as House A.

The even better part of the deal that has nothing to do with the houses? Another couple had been looking at House B for about the same amount of time as J and I had been deliberating. We'd gotten the necessary paperwork done so when we made a decision, it could take effect immediately and we wouldn't risk losing the house.

The other couple hadn't. They decided they wanted the house the day we dropped off our deposit. They had a two day wait for the house because they hadn't done the paperwork - because she worked for a bank. I still laugh at this. She felt because she worked for a bank, her credit should be unquestioned. And she was angry. She wanted to call the saleslady's boss over the policy. But the policy is the policy.

After dealing with C for that many weeks, we knew. She told us the first night what was necessary. She warned us we risked losing the house we wanted if we didn't get that done. We had everything done and the financing simply awaited final signature when the deal was done. I actually had a little bit of guilt over doing all the work to put everything on hold.

But we've got a house (ok, we have three) and I look forward to the day that I have more than a postage stamp for a countertop.

posted by Erin @ 7:49 AM