Caroline's Christmas Present

A HOUSE!!!

OK, we are still a year and a half away from moving back from Japan to the Bremerton area, but we thought it was a good time to start looking for a new house for us.  With the market as low as it is, it seemed like the best time to start looking for a larger home that was closer to town and was connected to city water, sewer, and natural gas.  This one seemed about perfect with all those things and a lightly funky style that says, "Putaansuu!"  We had agreed on a good price for the house, but with the inspection, we found that it has LP siding that is starting to fail.  We ended up discounting the house price enough to cover re-siding, repainting, and a bit extra.  Our neighbors are probably not going to like us much for this.  I think we're going to lower the value of their houses based on what we ended up paying for this one.

View off the front patio.  I just realized that there are no power lines!  Must all be underground.  It really seems like a nice neighborhood. William will go to Emerald Heights Elementary which is 1/4 mile away in the neighborhood, comes highly rated, and houses the gifted program.  The neighborhood even has sidewalks (on one side of the street anyway...)

I skimmed these pictures from the MLS listing.  This isn't our furniture and they used a very wide angle lens that tends to make the space look bigger than it really is.  This is the front room.  We intend to put the grand piano in here and then see if we can't fit in a small conversation area too.

The view from just in the front door.  We really like the tall ceilings and the fact that you can see light at the far end of the house (It's a Frank Lloyd Wright thing apparently.)  I'm also glad that there is a ceiling fan there to take the warm air that collects up high and circulate it back down to the living space.

View from above.  See how the room looks a bit smaller now.  Also look at the doorway to the left to the dining room.  See how it is a single wide door?

Well look at it now, it looks like a double wide!  Tricky cameras these real estate agents use...  We did have a family member go through and look at the house and take a video tour to get a feel for the actual lay-out and size (Yes, we've not actually seen this house in person yet.)  We don't intend to use this as a formal dining room, but rather a den/man-room/non-smoking/game room.  We're thinking a poker table at one end, the dentist chest along the side, and a high back leather chair discussion area at the other end.  Maybe even a busy-box art piece on the wall...

The family room.  One thing we really thought was cool was the window above the fireplace where you'd normally expect to find a chimney!  It's a gas fireplace where you don't really need a tall chimney.  The kitchen is off to the right, and the office is off to the left (door just out of view).  Caroline would like to be able to see the TV from the kitchen (to keep an eye on what the kids are watching and take part in the fun while cooking) so we'll put the entertainment system along the left wall and a couch about where they have the purple couch here.  I see a Superbowl party in our future...

Here is the office.  It has a view to the back yard.  It's also nice and close to the family room so that we can keep tabs on what is going on out there while we catch up on e-mail and pay bills.

The downstairs half bath.  You can see from the reflection that it is just across from the office.

The kitchen dining area.  Deck is off to the left and the pantry is the door to the right.  Yes, there is a dead-bolt on the pantry door.  Absolutely nobody gets cookies until they finish their dinner! :-)

The Kitchen.  No fancy countertops, but that works for us.  The main thing is that it is bigger than what we had before.  And... it has a dishwasher, which is something we haven't had in Japan all these years. Both of us are getting a little tired of washing everything by hand.  The green tile and the purple walls will get heavy consideration for change.  The house has natural gas, but the range is electric!  We will be replacing that with a gas range.  I didn't realize how nice a gas range was until we had one in our house in Japan.  Now I know what they mean when they say, "Now we're cooking with gas!"

The pantry.  We've only ever dreamed of so much storage...  I'll try not to take it up with bottles of beer... :-)

The Laundry.  An electric dryer too.  We convince the sellers to throw the washer and dryer in to the deal even though they hadn't originally listed them.  They aren't necessarily the neatest, but they work and we don't have to go find some for the house so we can rent it out while we are all the way here in Japan.  We'll also be working to add a utility sink by the window.

It's a nice big deck, but it's getting to the point it needs resurfaced.  We may get rid of most of the deck and replace it with a stone patio.  It's cheaper, easier, and less maintenance.  I figure a natural gas fed fire pit would be a nice feature.  The pergola seems in good shape and is a nice architectural feature.  Plus, I can grow Hops on it...  Just need to figure out which type...  I was also thinking of putting corrugated clear plastic on a portion of the pergola to provide some rain shelter so we can enjoy the outside even if it rains.  We'll see what works...

Another view of the deck.  You can see the back side of the fire place back there.  I like the concrete walk way that goes around the deck.  I figure the patio will fit largely in the footprint of the deck leaving the planting areas open.

I'll need to do some moss control... A low maintenance yard, but big enough to play in a bit.  The property extends a bit beyond the row of plants there.  I think it's a drainage area, but might be useful in some way.  There is a reasonably busy street about 30 or 40 feet over the plants there.  The road noise didn't seem too bad on the video but I might try to build a SMALL simple splashy water feature to help hide the noise.

The Master Bedroom.  Bigger than we are used to.  We'd like to fit our King sized bed in the room and an exer-cycle.  I'm thinking that there should be enough room.  Caroline also would like a TV mounted on the wall so she can watch it while riding the exer-cycle.  Sounds like a plan to me...

The Master Bath.  The door leads to the bedroom.  Dual sinks to minimize getting in each other's way.  The mirrored door goes to the larger of the walk-in closets which will be Caroline's.

The other closet is a bit smaller, but will probably work just fine for me.  The other door is to the toilet.

We don't tend to use soaking tubs much and Caroline wants an ironing board set up near the closet for quick bump ups of clothes before wearing.  We're thinking of making a removable upholstered cover for the tub that we put the ironing board on and use for sitting on and setting clothes on.

2nd Bedroom.  The picket fence and arbor is pretty darn cool, but not our style.  William wants a space themed room when we go home, so this room might get a complete redecoration and become William's room.

Or maybe he wants the ORANGE room.  We intend to make one of the rooms into a dedicated guest room with a queen sized bed.  We're figuring if we used the ORANGE room, that we wouldn't need to worry about people staying too long... :-)

The kids'/guest bathroom.  Also has double sinks and a linen closet.  The spots on the wall are glass globules used for holding flowers in vases that they glued to the walls for a bubble affect.  Interesting...

A recent picture that the inspector took.  My favorite part of the house is shown by this picture. A 3 car garage!  Enough room to park two cars in and then another bay for shop area and projects!

We can't wait to move home now!  House warming party in early fall of 2013!

Update: The property manager that is taking care of the house and renting it out until we return, took a nice video tour of the house: