Dream of homeownership finally comes to fruition

I've been waiting a long time to write this column. Until recently, I considered myself merely a bystander as far as real estate goes. Now, though, I'm in the game. My husband and I bought our first home and just finished spending a week's vacation moving everything into it. After eight years of marriage and two kids, let me tell you, we had a lot to move!

One of the most frustrating things about looking for a new home is that sellers can be oh-so-creative when it comes to attracting potential buyers. One house we looked at was, on paper, everything we wanted. The problem was that one of the "bedrooms" was really nothing more than a closet, and we'd have been hard-pressed to put even a child's bed in it. The other rooms weren't so great either. The kids and I would've been fine, but my husband, who's six feet tall, would've had to stoop. So we passed on that one.

One thing we did that made me happy and frustrated at the same time, was that we made the search a family adventure. Our oldest son is just now 6 years old, and the youngest is a year-and-a-half behind him. Since young boys (at least not ours!) don't enjoy walking quietly, it was sometimes a challenge to keep them entertained while listening to the Realtor extolling the virtues of each home.

Once we told the boys we were going to buy a home, we promised them a new kitten and a new puppy. Before we ever found a home, it was determined by the boys that the cat would be named Sally, and my youngest son decided that our dog should be brown.

Well, the brown dog (which, incidentally, we haven't yet added to the family), caused a bit of a problem when we went to look at another house on our list of possibilities. The house was green. It wasn't a bad house, but my 4-year-old refused to get out of the car because "a green house won't go with a brown dog." In the end, though not for that reason, that wasn't the house for us.

When we found the first house that we thought could be home, we put a contract on it, only to find out after the fact (and all that paperwork), that someone else already had a contract on it the day before ours. It was such a disappointment!

But then, we found home.

"Home" is a nice big old house located in north Springfield, in what I'm told is the Woodland Heights neighborhood. When I say old, I mean built in 1897.

While there's a lot to be said for brand-new homes, there's just something neat about eating dinner in the kitchen and realizing that more than a century ago, another family ate dinner in the same house. It just makes me wonder about all of the people who lived in the home before me, and what the landscape around the house looked like when it was first built.

Luckily for me, my old house has lots of newer touches, like air conditioning, siding, good heat that doesn't require the lighting of fire (which isn't something I handle well and which makes me quite nervous), and a recently finished attic that's the perfect playroom for little boys.

But I love the old things, too, like the original hardwood floors, the transoms above the doors most of which still function and the beautiful crown molding that will look even better with the paint removed.

It's a great old house. And speaking of paint, one thing that I love best about the inside of the new house is that there are no white walls. After years of renting homes that knew no other interior colors, I'm thrilled.

One thing that's puzzled me throughout the entire process of becoming a homeowner, though, is that several people have said things like "When you buy your next house " or "Next time you do this " and I'm thinking, "Why in the world would I want to do this again?"

My husband and I both agreed that when we bought a house, we would settle in and take root. No more moving except in the case of unusual or bizarre circumstances, and those will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

On one hand, the way I see it, the only good thing that might come from going through the process again might be that I'd understand a little more about it. We signed all the appropriate forms, jumped through all the hoops and such, but I can't really say I know much about the specifics of buying a home.

On the other hand, I don't know if that really matters in the grand scheme of things. We have our home, we've gotten the cat (she's quite cute, by the way), and are planning for all the things we'd like to change and can now, because it's our home.

A friend once said "there's a home for everybody."

Given some of the homes we looked at, I'd have to agree. I'm just glad we found the one for us.