Here I Go Again

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it previously, but I’m moving again.  This will be my fourth move in eight years, and I’m hoping to stay put for a while this time.  Just like everything else in my life, I find myself frequently dissatisfied with the places I live, and need to exchange them shortly after I move in.  However, I like to believe that I leave them in a better state than I found them.

I was a military brat, and lived in five different cities and nine different houses before settling in Ottawa.  When we move, my own kids will have lived in four different houses, plus the two they’ve lived in with their dad.  My daughter just turned eight this week, so she’s averaging a new house every two years.  I can’t believe my daughter is eight by the way.  I’m not sure exactly where that time went, but it’s kind of scary to realize that when that many years pass again she’ll be able to drive.

Anyway, the new place is a single home, much bigger than our current townhouse, with a big yard.  It’s just a few steps away from the kids’ school, in one of the older neighbourhoods in Kanata.  I’m looking forward to having trees again, even though it means raking.  The house was built in 1965, and though much of the major needed renovations (roof, eavestroughs, windows, furnace) have been done, there is much more to be done.  High on the list is a fairly major kitchen renovation.  When we went to look at the house before I made an offer, my daughter told me, “Mom, this house doesn’t have a dishwasher.  We can’t buy it.”  Indeed, the house doesn’t have a dishwasher.  And in the current kitchen configuration, it’s difficult to see where one would go.  So, I plan on ripping out the wall between the kitchen and dining room and expanding.  I find I have no need for a formal dining room, and certainly no need to have two places to eat (there’s an eating area at the other end of the kitchen which will become either a place for the kids to do homework, or part of the family room).

Besides that, there’s a fair sized list of things that need doing, including painting the whole house, laying a new floor in the family room, replacing the garage doors, installing central air, re-finishing the basement and renovating the sunroom, to name just a few.  But, it’s certainly liveable as is, and I look forward to making in to what I want it to be.  A few pictures follow.

The front yard.

The kitchen, with a good view of the wall which is going be ripped out.

   

A few different views of the backyard.  The grass doesn’t look nearly as good now, but that’s okay, since we’re likely to put a patio in anyway.