inspections, real estate goddesses and gingko trees

I'm pleased to report that the house inspection went fine and we signed the final papers yesterday afternoon. We take possession near the end of the May, though it sounds as if there's a chance we may get it earlier; the owner is going to let us know.

Many thanks to Walter for coming along on the house inspection so we could get his expert opinion as well. My sister was there for the first bit and got to meet our real estate agent as well as the owner.

Speaking of real estate agents, I must sing praises of our wonderful agent, Kathy Gordon of ReMax, whom we found through Parki. Kathy is Goddess of Real Estate Agents as far as both Jeff and I are concerned. She never pressured us, remained incredibly patient despite our indecision on the type and location of house prefs, was always cheerful and in good humour, worked incredibly hard for us.

Our friend Walter.

One thing I really appreciated was the fact that Kathy would point out the good AND bad points of a house when we were looking at it, warning us about potential problems. As a result, Jeff and I learned a lot about buying houses at the same time that Kathy was learning more about what we liked and didn't like even when we weren't really sure ourselves, or at least not enough to properly articulate it to her.

Kathy's unflagging sense of humour also kept our spirits up and helped take the edge off what could sometimes be a highly frustrating process. And she uses e-mail! And has a Blackberry! Much better than playing phone tag.

I would recommend her services without hesitation.

While Jeff, Walter and Roger (the house inspector) went around the house examining and poking, I measured things, like the dimensions of my future office so I could start planning the layout. We're going to raise the floor a bit to make it warmer, fill in the spaces between the ceiling joists to keep cold air from coming in, etc. I want to cover the wall space with as many bookshelves as I can.

The photo below is meant to be a "before" picture. I'll take another one six months from now. :-)

My future office!

I'm pretty excited about planning my new office, which is going to be twice as big as my old one. Right now I'm intending to make one half (the half in the photo) my writing office. The other half will be for music; I can set up my keyboard, guitarstuff. Depending on how stable the temperature ends up being in the basement, I may opt to store my harp upstairs. I'm also hoping to put a rolling storage cabinet setup in the middle of the room that also doubles as a craft/layout table. Depends if there's enough space.

I chatted a bit with the owner, who was in the house during the inspection. She is a wonderful older woman who has obviously put a lot of work and love into her house; both Jeff and I really liked her, and hope to keep in touch even after we move in.

One of the things we talked about was her garden, which was designed by Zone Six. I've posted part of the garden map at the top of the page. Here's a list of some of the plants in the original design.



Holy cow. Talk about pressure...though I enjoyed gardening when Jeff and I lived out in the country many years ago, I was never very good at it. But I'm determined to learn more. There's a Japanese maple! A dwarf lilac! (I *love* lilac) Honeysuckle! A gingko tree!

I'm pretty excited about seeing the garden after spring, when the snow isn't covering everything. And we'll have a deck! Which means we can sit outdoors on our own property! For longtime condo types with no balcony, this is going to be a welcome change. Hey, and we can get a barbecue! Yes, I know we have the Ridpath cottage, but this is going to be our very own place.



Some of you have asked why Jeff and I didn't get a bigger house, one with a guest room. Yes, it was something we were hoping for. But with the cost of houses the way they are, we found that we had to make compromises. Having a guest room wasn't as important to us as, for example, living in an area where I was able to access the TTC without too much hassle. We almost put in an offer on a townhouse with a guest room out in the West end, but it would have meant adding nearly 45 minutes to my travel time to Urban Tapestry practices, and would be at the opposite end of the city from most of our friends and family.



Other priorities included finding a place that was within walkable distance to a grocery store, coffeeshops, bookstores. A bigger home office for me. A quieter area than our old place, which was subject to nightclub noise in the evenings and on weekends. And if at all possible, a detached house rather than semi-detached.

In the end, we got most of what we wanted. Jeff and I love both the house and the neighbourhood, and I have no idea how I'm going to stand the anticipation before being able to move in:

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