Choosing a House

My mom did not want us to “waste our money” on an apartment. 

Which is why, for the first six months of our marriage, Jon and I lived with my parents. It was a little weird, but it was four of us in a five bedroom house. There was more than enough space. 

We did eventually start talking about moving out, and our first instinct was to rent an apartment. But a friend of my mom’s who always had her eye on the property market encouraged us to look at some local houses. Once we started researching, we were surprised to find that in our area, with the down payment we had, rent would be as much as a mortgage.

So we changed courses and started looking for a property of our own. (Not to knock apartment living. There are major pros to it. But with planning a future family, we wanted property/equity to leave to our child/ren.) We compiled a list of places that were within our budget and used Weichert’s website to find a real estate agent, who we met for the first time in front of a hopeful house in South Edison. She was nice and not too pushy, which we appreciated. 

What were we looking for within a house? Closeish proximity to my parents. A good school district to send our future children to. Three bedrooms that were a decent size, preferably with an en suite bathroom in the master. A large kitchen. A good size backyard. 

Our first day out, we learned a lot. Mainly that I was not into Cape Cod style homes, which was a lot of what we were seeing. I didn’t like the short, sloped ceilings, and though some had been dormered (this was when I learned that term), most of the dormers made the ceilings very odd shapes. Though I like an eat-in kitchen, I also wanted a separate dining room. And all the rooms in this style of house were tiny. Maybe most importantly, there was almost no storage, and Jon and I are good at having a lot of stuff. Nothing we saw was that exciting. 

By our second trip, there was one house I really had my eye on. We had extended our search to South Plainfield; it was still very close to my parents, and a former teacher told me she was happy sending her own children to the schools there. Unfortunately, the house I was most excited by had to cancel our viewing due to sick children. Boo. 

But we did see a house that surprised us. Though I wanted a two story house, we became interested in one that spread its rooms over just one floor. That said, the rooms were the most spacious we had seen yet, particularly the living room and the kitchen. (Small kitchens seemed to be the plague of our modest budget.) And there was a basement that spanned the length of the whole house - perfect for storage - and an attic that made a future expansion seem very possible. There was also a large backyard with a small garden and shed. And, a random bit of luxury, a jacuzzi in the bathtub. 

This house was miles above the others we had seen. It held a lot of potential. I wasn’t 100% convinced it was the place for us, but we put a bid on it anyway. Which was accepted. 

Something none of the houses we had seen offered was a large master bedroom. The house we had missed, though, did have one, and I was dying to see it. We were able to set up a viewing for the following weekend, followed by another viewing of the house we were now supposed to buy. My parents came with us to help us compare. 

As website photos had promised, the master bedroom in the unseen house was massive and beautiful. It had been an addition, with enough space for a king sized bed as well as a desk and a huge en suite. It was my favorite sleep space we had seen by far. In fact, it was the biggest room in the house, probably about twice the size of the living room. 

Actually, I wasn’t too sure about how that fact sat with me. Would future children have enough room to play? It’d take some finagling. 

This house had three bedrooms, yay, but two of the bedrooms were upstairs, with no bathroom on thag floor. Whoever slept up there would have to climb down in the dark if they had to use the facilities. Being someone inflicted by this need frequently, I knew this would not be optimal. 

There was a sizable basement for storage and play, and a pretty large backyard. But just beyond the fence at the edge of the property ran a train line. Would that noise annoy us during the day and keep us up at night? 

With a lot of pros and cons lining up on opposite sides of my brain, we drove across the small town to revisit “our” house. There, the entrance brought you into a Florida room, and immediately, my mom said, “This is the house. You’ve made the right choice.” Her quick-to-form opinion didn’t waiver at any point. 

“But the bedroom,” I protested as we stood in the middle of a kitchen that was probably larger than the kitchen and living room of the other house combined. 

The usually quiet realtor sagely asked, “Where are you going to spend more time - the bedroom or the living room?” 

She had a point. 

Something still didn’t sit right with me as we walked out of the house. I had yet to secure a permanent job; all I was doing at that point was substitute teaching. Would we be able to afford the house on just one salary? I voiced my concerns with a heavy heart. I had been trying so hard to obtain a teaching job, but the state had few to offer at that time. 

Just then, my father looked above the house. “Look at that,” he said. “That cloud (which was directly over the house) is shaped just like a white feather.”

What my dad didn’t know: Not long after my husband’s father passed, his mother went to a medium who said some pretty convincing things. She told my MIL that her departed husband would signal his presence to those of us still with the living by leaving white feathers. 

So this gigantic white feather directly over our house seemed like a sign from Roger. Everything was going to be okay. 

Incidentally, I received a call that night inviting me for an initial teaching interview in the coming week. I got that job and have never since been without work. 

That spring, we moved into our small house with two wonderful cats to really make it a home. We stayed there happily for seven years, enjoying our garden, the large living room and kitchen, the flow of the rooms for parties, and wonderful next door neighbors. 

But the time eventually came when we needed more space. Our starter home had only two bedrooms, and with a mother in law who comes to stay for a bit annually, and wanting to have a child, we were going to need another bedroom. And the market was in a good place to buy. 

Not to mention, those schools we had heard good things about had become problematic. I knew more than one person whose child had had bullying issues that the schools hadn’t handled well. One family even sent their children to private school afterwards. I had also had students move to Piscataway from South Plainfield and complain about the schools. So… yeah. It was sounding more like moving was our best option. 

Since we already had one house under our belts, we could add to the list of things we were looking for. No compromise on the number of bedrooms now; it had to be at least 3. At least 2 bathrooms. A decent sized yard. A master bedroom where I didn’t have to squeeze past a small space between the bed and the wall to get out would be nice. I would have loved a kitchen at least as big as our current one, but I knew that was a pipe dream. We definitely needed a basement for storage. 

And something I hadn’t thought about on the first go round - a coat closet. Seriously. Bedroom closet space is something everyone thinks about. But our first house had no coat closet, and that got a little old in the winter. 

So Jon and I developed a new hobby - spending all one day of a weekend going to open houses. We’d line up 7 or 8 of them and try to visit them in as logical an order as possible. We weren’t in a major rush to move, so it was a ton of fun, no real pressure, to take a look at what was out there. We saw houses within our budget that were decent. We saw houses above our budget that we loved. Mostly, we saw houses in our budget that we would have loved to purchase - but they were too far away from our jobs, especially Jon’s. We did briefly talk about him finding a new job, but we would have to find something amazingly special to consider that headache.

We looked in South Brunswick - houses were too small for the price. We looked in West Windsor and Princeton. As a joke, because the taxes there - yikes. We looked in Hamilton, where we could get a beautiful house, but we would not be walking into the best school district situation.

And then, in the small nearby town of Dunellen, I found my dream house.

This house was across the street from friends of ours. A beautiful Tudor (my favorite style) with a beautifully landscaped front yard. When we visited our friends and found a “For Sale” sign in front of it, I needed more information.

When we went to see the Dream House, the owner was home. This unusual thing was a bit of luck. It allowed us to gush to him, Jeff, about how beautiful the house was - because it was as beautiful inside as it was out. His wife was an interior decorator and had furnished their house with the most beautiful wallpaper, couches, love seats, and carpets. So many features added layers of day dreaminess. The living room had an electric fireplace and a cozy window seat, the perfect place to sit, look out at the charming backyard, and write. The small kitchen had a cute dining nook for enjoying Sunday brunch. The basement provided a play space for future children. A built in house-wide sound system painted visions of children running down the stairs on Christmas morning to our favorite carols playing. 

Honestly, even reminiscing about it makes me nostalgic for the Dream House. 

All of that said, there were major drawbacks. For one, there was no bathroom on the main floor. There was a full bath on the second floor and a half in the basement, but not having one on the ground was odd. The school system was not highly ranked, and Jeff was even pretty honest about how biased it could be. And the biggest one - it was out of our price range. 

But only just. The taxes were a lot more than we were currently paying, which made a big difference to affordability. 

So I did something a little unorthodox and sent the owners a personal thank you note just for showing us around. It was clear they loved their house, and maybe showing them that we did, too, would prove we would be worthy successors. 

This move was followed up by an even more unorthodox one - Jeff friended me on Facebook and initiated a conversation. He invited us back to the house to discuss a rent-to-own proposal. My heart rate spiked- could I really be setting up to be the chosen successors to the Dream House? 

We went back one night sans realtors. Jeff served some almonds and olives in the breakfast nook while I day dreamed about having an actual breakfast there with my family in the future. 

We talked about the school system. And Jeff was very candid about the bias, which had worked in his kids’ favors. All three had gone to NYU. Still, I didn’t love the fact that bias existed, and so obviously. 

Then there was the rent to own proposal. We hoped they would hold onto our rent as a down payment - but they wouldn’t. They hadn’t realized we already owned a house and thought we could build up a down payment while paying them rent. Not at the higher than our current mortgage price, though. 

I can’t lie that I was defeatedly deflated as we left. Or that I still don’t feel a twinge in my heart when we visit our friends across the street and I see the house. It’s still beautiful. I would still love to have lived there. 

And then I remind myself that no one in my house is the world's greatest housekeeper or landscaper. The house would not have looked the same if we were in it. 

I console myself. 

Anyway, we continued going to random open houses. Nothing too realistic or exciting. 

Until one day, I saw a house online in Bridgewater, a town my mom had started her teaching career in, that had beautiful curb appeal based on the pictures. I saved it for the end of that semi-fake house hunting day because, for a second time, my hopes were cautiously optimistic. 

When we pulled up to this house at the end of the day, my heart stopped briefly. This house looked EXACTLY as it had in the pictures, with a long, rolling hill of a front yard, a beautiful Japanese maple out front, and a tall stone chimney off center of the gray-blue abode. 

I hadn’t been sure about the inside of the house based solely on the pictures. Four bedrooms were listed, but there were only pictures of two. The dining room looked small. No stairs were shown, but there was clearly an upper floor. What were the owners trying to hide?

We stepped onto a wide front porch and entered the house through a side door into the larger-than-imagined dining room. A breakfast bar, where I could imagine my future child doing her homework while I cooked dinner, separated the dining room from the extremely large kitchen.

I had really thought I’d have to compromise on kitchen size, but this one was somehow even bigger than our current one. It also had massive new windows that looked out to the wide backyard; Jon could picture himself cooking there while our unborn child played in the yard. (Love that we both fantasize about ourselves cooking dinner.)

The master bedroom was larger than we had imagined. Upstairs was a previously unseen full bathroom with a walk in shower perfect for when my mother in law visited. There WERE two bedrooms up there, and they were spacious; one we envisioned turning into a highly anticipated library. 

But the best was yet to be seen. I’m not sure if we knew there was a basement at all, but there was, with three finished rooms, a half bath, AND storage space. One of the rooms had a fireplace and a pool table. Another had a mounted projector and retractable movie screen! When we asked the realtor why those amazing amenities hadn’t been pictured, her response was, “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Well, surprise! No one had bid on the house yet. 

We texted our realtor from ⅔ of the way up the basement stairs. This was the first house since the Dream House that we were both in love with. 

Within a month, the house was ours. We sold our previous house to a young couple after a single showing. Moving is a horrific chore, so we’re glad to have found a place we have zero interest in leaving. 

Because this house has it all - things we knew we were looking for and things we didn’t. 

Three beds/two full baths? Check. 

Storage? Check.

A spacious kitchen? Check. 

A great school system? Check. 

A sizable living room?  Check. 

Lots of lawn? Check. 

A staircase that can be descended on Christmas morning to find a tree surrounded by presents? Check. (Although Lily is still using a downstairs bedroom.) 

A room we can turn into a library? Check. 

A fireplace? Two checks, though neither of them are currently functional. 

A movie theater? Check.

Walking distance from an amazing downtown? Check. 

A diner in our backyard? Check. 

And most importantly, a coat closet? You’d better believe it.