Home again, home again - The rental {Exterior tour}

It's been an incredible 45 five days, but here we are. A house found and offered on, another house listed, a house lost. A house still on the market, an offer to us accepted. A house inspected, an appraised. A rental found and moved into. A house cleaned and moved out of. And as of today, a house closed and officially sold. And now we are home again, jiggity jig - settled here in the rental until we find the next big thing. 

Despite it's few flaws, we feel pretty lucky to have found this particular rental.  It's tucked into a tight neighborhood of spec houses where the houses are so close they are essentially built on the lot lines. As in, the "fence" on the side of our back yard - is the neighbors house.  No kidding. But! And this is the bonus - our rental sits on the end corner adjacent to the storm pond/green space and playground. And all of the windows in the  house face out to that view. It's not the waterfront we had had in mind, but it sure beats looking at the walls of a neighbors house. ❈

It has a single door "two car" garage that we are pleased to be able to fit one of our vehicles into. Coming from a house with a three car garage and basement storage we weren't thinking we would be able to get either car in, but a few trips to Home Depot and four industrial strength storage racks later we were in business. 

It has a cute little front porch. Can you just see a couple of pumpkins sitting on those posts in a few weeks? We put the leisure chairs from our old deck here, two on each side. And I have two lanterns sitting at the front door like little sentinels. You can't see them well in this pic. but you get the idea.  The brown rug in front of the door is from the kids clubhouse.  Works great here! And, no houses looking out this direction - makes me so happy. ❈

In the back yard there is a teeny weeny patio just big enough for the grill and our outdoor dining set. 

And it has a small fenced yard. I have my deck pots all along the perimeter now as there was nothing planted there and no other place to put them anyway. There are a few houses behind us but they are separated by some tall trees/woods. Again, so lucky as most of the houses in this neighborhood have a house just over the fence. 

And here's the back of the house.  the upper window is the master bedroom and the lower window is the dining area. 

All in all it's a really good fit for us. Of course it could have more storage - I'm not showing you the gravel side yards that are filled with kayaks and chippers and lawn mowers and such. Let's just focus on the views, shall we? ❈

So... do you want to hear the real dirt? The "keeping it real", real dirt?  It's a good thing this house has it's perks (adjacent open space). Because you know what happened? We got a call the Thursday night before the Saturday we were supposed to move in. The owners wanted to know if we could push back our move date to Monday (Labor Day) because the house wasn't ready yet. Now you have to understand the house was empty when we saw it, there was plenty of time for cleaning and repairs...  so you know what happened? We said, "Um.. yeah, not happening.", and moved into a house that was not yet ready for tenants. But I know how to clean and the handyman was finally out yesterday to begin the repairs. Frustrating, but it's coming along. 

That said, I actually really like this house.  I love looking out the windows and just seeing the pond and the trees... The layout is really working well and everyone is nestling in and pretty happy.  Every time I get a little frustrated with the things that still need work I just look out the window and feel totally grateful that we stumbled onto this place.  It will do. Quite nicely. 

Up next, a tour of the downstairs. 

❈