New Hobby

I'd like to tell you about a favorite new hobby that goes along with being a homeowner in sunny Florida. We lucked out when we bought this house for many reasons, but one super great thing is the 5 (count 'em 5) citrus trees on the property. The largest is a Honeybell tangelo tree in the front yard that drops huge juicy tangelos all day. It is difficult to keep up with, but I thought I would display to you this new hobby of ours.

Step One: Pick tangelos from our front yard. Note the ballerina technique, even though one of our first housewarming gifts was a citrus picker from my Dad.



Step Two: slice beautiful tangelos on lovely, spacious counter tops.



Step Three and Four: Juice those juicy tangelos on our new juicer, the second housewarming gift from my Dad. And finally, enjoy the sweet, sweet nectar.

We always looked at houses on Sundays. I think we always met at 1:00pm at the first house on our list. Usually there were about 13 on the list, and we couldn't always get in to see them all. This house that I sit in now was actually on our list one day, but the selling agent didn't give our realtor the code that day so we missed it. Instead we found a super cheap foreclosure around the corner, directly on Webber. It was a charming ranch home with terrazzo floors, a gorgeous back yard and a front yard landscaping that was almost nice enough to ignore the 4 lanes of traffic roaring by. I needed to compare it to something near by because the price was almost too good to walk away from. So one Tuesday during lunch I called our realtor and told her we needed to see the one on Sunnybrook before we put an offer on Webber. And here it was, seemingly modest but something stood out. A huge Florida Room with so much light it would be a crime to not use it as a studio was my favorite feature. The impeccable pink-tiled bathroom was kind of nice too. So the rest is history, and I wanted to share the photos of our first impressions here.








(Notice the hole in the wall and the 1970s fridge....at least we would need to buy new appliances!)


Ok, so this was more like our 5th impression of the house, because once we saw it we remembered the door code and went to visit. A lot. And everyone who we brought to the house confirmed that this was the one, this was ours. But soon it was time to really make it ours. Here is a bit of the progress we've made so far...

First thing we had to do (of course) was buy appliances. Remember, there was a gaping hole on the wall where an oven once lived, and the refrigerator was from the 1970s, complete with wood paneled accents on the interior drawers. Luckily we had been shopping for appliances for about a month already (a bit eager I guess). So as soon as we had the leftover cash at closing, we headed out to Sears, Best Buy, DeSears...anyways, after lots of hunting, our beautiful oven/microwave and fridge arrived home to fancy up the place. It was also exciting for me to cook a microwave dinner as I have not had a microwave in many many years.






So far we love everything about this house, especially the ability to cook without squeezing past each other in a hallway sized kitchen, and being able to invite friends over for fresh-squeezed mimosas. And spending almost every weekend at Lowe's. There is a lot more to do, and you just might see it all unfold here.

Welcome Home

Here I am sitting in the office of our new home. The one we own. I can see my very own palm trees, rose bushes and orange trees from here.

After so many months of cruising neighborhoods for "Open House" signs for weekend entertainment, then many months of actually looking with a realtor, then many months of paying debts, tweaking credit scores, looking for brokers who didn't laugh us out of their office, and of course convincing myself, my very very wandering soul self that it was finally time to put down some roots, we found this house. (Well actually first we found another house, the one we called "Polo House." Losing that 2 days after we bid on it was the first lesson in this insane path of becoming homeowners.) But then we found this gem, at the end of a winding street, built in 1959, a perfect ranch house with everything we wanted. Terrazzo floors in perfect condition. A Florida room (sigh). An open kitchen. Mostly we wanted space, blank walls and a fresh slate to re-create.

And so we entered into the time warp of buying your first home. And yes it really does feel like one of the most stressful experiences you'll ever go through. But on December 30 we were handed the keys to OUR house (ok, so actually we had to break into the lockbox since the selling agent was too lazy to make us a set of keys, and actually we moved in illegally one day early since the title company were too idiotic to get our closing statement correct) and here we are. When we put our first bid in two days before Thanksgiving (oh yeah, this was a foreclosure owned by a German bank with representatives in California) and told everyone we were closing before New Year's we were met with much laughter. But we did it.


(This is our first night. I am wearing the oversize t-shirt I had to borrow from my realtor because in the process of packing/moving I threw on some "fancy" shirt I found in a box that had been sealed for years and it was so dusty my eyes started to swell up during closing. Classy.)

Spent our first New Year's Eve here in the living room, drinking champagne sitting on lawn chairs and it was perfect.



Ok, so it is now March 1. And many people want to see our new house, so we decided to start a blog about the process of renovating and living in this classic Florida Ranch house and also the strangely comfortable transition for a helpless wanderer to become nested.

Stay tuned for photos of before...during...and eventually after!