Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Meet our (hopefully) new abode

so here's the house: It's a 1977 ranch and has only had one owner. It's really clean and they kept it up structurally and whatnot very well. Cosmetically, weeeelllll, that's a different story. Original carpeting (from 1977) in no less than 8 shades from the '70s, wood paneling, avocado appliances, etc.......bright side to that - it'll give us something to do for "entertainment"!

The location works perfectly for us. It's in a small little town with a funky name that has a gas station. And a grain elevator. But it's located about 30-35min from my work and 45-50min from J's work. It was pretty much our only option, but I'm optimistically looking foward to it.

We love the land. It's on 8.5 acres with (very) slightly rolling hills, and it actually has quite a few trees. Which, believe me, is tough to come by in Kansas where the topography is wide open plains of grain and cow pastures. There's 3 useable outbuildings, 2 dilapidated outbuildings, a slab for another outbuilding, and some cow corrals (I guess that's the right terminology?? I don't know - it's some circular fenced in little areas with long troughs for feeding I'm guessing).

The outside of the house is also really cute; at least in my opinion. It reminds me of my memaw/great grandma/mimi's houses that were in OKC, OK. I have great memories from those houses and there's just something about their older houses that I lurved.

The inside is definitely liveable too. We'll just have to get our hands dirty fixing it up. It's got a funky layout, but I like funky. It's only 1780 sq ft but luckily they finished the basement so it's actually a lot bigger/more space than my current house! AAANNNNND! there's a cellar! So awesome for wine storage!

We put an offer in last week and are hoping to hear back soon ("soon" and "quickly" are relative terms in Kansas ;p). We're also keeping our fingers crossed they let us rent from them before the closing date. If not, we'll be screwed. There's NO temporary housing. But let's worry about that later; *if* we even have to.....

Here's all the pics I took of the oustide. I'm STILL kicking myself for not getting shots of that rad carpeting!

"driveway" leading up to the house. you can see the cool windturbine field in the distance. and directly across the road (yes, i said road. not street. i think for something to be deemed a "street" it has to be paved, asphalted, etc. we(will hopefully) live directly off of a dirt road.....the nearest "street" is the highway - about 5 miles away.) is an old feed yard. THANK GAWD it's not being used. i'll have to describe the smell of a feed yard/state of kansas at a later time.

back of the house

fire pit?? J said it's "blairwitch; Kansas style"


garage off to the right of the house. the door on the right is to a heated room - we might use it as a "dog house"??


outbuilding behind the house and its "innards". fridge is kind of creepycool; reminds me of all the SAW movies.....



the final useable outbuidling. i'm not really sure what it is - obviously pens of some sort? but there's no doors on it, so how did they keep the animals in? and what animals? pigs (or do you say hogs in the country?)? cows? i'm pretty sure it's not horse stalls......or heck. maybe it was just used to hold tractors and other country livin' paraphenalia!

dilapidated building numero uno.....dos is similar - just bigger and more rotty-ish

we're debating what to do with these two. J says tear down. i say leave up so the rats/field mice can congregate in there instead of in our house!.....J's argument to that is there aren't rats: it's too cold. but i beg to differ; those suckers are like roaches and could survive a nuclear bomb!

slab of building that a tornado whisked away to Oz


cow corrals?? i really have no clue.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Keep that cellar stocked with wine so that when the tornado comes, you have plenty of supplies!

Andrea said...

Super cute! Post some pics of the inside when you get there so I can see your funky floorplan!!

Viula said...

OMG- you guys are going to end up with sooooo many dogs out there. it's going to be like a retreat for wayward canines. i love it!!

personally, i am a big fan of avocado appliances but i dig that whole retro thing... looks awesome and you'll need something to keep you busy out there besides the internet (do they have that in kansas?). ::sending you good real estate vibes::