House blogging is off to an inauspicious start, I have to say. Take trying to get the picture for the header, for example. First off, I’m positive I took pictures of the outside of the house before we moved in, back in the spring. I took pictures of every room, empty, too. But I can’t find any of them. Either I deleted them by accident, or they’re hiding out in some obscure and non-intuitive location on my computer, or (most likely) they’re still on the memory card that I can’t find.

At any rate, I decided to just take a new picture. Simple enough, yes? I got outside, found the perfect angle….then realized that the memory card wasn’t in the camera. So I trudged back in and got it and finally got the damn picture. Also, it was cloudy. But I think that’s okay. Also, I should have gotten it a few weeks ago, back when the crepe myrtle was still in full bloom. Oh well.

But here we are!

The Boxy Colonial is not our first house. Our first house was a two family in Boston (Dorchester) that we bought back in 1999, right after we got married. We lived in the top two floors and rented out the bottom (which was a nightmare, the likes of which I never want to see again, but that’s another story). I’m sure I have a picture of it somewhere, but not, it seems, online. It was built in 1910 and was a lovely little house, with surprisingly attractive gray asbestos siding. Inside, upstairs, it had been renovated in a sad, unattractive way, and all the original woodwork had been ripped out. But we loved it anyway, and we were very happy there for about 3 years, until we decided to move back south.

Next up was cute cape cod about an hour north of Atlanta. Here it is during a rare snowstorm:

House two was lovely for us for awhile….it had a nice layout, and big bedrooms, and an acre of woods around it. But we eventually decided to say goodbye to it for two reasons: as our kids grew, it seemed to shrink and it was sort of in the middle of nowhere. Had the house been in a better location for us, we probably could have dealt with the size. It was just under 1900 square feet, and it had a basement that we could have finished one room in eventually (most of the basement was the drive under garage. Another strike against it). But, while it was very close to Dave’s job (he’s a high school teacher, and he’s since moved to a new school, close to the boxy colonial), the kids and I wound up driving at least 45 minutes to an hour pretty much every day for various activities and to visit friends. And, really, more space, we thought, would be awfully nice. We’re about to have our fourth kid (although we didn’t know that yet when we moved) and we homeschool, so we spend a good bit of time at home. And houses are dirt cheap these days (which, of course, was also a factor when we SOLD our house, but, since we were moving to a bigger house in a more expensive area, we more than made up for what we lost when we bought the new house).

So here we are in house #3. We moved in in May, and we’re totally in love with it. Truth be told, a boxy colonial is not exactly what I would pick if I could have any house in the world. I like Craftsman houses more. I like big, rambly ranch houses more. But I have a soft spot for colonials, too. And there are an awful lot of colonials in the northern suburbs of Atlanta and not nearly as many Craftsman bungalows or rambling ranches. And our particular boxy colonial has enough charm in it to set it apart from the crowd, we think. Also, not insignificantly, it was a foreclosure that had been empty for 2 years, and it was a GREAT deal.

In case I change the header at some point, here is the Boxy Colonial:

Okay. It took me two days to finally get this first post written. And now I need to go put bookshelves together!