That House on Oak Brook Drive (House #2)

Well, the reason why the blog was delayed so many weeks was because we were in the process of moving. The move came up really fast and we acted quickly....and since we weren't really "looking" for a home, it seemed even faster. Joe found this house through his friend, and it appeared to have everything we wanted...but needed some general updates. But, first- I want to write a little about our old house.

What we loved:

1- It was a ranch. When we moved into this house, we had always wanted a ranch. More open layout. More open space. A big basement. At this point, we only had 2 kids- and there were two bedrooms up and the boys could share that bedroom. It was perfect.

2- The big, open basement. The boys played so much basketball (hoop on the wall) in that basement. It was perfect for that. 

3- The yard.....it was big enough, it had a playset on it for Saylor, it had a great stone patio down below. It had room for a firepit. 

4- It was warm and inviting. I loved decorating this house at Christmas, and really all year long.

5- It had a great storage room- it was a big square room. I had room to put a lego table in the storage room to keep those out of my hair too! 

6- We made a lot of fun updates to the house including:

* Kitchen and entry floors

* Kitchen pantry cupboard added

* New master bathroom

* Mudroom hooks on the wall, new paint, new countertop, new cupboards

* Carpet in three upstairs rooms

* Painted over the red wall in the kitchen

* Painted the bedrooms when we moved in

* Made their girl bedroom into a home office which I loved!

* Made their downstairs office into a little girl's bedroom

* Made a little coffee bar in the kitchen

* Updated the upper deck outside

* Put a basketball hoop in (that we took with us to the new house!)

* Took a tree out of the front yard that was dying

* Cleaned up the landscaping

* We put a lot of love into this house....it was fun doing little projects here and there!

7- We enjoyed our neighbors, The Rushenbergs and the Hoffas

8- I loved the little toy room downstairs. It had lots of storage for toys, games, puzzles, and a floor that you could easily clean up and play with toys on! 

9- I liked the guest room downstairs. It was spacious and had a small bathroom next to it, which was nice for guests. It had huge windows. 

10- The remodeled master bath was just lovely, and oh so functional! 

What we didn't love:

1- The yard....got really wet. We actually updated that with a drainage system and it helped, but it didn't fix the problem completely.  Also, the boys were kind of growing out of the yard. If you know my boys, you know that they are playing baseball and football and basketball outside in the spring, summer and fall probably 4 nights a week. We use our yard all the time. We also use our driveway all the time! So, we were looking for a bigger yard if possible. 

2- Renters as next door neighbors came and went and didn't keep their yard work up. 

3- The bedroom situation with 3 kids is less than ideal. We could have moved the boys downstairs and Saylor upstairs but we would have lost our guest room- and we use that too. Saylor did not like her room downstairs. I thought she would grow out of that but it had been at least 6 or more months since she had complained nearly every night about it.

4- A ranch makes it difficult to ever "be alone"....we couldn't really stay up once any of the kids were in bed. If the boys were in bed, we couldn't be in the main living room. If Saylor was in bed, we couldn't be in the basement. There wasn't really an area we could be without the kids.

5- The great thing about the ranch is that it's open and large....but the bad thing is, I felt like it was constantly dirty. I couldn't really ever just shut a door....cuz every door seemed to be part of the main living area. It seemed as if toys were constantly everywhere....whereas a 2-story house, you can kind of "walk away" from the bedrooms. It seemed as if the loudness was also everywhere. 

6- If we could get a little closer to Sacred Heart and Dowling, that would be ideal. We needed to stay on this side of town because this is where basketball and baseball are and it's convenient. We also really like this side of town- the Waukee/Urbandale/Clive area....but 20 minutes to school seemed a bit much. So, if we could shave five minutes off, that would be helpful. 

7- And, if we were dreaming big, we wanted a pool (someday). Ideally, we thought it would be nice to move when Joey was in junior high....put a pool in someday....

8- Curb Appeal – I never did like my garage doors in the front of the house. I did love my landscaping in the front….but didn’t like that the garage doors stuck so far out – they were the first thing you saw when you pulled up! 

So, we left this house with sorta mixed reviews. We loved it...but we sorta outgrew it. It was our house for five years, and the house that we brought Saylor home in. It was the house that my  kids started "real" school in. It was our first and only ranch. It was the house where our toddlers grew into boys and we had our first girl. So, there were a lot of good times in this house. But, we were excited about a change for our family, and a better set up to raise a growing family in! Goodbye, house on oak brook!