The Wise Man Builds His House Upon............



Outside of the First House. Read the story and you will understand.

No doubt, you have heard me whine and whine and whine on here about moving from our big old Victorian house in Kansas and to a smaller ranch house in Oklahoma that we rented. We longed to have our own home again, to put down (what we hope) are our final roots, and to enjoy a wonderful family home. 

Great kitchen of the first house. Top of the line appliances. Wonderful room.

  We thought we had found the perfect home. Just our style. Rooms we loved. Great yard. Super location. Affordable!! 


Master bedroom of the first house.Lots of big windows. French doors you can't see.

  We thought we were going to close on it just weeks before Christmas, and spend our first Christmas in it...no matter what! We could not wait.


Some floor problems...But look at al those buit-ins in the dining room!

  We knew it came with flaws...such as the floor pic. But we were use to old houses, and we can deal with the problems. The charm is too much to pass up. Then when it was time to close on the house, we find out that the title was never clear and there were some problems with that.They said it would take a year and a half to two years to clear up the mess.  To make a long story short, it should have never been put on the market to be sold until the issues were clear. We were devastated. I pouted (and cried) for over a month. Clear till the end of January. Finally, in mid-February I begrudginly began to look at other houses. Nothing compared to the house I had thought I was going to get though.


Front of second house...An ugly duckling waiting to be beautiful.

  So a couple of weeks ago, my husband finds this house online (see pic above). Ironically, it is only two blocks from The House We Didn't Get. It meets all our criteria as well, and is thousands (a lot of thousands) less than The One We Didn't Get. BUT there are a few glitches. ...Such as it comes without a kitchen.


The non-kitchen of the second house. Yikes!!

What you are looking at is the entire kitchen. It is a huge room, and it has these (very few and ugly) cabinets and not a single appliance. But on the upside, that leaves a blank slate for me to put in a kitchen I choose an love. On the down side, kitchen are SOOOO expensive. On the upside, my husband and I are Primo Bargain Hunters!!

The master of the second house. This is half of the room. But it also has half the closets of the first house.

  Ninety-eight percent of the house has beautiful wood floors that need just a tiny  bit of TLC.


The den of the second house. Beautiful and bright.

  It has huge windows (45 of them to be exact), that make me weak in the knees!! 


The living room of the second house..Looking into the den on the right and the dining room on the left.

  And, all kinds of old house funkiness that I love. It is spacious and just waiting for someone to love it. BUT it does come with more work than The House We Didn't Get.


The living room comes with the beautiful chandy. Whatever that was rolled up, is no longer in the house!

 Both houses have sat empty for almost two years. Both have a broken water pipe...that they tell me can be easily remedied. ("Easily" is apparently a relative term!)

So I had fallen in like with the second house and had ideas running amok in my brain. I knew the summer would be a perfect time to get to work on this ugly duckling that could easily be a swan.  We got all our (ugly) ducks in a row and won the bid on the house. We got all the paperwork in and were on our last leg of paperwork, when the broker from The House We Didn't Get called and said, "Hey ...Your house is now available with a clear title and just waiting on you."

Really. Not. Even. Kidding. So I have until tomorrow to decide....

Frankly, I will be grateful to have either one...and at this point...I'll believe it when I spend my first night in either one!