Home

The big news is: we're homeowners! After a few weeks of looking, we hit on a ranch style house built in 1956 that we fell in love with. I'll admit I had a brief flirtation with another smaller house that had a completely updated, stainless steel fancy kitchen, but I came to my senses.

It turned out that the one we picked was a single-owner home which, considering it was built 52-years ago, is a pretty big deal. The owner kept everything in really good condition and did some clean-up and updates throughout the house before putting it on the market. These included ripping up some ugly (or so we've heard) carpeting to reveal beautiful original wood floors. Bonus!

I'd like to do updates on the kitchen and bathrooms eventually, but they're not hard on the eyes in the meantime. Not like some houses we looked at that had bright green toilets and pink bathroom tile, or a carpeted kitchen with a bizarre "futuristic" 50s stove that had the four burners all in a row. We have a big old basement that's not quite finished, which makes it perfect for, say, roller skating or bocce ball. The yard is absolutely huge. Like bigger than two New York apartments put together. A friend has a big movie screen and a projector, so we're envisioning lots of summer movie nights.

Upon unpacking, we found:

* an old kitchen message board with cartoons and notes from the 70s
* a door that had been taken down with height marks and notes for children and grandchildren starting in 1961

At the closing, we met the owner, who was a very sweet old man. Turns out he actually picked the plans out for the house (from a book at the library) and had it built. He said he only regretted not having the builder take out the door that comes off the living room because, as he later realized, in the plans that door was only there to lead to a swimming pool.

He married his high school sweetheart and must have bought that house when he was only a kid. His wife recently passed away and he moved out only because he couldn't stand to be in the house any longer without her.

So now J and I are starting a new life here and I couldn't be happier. We're spending the weekends painting and rearranging and basically marveling at what to do with so much space.

New York might have the tastiest bakeries, the best orange tofu dish in the world, and a burning pulse you won't find anywhere else. But in Denver, we finally found a home.