House hunting

Yesterday we ventured out to another open house, this time in Sugar Land which is right outside Houston.  We like Sugar Land and go there often - usually for shopping or eating out.  It's further from Jon's job than we would prefer, about 45 minutes, instead of his current 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 hour drive.

We liked this house and it was exactly in our price range.  It was four bed, 3 bath, about 2500 square feet.  If we were closer to our lease being up, we may have made an offer.  It had everything we needed/wanted.  I'm sad to say that I don't have a bunch of photos - it's awkward to be snapping away when there are a dozen other people looking around too.  I feel like I'm staking out my territory or something ;)

Walk in the front door, through the entry way, the living room and dining room are on the right. To the left is the office/4th bedroom.  Through the 4th bedroom,  on the other side is a hallway which leads to the 3rd bedroom (the windows you can see on the far left).

living room

...and dining room.  This room was huge with ceilings that were around 16 feet tall!  

Office/4th bedroom.  It was interesting because it had doors on both ends of the room.  Very nice to be able to close it off from the entry way of the house.

kitchen 

Backyard area was nice and low maintenance, but smallish.  We aren't married to the idea of a pool.  Something that we are learning about Texas is most all of the neighborhoods have association pools/tennis courts.  Jon being so uber careful about insurance etc. actually worries about the liabilities of pool ownership.  Thoughts? 

Great room off the kitchen.  Again, HUGE.  Loved this space. 

Master bedroom and bath.  The closet!  Oh my goodness the closet.  It is bigger than the kitchen in our first home.  I'm not sure if I could ever get over the guilt I'd feel with such a large closet! Ok, I could.

Master bath overlooks the pool.  Hi Jon!

Looking back into the kitchen from the great room.

And then we had Beignets! Mmmm.  And then we felt a little sick.  Ha!

We've talked about when we need to be ready for making an offer.  With our rental contract running through September, we think we could make an offer on a house anytime after April, preferably in late June.  That being said I'll probably fall in love with a house tomorrow.  It's hard walking through these homes knowing we can't become attached, we're still just looking and scouting out areas.  Our perfect house would still be from the 60s, having been already remodeled.  Most of those homes are waaay out of our price range.

Things that are important to us:

- wood floors (this is becoming a must on our list as we live out this year in a rental with carpeting - something we've never lived with before.)

- curb appeal, including the color of the exterior of the home.  The more we drive around, the more we realize that the homes all seem to be brick and none of them seem to be painted.  We *think* this is because of neighborhood rules and regulations.  So if we buy a home with an awful brick color, I may be stuck with it.

- good spaces within the home - workable for our family.  After living in our rental for six months we realize that we really do like having two dining/living areas.  Our family needs this room to stretch out.  But we also don't want to buy more space than we need.

- plenty of yard.  Our last home had a "rock garden" as the back yard.  While certainly low maintenance we are loving having an all grass back yard again in our rental.

 - close to Jon's office near downtown Houston.