winterbadger | phew, that's over....

Well, it's all done.

redactrice and I showed up at a title company in Annandale yesterday afternoon and signed over the title to our house in return for a whopping big sum of money. It was all very quick and painless after the bother of fixing up, my endless moving out, the waiting and waiting for someone to bid, more fixing, more moving...

I'm sad, and I will always remember the house in the trees with love, but it's someone else's home now. I hope he enjoys it even half as much as we all did.

soccer_fox and I then spent the evening looking at houses *other* people are trying to sell, mostly out of idle curiosity, but at least a little so as to get into practice and learn what appeals to each other. We agreed that one lovely bungalow was just a bit too small for us and four cats. We split our vote on what estate agents apparently call a "tudor" house that had a lot of dark-stained wood paneling, a large central ground floor room with a balcony/loft overlooking it, a lot of basement rooms, and what our agent jokingly referred to as "the crypt" (an unfinished area under the foundation--dirt floor, not even packed down). We had more mixed feelings about a bungalow on the other side of town that needed a little work but had some nice rooms (and a friendly stray cat that almost persuaded Neta to take her home!) And we finished up with a very nice little cape in our neighborhood that if we were really looking in earnest we would have seriously considered. It had a basement apartment that would have had to be entirely refinished (someone had already torn out most of the ceilings and interior walls!), but the main house was in excellent condition, and it had plenty of space and a nice deck out back. The agent we toured around with was very nice; I think we'll keep in touch with him.

After my last experience and the last week of moving C&M, I'm frankly horrified at the idea of moving house again. But the place we have, while lovely as an apartment, is not a place I'd want to live for more than a year or two. We're still sorting out whether we want to start the UK adventure next year or in a few years from now, so we won't be moving soon (that is, for at least 5-6 months) whatever we do, but it's nice to know what our local options might be like.