Rosewood

We bought a house!

It is on Rosewood Street, south of Burns Park, in Ann Arbor. Jake and his parents put in a bid Monday afternoon, and the sellers accepted it a few hours later. We'll take possession of it on June 24. Yesterday morning they went back so Jake could take lots of photographs and measurements, so that we can start planning. It has been snowing in Michigan and it sounds like it's really pretty right now. Much prettier than rainy Stockholm, which along with all southern Sweden seems to have officially reached the criteria for spring without having a season that fulfilled the criteria for winter. More on the Swedish winter later. The point is that it is white and snowy at our new home.

Our house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a side porch, and it was built in 1930. There are pictures here, and I'll put up some of the ones Jake took when I get them.

It was very interesting to go through this process from afar, and it sounds like once they actually saw a lot of the houses, things were very clear. Like - the farmhouse of my dreams was actually in disgusting shape except for the handful of very clever angles they photographed and would have needed hundreds of thousands of dollars of work. And - oh, this house is really exquisite but the bedrooms are tiny and even though it's only mildly out of the price range the taxes/maintenance would be ten thousand dollars more a year. Or, very simply, this house is truly disgusting and next to horrible slummy student multi-unit buildings and has about .001% of the cute bungalow look that they managed to convey in the online listing.

So, when they saw our house on Rosewood, it all made a lot of sense. It is in exquisite shape, with everything from a newly renovated kitchen to a new furnace, not a single crack in the paint on the walls, new energy efficient winterized windows, etc. The listing price was insanely good, and means that we can do some work on little things that will make a huge difference. We're going to extend their cute white picket fence so that it encloses the front of the house too, up to the sidewalk. And my favorite part is that we're going to enclose the other part of the yard that's next to the garage and sort of non-continguous with the rest of the yard - and put in raised beds for a vegetable garden! This is what I want it to look like, on a slightly smaller scale.

Apparently the closet in the master bedroom is nasty. It's a walk-in closet although it has sloped roofs which Jake has to crouch down to avoid, but everyone agreed that it would be easy to finish it nicely. The upstairs (yellow) bathroom has unfortunate plastic walls in the shower (the bigger bathroom with full tub, etc., is downstairs) and everyone also agreed it would be easy to redo that with pretty tiles or corian.

Now I'm already onto things like wallpaper! I love Farrow & Ball. I love their
yellow bumble bee wallpaper and also
this more flowery one. Jake and I have been negotiating who gets which of the other two bedrooms for desk/office space. I desperately want the upstairs bedroom that is currently blue and white, because it's such a cute attic-like space and faces right onto Rosewood, but the downstairs bedroom is going to be the primary guest bedroom because it's pretty big.

When they went back yesterday after the bid was accepted, they met the woman, who was on her way out the door with the two kids. Her husband is just finishing his residency in pediatric oncology or radiology or something, and they're moving to Kentucky because Michigan didn't make him a good enough offer to stay. Apparently she was totally tearing up - both happy that it had sold and sad to be leaving because they love it so much, so I thought that was an excellent sign.