The House

Welcome to what has become my ongoing series documenting our move to Utah. Don’t worry, this won’t last forever. Pretty soon I’ll be commiserating about leaving my beloved Colorado as I cram in every last adventure I can!

I’ve been asked for more information on the timing of our move and our new house so I’ll give you a window into my stress. As I mentioned before, the Denver housing market is on fire with a huge shortage of houses on the market, thousands of people moving here and being forced to pay top dollar because of the lack of inventory. Jamie’s sister has encountered this problem. She sold her home last year, made a huge profit on it, and traveled to Europe. Now that she’s back and looking for a job, she can’t afford to buy another house and is currently renting a one-bedroom for $1,300. I know New Yorkers would scoff but that price is high for Denver.  People are realizing what an awesome place this is to live and are coming in droves so I don’t see the prices dropping back to where they once were, though I’m sure the market will stabilize eventually.

Our plan is to put our house on the market late-April and hopefully move out by late-June.  Hadley has YW Girls’ Camp in our Colorado ward the last week of June and camp in our new ward the first week of July, hence the timing. Thus begins our homeless stage and the source of much stress. Since we’re building, there is a laborious process to endure. We spent several weeks in review with the house plans and making any necessary adjustments and upgrades and now we’re stalled as the building permits are approved. What was supposed to be 3-4 weeks it taking much longer. The original projected completion date was early-August (perfect) but now we’ll be lucky if we’re in our new home by early-September (imperfect x 100).

We’ll be living with Jamie’s parents in the interim and the kids and I always spend a good chunk of July with my family in Canada. That’s all fine. But school starts in mid-August and there is no way I’m driving 45 minutes from my in-laws’ house in each direction, two times a day to drop-off and pick-up  the kids. That’s 3+ hours a day in the car. So, let’s not think about that and  I’m praying like crazy the permits are approved so they can start construction, PRONTO.

Due to the premium price tag of our lot, in order to fit this move into our budget, we had to select the smallest model. That’s fine. Our new home is actually comparable in overall size to our current house but it is ranch-style and the layout is completely different. There are only three bedrooms upstairs (that are a lot smaller) so almost immediately we need to scrounge together some money to finish two rooms in the basement so we’ll move Hadley to the basement and Jamie can setup his office down there. Hadley’s temporary bedroom upstairs will become my office. We’ll slowly piece together the rest of the basement over the next several years.

Hadley is a wonderfully gifted artist and loves to create. The problem with that is she has decided this is HER house and her design choices. She begged to go to the design center with us a couple of weeks ago but we made it very clear that, though we value her opinion, she did not have the final say and could not use words like “barf” and “disgusting” when she did not agree with our choices.  She was very well behaved during the process and bit her tongue a few (hundred) times, I’m sure. We consoled her that she can decorate her new room in the basement however she wants. Tip: do not give a full license to a burgeoning artist. She is currently designing her dream bedroom that looks just her Grandma J’s guest room, complete with a chandelier. Good luck with that, kid.

We dragged Jamie’s sister Tammy (a former interior designer at Gensler in New York) to the design center with us. Her family just renovated a beautiful new home in Salt Lake City that looks like a showhome from the magazines. I mean, the woman still carries around paint samples in her purse. That’s how hardcore she is!

I deferred to her on almost everything except for two items: the interior wall and exterior house color. I really wanted our home to be gray with white trim and a blue door but when we pulled up to the neighborhood, we noticed that there were three other very similar looking homes with the same colors and one even had a blue door. Cursed! We took a stroll around the block debating the virtues of various home colors. Jamie and Hadley really liked a dark grey house with red trim but our current home has plenty of red accents and I’m over it. I opted for a beautiful slate blue house with white trim but they wouldn’t have that, either.

We finally compromised on the gray house with blue door. So what if it looks like we’re copycats? It was what I originally wanted and it’s ours.

I’m really great at pinning looks that I like on Pinterest  (is that a talent?) but have zero ability to translate that into making selections that work together (lack of talent). Tammy was a godsend and I’m really excited to see the final product. We’ll be significantly downsizing on the main level, getting rid of both of our dining room sets and two sets of couches, and buying only one dining table and couch. I’m really hoping we won’t feel cramped until we’re able to finish the basement.

Our property backs to farmland that is owned by Jon Huntsman who leases it to be farmed with alfalfa and a 90-year-0ld couple owns several acres on our south side. We posed for a few token pictures in our new yard. The next time we see it, there will hopefully be some movement on it!

As we scrimp and save and try to figure out how to make this house work, I think about that $55,000 premium price tag on the lot and how that would have more than covered putting in our yard, deck and basement. But then I look at those views and know that waking up to this as our backyard will make it all worth it.