And the door closed.....

Three houses came on the market this past week and we looked at one last night.

As usual there were things we liked and things we knew we would have to update.  In my mind I was making a list of pros and cons.  The pros were winning.

Last night I had trouble sleeping because thoughts kept popping into my mind....

The master bath was so small there was no place to store towels.  Where would we put the towels?

Where would we store our extra sheets?

If someone came to the house and entered by the front door, that person would have to walk through the kitchen to get to the living room.  There was no direct access to the living room from an entrance to the house.

I was troubled this morning.  Thinking.  Thinking. Thinking.  I didn't want to talk to Gary because I was afraid he would ask me about making an offer and I didn't know what to say.

Then it happened.

He had called Lynn about our taxes because we still had not heard anything from him and taxes are due next week.

The bomb dropped.  $30,000 owed. 

Why so much?  Because we had a great crop in 2016 which we sold in 2017 and the earnings were on our 2017 taxes.

Thud.

There went some of the cash that we would have spent to pay for the house---in cash.

So we talked about it.

Why did we want to move?  To be closer to the girls, to cut down on traveling time, to make it easier to go to Lafayette, to downsize some.

All of those are great reasons, but we still like where we live and our farm is paid for. We don't have debt, just monthly bills which we pay each month. No car payments.  No house payments.  No installments on credit cards.  Just monthly bills.

We re-evaluate.  What do we need in our house? 

Even though I love sleeping upstairs, the stairs are my knees. 

Nightly trips to the bathroom require up and down the stairs and by the time I do that, I am too awake to fall asleep immediately so I am restless. 

Those are the two biggest issues, plus I would like more counter space in the kitchen and more room in the dining room.

What to do? 

We have a plan.  In May we are blocking off a week (forewarning to both daughters and families) and staying home.  We are ordering a dumpster and cleaning out the garage and the downstairs bedroom. 

After that is finished, we will evaluate the bedroom and re-decorate with new paint, new carpet, new window treatment.

Then the bedrooms upstairs will be re-evaluated and made into guest rooms and a sewing room.

We will talk to Mike about possibly removing the tub and installing a walk in shower.

As Rebecca, our real estate agent, said last night, she didn't want us to 'settle' on a house.  She said there would be other houses open up on the market that might be a better fit for us.

I think that is true.  And even though we could have made that house work, there were things that I just didn't want to 'settle' for - like the master bathroom.  The closets in the bedrooms.  Having to walk through the kitchen to get to the living room.  To some that may have been no big deal, but those things would have been what I would be living with every day.

I was waiting for a sign.  One came.  I say "the door closed" but Gary said it was just a window.  There still is a house out there somewhere for us.  It just hasn't found us yet.