For years our dream was to find that perfect house with all of the modern touches, big master bedroom with a 5 piece ensuite bath and walk in closet, a nice big kitchen and lots of room for a growing family. We found a model of home from a builder in the area of the city we liked, and just kept watching for one to go on the market. Finally our patience paid off and we found one to buy. The house was on a short little street, around the corner from a brand new school with a big park next to it. Our dreams were coming true!

Dreams can change

We moved in to our dream home and thought we were going to be happy for years to come. Our kids would be starting at the new school when it was finished, my wife was close to the highway to commute to work, and I was close to the transit route to get to my work. The first few years were everything we hoped. The house was great, the neighbours were nice, I was able to do a few minor updates, installed some laminate flooring, put a patio in the backyard with some other landscaping changes… But as the kids got older, things started to change.

My wife is a teacher, so she is home during the summer. Now that the kids were older (10 and 5), they needed to get out and do stuff. The park around the corner! There are only so many times you can go to the park before it gets boring… And since it was a new area, there weren’t many trees to provide shade. My wife told me some days all they did was sit under the slide in the shade to try to stay cool. Our previous neighbourhood had a splash pad that was so nice in the summer. They missed that. How about we get a slip ‘n slide for the yard! One thing about new homes, they try to fit as much house as they can on the lot and the backyard suffers. We bought the slip ‘n slide, got it home, took it out of the box… One end was at the fence on one side of the yard, and the other was… you guessed it, at the other fence. My wife pulled our kids back and forth on it a couple of times and that was it.

When we bought this house, we were a one vehicle family, and that was fine. As our lives got busier, a second vehicle became more of a necessity. Luckily my father-in-law was getting rid of one of his and offered it to us. We jumped at the chance! The only problem, and something we didn’t consider when we bought our house… there was only parking for one vehicle in the driveway. This was one of those areas where people would pave over their front yard to make a second parking spot. Our problem was we had a big beautiful tree in our yard that we didn’t want to touch. The only option was to put one car in our well used garage. We moved everything to the sides as best we could, and when stuff started to move when I was pulling the car in, I knew that was as far as I could go. Another strike against the house.

Next came the baby boom in the area. We can’t really complain about people having families, but when you have the windows open and all you hear is baby monitors going off, you realize this isn’t what you were hoping for. The final strike came one summer day, when my wife was sitting in her favourite window seat in our bedroom, listening to the baby monitors, watching other people’s TV’s because she could see right in their windows… She counted… there were 7 houses surrounding our back yard, and if she was able to see in their windows, they could see in ours. After that point, she felt self-conscious every time we were in the back yard, every time we had the kitchen blinds open…

The Open House

We decided we needed a change. Again we thought we needed to find a nice modern house with all the amenities, just with a better yard and less neighbours. We quickly found out that those houses were few and far between, and it seemed when someone got one of those, they held on tight to it. Those pie shaped corner lots were the first to be snatched up in the new subdivisions, and there was always a premium charged for them.

Then one Sunday we were out for a drive and saw a sign for an open house. We turned onto this beautiful winding street, lined with big old trees that shaded the road. We came to this cute little house with the For Sale sign on it. It was a simple raised ranch with a big four car driveway, with nice flowers in the front garden. We decided to stop.

We went in. The house was small. It had 3 small bedrooms that only had bi-fold doors on them. The bathroom was dated. The kitchen was old and only had a single sink and no dishwasher. There was old carpet in the living room. The basement had wood paneling everywhere. The second bathroom in the basement had no shower. But then we went outside…

The yard went on forever! It was 200ft deep and backed onto a hill, and then a highway, so no houses behind us. There was one neighbour on each side and that was it. Our kids went running around the yard. They looked so happy! And small, all the way at the back of the yard, but happy!

Could our idea of the perfect house have been wrong all this time? We had a lot of talking to do.