A home that we love!

Charlie and I have been looking for a home lately and I think we have already found one that we want.  Let me give you a tour...

It is a sturdy 1500 sq ft home with a basement built in 1930 on 3.5 acres.  It is located between farmer's fields and is definitely rural - but only a mile or 2 from the school and a couple of minutes to the grocery store/bank/gas station in a nice little town.  

Here is the living room.  You can see through to the dining room and behind that the kitchen.  Our realtor is on the ground here looking under the carpet...

... and we found beautiful wood floors.  They are already finished and we would pull out the carpet and tacks and go back to wood.  It looks like the same floors are throughout the upper level too.
It would come with appliance which is a nice feature for us because we don't have any yet.
This is the other side of the kitchen -- kind of a computer station.  I'd eventually (5-10 year plan?) remodel the kitchen, but for now we think it will work fine.
This is the view out the front door to the left.  It has a cute porch and just the right ratio of shade/sun.
This is the view to the right.  They have already tilled up a nice area for a garden.  Further back on the property -- behind the garden is a barn.
It is a large barn in relatively good condition (not about to fall down like most old barns I see).
The back half of the property is devoted to 4 fenced in areas they have used to pasture animals.  It also has a newer stable with 3 very nice stalls and a tack area.  We could either rent it out to someone to board their horses, or I could use it for goats, alpacas, whatever.  How cool is that?
Here is an exterior view of the stable and the current resident of the front pasture.

The home is a little more than we wanted to spend, but it really has a lot of possibilities -- and I think it would be easy to re-sell if we had to.  It needs a little work in some places, but what house doesn't have stuff that needs to be done?  The house has 5 bedrooms!!!  One would be Charlie's "Michigan room" - where he can decorate the room with his favorite sports teams stuff and watch the game with his buddies.  I would take over one room for my crafts and projects.  One would become a guest room -- and hopefully someday a child's bedroom.  That leaves one to spare -- we daydreamed of converting it to an upstairs bathroom/laundry -- or an office.  The house has a very nice garage, and a newer room that was added to connect the garage to the house.  It would be a perfect spot to add a small wood stove for supplemental heat.  

Anyway, you can see we have big plans for the place and we aren't even sure we are able to buy it.  We have invited our parents to see it with us as we go through again next weekend.  We want to get opinions and more experienced eyes  when it comes to home buying.  We need to taste the water (it has well/septic) and check out some little details.  If all goes well next weekend and the home hasn't sold (I'd be crushed) then we will put in an offer and work on getting an inspection.    

It feels like the right one.  If it doesn't sell between now and next weekend, it may very well end up ours.  How exciting!  Then this blog would be filled with all the adventures of owning and fixing up a home and the garden/livestock that we will eventually have. 

In the mean time, please leave me comments on what you think of the home.  Do you have any advice for first-time home buyers?