We have spent an exciting (and slightly exhausting) week in our new home in Mesa, AZ.
We closed on the house in early April. But (and this is weird) by the time of the closing we had not spent more than 30 minutes in this house. A person can easily spend more time than that picking out their cell phone at the store. Even test driving a car usually involves more time than that.
But that's the way of home-buying I guess. Do people really spend more time than that? Maybe, but probably not appreciably more. Ideally a person would live in a house for a week before deciding whether to buy it. How else can you really know what it would be like in a place?
We had the advantage that my parents lived 20 years in the "neighborhood' (i.e., Leisure World), but even that experience only took us so far.
For example, this week we found that there is a lovely path along several ponds. The entire walk is about 3 miles. There are houses next to the walk, of course, but it is a quiet experience. There are ducks and geese, fountains, and small human-made waterfalls. Even after 20 years of visiting my parents I had been unaware of this walk. Know what else we found this week about it? It begins about one block from our home. Score!
We spend every morning walking and then at the rec center, where there is a ballroom where we can dance, a fully equipped exercise room, and a swimming pool. Know what we found? There is a short-cut path to it. It's a five minute walk. We don't even need to use the golf cart to get to it.
In short, what we learned about the house from this week that we didn't know was all good stuff. There were no bad surprises about the appliances, for example. (in fact, they work very well). And in contrast to Whidbey Island, when you need work done contractors are practically falling all over themselves to get work. On Whidbey Island you can call and call and and not get calls back. We have people offering their business cards to us. Makes no sense as there is a lot of work for people on Whidbey Island, but there aren't people doing it.
This home is in a retirement village where you have to be at least 55 in order to own or rent. Hence the name: Leisure World.
If someone was focused on making friends, this would be the place. At our orientation we were given a form to complete where we could indicate our hobbies and interests so people could contact us. We declined. We find each others' company all we need, along with our families.
We hide away from the world--on Whidbey Island we are pretty isolated and on our public lands where we spend the other half of the year we are totally isolated. Although on the surface Leisure World looks to be the direct opposite of what fits us, in actuality it is just like those other areas. Last night we spent about three hours on our back patio and there was virtually nothing except the sounds of birds. We saw quail running past our home and two Ravens in the tree above us. There were a couple of golfers who waved.
We can go about our lives here uninterrupted by the world, in a peaceful and quiet environment where there is an abundance of opportunities for the activities we enjoy. (one change we are making in our home is that we are having a vinyl/wood floor in a room off of the kitchen that will become our ping pong space, since we play ping pong about every day).
Our goal for this week was to get things organized and to get started on the renovations that were needed. We bought the proverbial worst home on the block. But it had features that none of the other homes we looked at had.
The major feature was that it looked out onto the golf course, down the fairway. What this did was to give us a feeling of openness. Many of the homes in Leisure World have small backyards that are close to other homes.
Another important feature is that nobody had messed with it. It is an "unrestored original." The entire west side of the house is windows----three large sliders and two doors. So wherever we are we see the long fairway, with trees and grass.
But it was tired. It had been a rental for several years, and was in need of rejuvenating. We saw a lot of houses where there had been remodeling, but mostly that seemed to be adding rooms and making kitchens and bathrooms very modern. All ours needed was repairs and painting--the inexpensive stuff.
.......and to get rid of things that we didn't want. When we bought the home we inserted into the offer everything in the house---all furniture, dishes, towels, televisions, and toilet paper. And the golf cart.
But we knew we didn't want all of what was in the house, so the first order of business was to go through everything and sort into "keep" piles and "donate" piles. In addition to a lot of furniture, we filled 6 or 7 large boxes with extra dishes, glasses, etc.
Then we rearranged the furniture, and decided we liked a lot of it. Opened the house out considerably to get 11 chairs, a large dining room table, and several small tables out of there.
The next project was to organize the tile work that we will be having done. It's too difficult to describe. Just suffice to say that it will not look like a typical home when the work is completed. The project of organizing the tile work took several hours.
Finally there was the issue of moving our plants and bushes. We want to create a space in the front that is similar to creating a front patio. Except instead of a wall, we want a "wall" of plants and bushes. Tricky because we don't want it to be a hedge. Then, this fall we will add a number of desert plants. Then we will have a patio in the back and a patio-of-sorts in the front. For this project Vicky made several maps of the house.
And then laid out bricks for where we wanted the various bushes and plants moved to:
When we return in the fall the entire place will look different. We can only slightly imagine. But for not a lot of money it will be transformed into something that not only is no longer tired but is colorful and fun. We are excited!!!!
