We bought a house!

Two days after our nail-biting house-selling experience, Ray and I drove to Brighton to view a few places. The first two, despite looking good online, were instantly ruled out because of heavy traffic noise. The third, our favourite going in, was just as nice in real life as we’d imagined it to be. We love the sunroom that shares a see-through fireplace with the living room, and the four-season gazebo with wood stove.

While most people downsize in retirement, we’re actually upsizing our home and downsizing our property (with only 1200 square feet, it would be hard to find something smaller). We spent much of our time opening closets and saying, “look, more space!” We have no idea what we’ll put in all the cupboards and closets, but there sure are a lot of them.

We’re also going from a 60-year old home to a 7-year old home. [For England folks, a 60-year home is considered to be “old” here. We deal in decades, not centuries.]

With the bidding war scenario fresh in our minds, we were eager to get a deal signed and sealed, so as soon as we’d finished the viewing we asked our agent to go back in and make an unconditional offer on our behalf. The house was being sold privately and the owner had another showing scheduled for later that day. Over the next 15 minutes she negotiated a deal, got a verbal agreement on price, then went back to her office to draw up the contract.

We met friends for lunch on a patio overlooking Lake Ontario, a place I expect we’ll return to often. It was only the second time I’ve gone out to eat since the pandemic hit, and both times I was checking my phone regularly for messages from my realtor, the first time the selling agent and this time the buying agent.

After lunch we wandered around the town that we’d just bought a house in – probably should have done that before buying the house, but whatever. We’ll be able to walk to most things – groceries, chai tea latte (14-minute walk from the house), book stores, etc.

We’d intended to drive back to Ottawa the same day, but between the heat and a lack of sleep, we were beat, so we took our friends up on their offer to spend the night in Cobourg. We got the call later that evening that the deal had closed. The house will be ours on October 30th!

Nick spent the weekend in Kingston but he approved of our house choice virtually. Juno stayed with friends for the weekend, her first time at sleep-away camp, and she’s been pretty much unconscious since we brought her home, so it appears she had an active and fun holiday.

We made sure our new place had room for visitors, so we’re hoping to have a lot of them. No, we will not be hosting Maplefest, but perhaps you could still come see us anyway.