Why I live where I live

I saw this on Krista's blog today and it sounded like fun! It's the weekly Sunday Scribblings Sunday Challenge (plus, I love love love the picture so I had to join in on the fun).

Stephen and I moved into our house in a Montreal suburb the week before we were married. After visiting one too many fixer uppers, we decided to buy a new house. A house that would meet all of our needs and would be built to our specifications. First off, we wanted a house that we both loved where we would want to live for the rest of our lives. Second, it had to be in the boonies as they say, close but not too close to our respective parents. Third, we wanted to live in a community where there would be lots of young families so our (future) kids would have friends to play with and we wanted a quiet street where they could play street hockey. Fourth, it had to be close to the commuter train since we both work in the city. Oh, and I wanted it to be MarthaStewarty (Stephen still doesn't quite know what that means!)

We ended up buying the first house we saw! It was a bit out of our price range, but it by far exceeded our expectations so we took a leap of faith and bought it! We came by every Saturday while it was being built to see what had been added to it since our previous visit. It was so exciting. Sometimes, we couldn't wait until the weekend and would drive up on a Thursday night and peeked through the windows with a flashlight! Our builder was terrific. He built our house with his dad and everything was just right when we moved in. It is our dream house in every way.

Well, maybe except for the doors... The first week we were here Stephen kicked the laundry room door open after we locked ourselves out of it. That one required fixing mouldings, the knob and a paint touch up. Then, after seeing a really cool segment on Canadian House & Home about adding character to your newly built home, I decided to paint all of our upstairs doors black. I hated the result and tried everything to paint them white again but the gods were against it and I couldn't get primer nor paint to stick to them. We decided to change the doors altogether which was a disaster. The hinges didn't line up so we had to chisel out a new location for them on the doors and we did a really poor job hanging them. In fact we still have 4 doors that are unpainted and don't close! Oh, well. At least I can knit, right? Our door troubles were't over yet though.

The front door (which we never really liked anyway) warped from the cold this winter and we had wanted to replace it with one with a window anyway so we picked out a new one before Easter and hired Home Depot to come install it. They came by on Wednesday and got it done in a few hours under Julian's watchful eye.

I really love it. It makes such a wonderful difference, especially on the inside. We no longer have to turn on a light in the entrance in the middle of the day!

All in all, I love our house. I love our town. And I really hope to live here forever!

Why do you live where you live?