Home part 3...

In my previous post, I said there were two things that made me fall in love with this house. This post is about love at first sight.

One Saturday afternoon during my online search for a new house, Ron asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go for a ride in Temple. I gave him directions to this house for a drive by. When we got here, we found that the house was vacant, so I had him pull into the driveway. As I said earlier, the house is rather ugly, so Ron said, "You like this house?" to which I replied, "Let's just take a look." The windows all had sheer curtains and mini blinds in them so we couldn't really see inside, but we decided to walk around to the back. These pictures are what we saw.

The lot is an over-sized lot that backs up onto a ravine with a creek that runs along the edge of the property. There are 2 grassy areas on each side of a sun porch and than a huge deck that juts out over the back yard. Walking into the back yard had such an impact on me. We had lived in rented homes, apartments, and government quarters before we built the house in the country. Moving into the city worried me in one way; I was afraid I couldn't get used to living so close to other people again. But the feeling we had when we walked into the back yard was amazing. It was like being at the edge of a forest and the sound of the creek was so relaxing. We just stood and listened.

We walked out onto the deck and gazed over the back property. Luckily, the deck has a staircase that goes down into the back yard. We both walked down and just stood saying goofy things like, "Wow! This is amazing! Can you believe this yard?" Well, by then we knew we needed to schedule a showing.

The deck needed some work, so when Scott was between semesters, I had him draw up some plans for remodeling. We needed to fence in what little grassy area there was between the house and the deck so that we could let the dogs and grandchildren play outside. He started the work, but got sent to Iraq, so Ron and Ryan finished up when Ryan graduated.

We removed all the tacky lattice and put up some wider boards to keep little bodies from going through the deck wall. We gave it a fresh coat of paint, repaired and painted the two huge picnic tables, fixed up the swing the previous owners left behind, removed some rotten flower boxes.

Eventually, I bought some planters and usually put a mixture of coleus, begonia, and impatients in them. We tried other things, but there is too much shade. Which brings me to the only thing I don't like about the back yard: a massive magnolia tree.

I always thought I would love to have one in my yard, but never got around to planting one at the Killeen house. I was so excited when I found one here. Boy, have I been disappointed! That thing does keep leaves all year; but, it also drops them all year long! The saving grace is the tremendous amount of shade that it provides.

We spend a lot of time out on the deck. It is a quiet place to sit and listen to the sounds that I loved in Killeen. Eventually, we know we will need to start replacing boards and keeping the trees trimmed will be an ongoing task. But, it beats digging up cactus, moving boulders, and chopping down cedar trees!