So here’s the deal on the latest move… this is a long post so for the attention-span challenged, here’s the short version:

• We’re not picking up and moving to another state.
• We’re not being evacuated due to toxic mold or any other crisis.
• Our landlord offered us a bigger house and we took it.

Now for the long version… what happened is that our landlord approached us about another rental property she had just acquired with a much larger house. She knew that we were pretty frustrated with the neighbor issues we were having and that half our belongings were in storage because it couldn’t fit our 800 square foot house, and she (correctly) suspected we were thinking of moving at the end of our lease. She offered to let us have the bigger house, transfer our existing deposit — but the downside was rent would be higher. We didn’t think there was any way we could manage this, since we are already struggling with bills, but thought we’d at least take a look at the other house.

I don’t think I have written much about our issues with the current house. We tried so hard to make it home and love it but there have been a lot of challenges. The trashy neighbors on the one side weren’t even the biggest issue any more (probably because they haven’t been there much so there’s been less police activity), I think the toughest thing has been I-240; the noise is horrific, even with all the windows closed… and now that it’s summer, having the windows closed has been a big pain in the butt. We even activated the closed captioning on our TV because half the time we can’t hear it well enough to understand what we are watching.

We were told up front when we first inquired about the house that it was right uphill from the highway but I guess I was so desperate to get out of the mold house before it put me in the hospital that I talked myself into it. “How bad could it be?” I thought, “once the trees get leaves on them I’ll bet it will dampen the noise.” (it didn’t!) Waking up with your heart in your throat several times a week because an 18-wheeler is coming down the hill below you using it’s “jake brake” and it sounds like an airplane is landing on the roof wears you down after a while. We’ve got a deck but we can’t use it… when we spend any time at all outside, we hide on the other side of the house, perched on the side of the steep hill in our folding chairs and trying to ignore the cacophany.

And then there is the space issue… we never even really unpacked when we moved in because there was no space for anything. We bought 6″ bed risers for the beds so that we could cram the area underneath full of boxes — a nice solution, until you need something out of the box in the far back corner under the king size bed. Or the thing you need isn’t even there, it’s in storage. For all of these reasons we’d decided we were moving yet again once the lease was up, and we were seriously looking into trying to buy a house.

So along comes our landlord with this proposal and we went to see the house. We loved it. The neighborhood, up the road a ways from Biltmore Village, was not as nice as West Asheville, but we positively drooled over the 1100 square feet of space — and it had a full walkout basement which effectively doubled that space. More counter space, an extra bedroom, a bigger bathroom, more cabinet space, a linen closet, and a dining room for our poor table that was sitting in storage! Did I mention that each one of the bedrooms had a closet with folding doors that was equal to the space of all three of the closets in this house? I told our landlord we just couldn’t afford any higher rent but we’d think it over a few days.

We went back home, seriously bummed. Seeing the house and thinking about what we could do with enough room to actually breathe just kind of brought our current frustration to the surface… but there was no way we could go up $125 on rent, even taking into account the $35 we’d save on the storage unit. We looked at our budget and wondered if we should hold out and try to buy when the lease was up, or if that was even an option for us. To find out, Joy went to the bank with the spreadsheet we’d printed. In the meantime, I called the landlord and told her our concerns and what we were thinking of doing. The bank said that we should wait a year and get a few more bills paid off before trying for a loan, and the landlord came up with a proposal that if we’d sign another year lease she’d come down another $50 on the rent. She also said that at the end of the lease she’d use her contacts and help us find a place to buy, or possibly even work out a lease/purchase agreement with us.

We agonized over it some more and finally decided to do it. We move in on the first of August but she’s letting us move our stuff from storage and things like that and put them in the basement before the actual move, so hopefully that will diminish the ordeal of moving day a bit. Among other things, I will now be able to set up a place to cut the patterns for my collars and prep them, and have a sewing table, which will make the collar making so much easier… we will, unfortunately, have to fence in an area for the animals ourselves, but at least this way we can do it right and make it cat-safe so Simon and maybe even the others could come out with us now and then.

Cripes, I hope we did the right thing. I am dreading moving yet again… But I’m excited, too.

We went hiking this weekend and took some photos…