Shutters, half-done. Judge for yourself!

So remember that grand plan I announced here two months ago about moving to Charlottesville?
Yeah, that’s not happening.

House was on the market for six weeks. In the grand scheme of things that is not a long time, but the housing market in the DC area is incredibly tight and we figured we’d have a contract in a couple of weeks. In fact we thought the house would sell too fast and we’d have to rent back for a little while until we found a place to move into. But the weeks dragged on, the strangers traipsed through our house, and none made an offer.

It is now early May. If we got a great contract tomorrow we wouldn’t close until the end of the month at the earliest, realistically mid-June. That could work, but we are rapidly coming up to the arrival of baby #3 at the end of July. The longer the house sat, the more I saw myself 9.5 months pregnant, trying to pack up our house, only to unpack days later a couple hundred miles away. And register for school. And find someone to deliver the baby. And get a pediatrician.

We lowered the price, twice, to the lowest we could accept and break even. We dangled an incentive for buyers who didn’t like our small, dated kitchen- we’d contribute some money at closing towards a renovation. We had 3 open houses and more than 40 buyers come through. Many of them liked the house, with the exception of the aforementioned kitchen and its proximity to a major road. Those are two things we can’t do anything about. Our house is gray; with pinky-raspberry colored shutters that the previous owners had thought was red but didn’t quite turn out that way. I enjoyed them- they made the place look cheery. Our realtor (and our house-painter neighbor) thought it might help if we painted them black, so we did. It didn’t.

I also can’t articulate what a pain it has been to keep the house clean when you have two kids, and the inconvenience of being kicked out of your house unexpectedly between 5-7 on a weeknight. It was starting to wear and we felt like we had used all the tools we had at our disposal. In the meantime life moved on around us- kindergarten orientation was around the corner, Bridget was given a spot at a part-time preschool, and the universe just seemed to be sending the signal that we weren’t going anywhere.

We don’t have to move, so we’ll stay. We’ll re-evaluate things next year. For now I don’t know if it’s my nesting instinct kicking in or what, but I’m taking comfort in familiarity – the same doctor and hospital that I had with Bridget, supportive neighbors and friends, Maeve going to school with the boy next door. We’re kind of relieved actually- we may not have gotten what we wanted, but maybe we got what we needed.

Except for my pink shutters. Those I want back.