I'm pleased to say that we are well on our way to being homeowners in Victoria. We have purchased a house in the Lambrick Park area (actually in the municipality of Saanich), and we will be able to move in on September 27.
While we looked at many different types of houses, we found that the well-maintained "character" houses appealed to us the most. Some of these houses can be 80 to 100 years old; ours just happens to be a little older than that! It was built in 1900 (making it 108 years old this year), and several people told us that it was probably one of the original farmhouses in the area.
It's set back from the street on a plot of land known as a "panhandle", which is basically the back part of a long lot. One of the homeowners living on this large lot would have subdivided it, making two smaller ones. The records that we have for our lot seem to show that this was done around 1972.
The house looks small from the outside but is quite roomy inside. There are four bedrooms: two up -- the kids' rooms -- and two down, so guests, come on over! and two bathrooms, one of which is an ensuite off the master bedroom (yay!) The house has a fairly large living room/dining room combination, a shaded sun room off the back and a concrete patio. Those are the good things!
Things we have to or want to remedy: some galvanized metal piping downstairs, which must be replaced with copper or plastic; a gigantic fig tree in the back whose fruit must be cleaned off the ground regularly for fear of attracting wasps, and whose roots will eventually crack the concrete pad under the sun room; a minor damp spot in the main bathroom shower; a sagging floor in one of the bedrooms; lilac-coloured paint in the master bedroom (not to our taste); and the little matter of the small/cramped kitchen. (This last one might take a while to fix!)
Future project: kitchen remodel
The sun room is nice, but it's actually quite shaded due to the large fig tree just outside to the right of the picture. I think this picture must have been taken a few years ago!
The lilac-coloured paint has to go!
Our own bathroom!Disclaimer: The photos of the house are not mine (they are the ones that were available on the realtor's web site).
How are things going for you? Did you or your kids go back to school this week? Drop us a line! christinateskey @ yahoo.ca or mvieweg @ gmail.com
