Last weekend we moved into our rental house, and we’ve been here just a week now. Experiencing this place has served as a clear reminder of why we are doing this build in the first place. Mind you, this is a nice rental property. Its a good sized ranch home in a nice neighborhood of varied houses. But there are subtle and not-so-subtle annoyances to be found.

• The furnace is absurdly loud. It sounds like someone is idling an old garbage truck in the driveway.
• I don’t think you can even buy cabinets this cheaply constructed anymore at any price.
• They also have lots of wasted ‘blind’ space and drawers you can’t open as they hit the appliances.
• The master shower is smaller than an airplane lavatory while the extra family room / den is enormous.
• The toilets too are comically tiny and poorly positioned.
• Its several steps up and tricky to ramp for accessibility.
• Wall to wall carpet in most rooms doesn’t align well with cats.
• Also no good place to put the litter box.  😉

None of these are deal-breakers and overall we’re perfectly happy with it as a temp home, but its immediately apparent all the things we’d want to do differently. Things we took for granted even in the previous two houses stand in stark relief here.  (Like closet space, lighting, or a place to put your grill).

Many people said they thought we’d be sad to move out of the old house. We moved in when our daughter was just 18 months and its the only house either of the kids remember. We also did a lot of work to make it livable over these last 7 years. But I can now confirm that none of the 4 of us shed a tear. We had a countdown on the wall leading up to move date and it was 100% excitement in our household.

We’re happy to be here in the rental, particularly now that its mostly settled after a week of unboxing and arranging. That said, we’re definitely still dreaming of the final destination!