It's OURS!

We're officially homeowners!  On Tuesday afternoon (after many trips to the bank, FedEx, the Post Office and even more phone calls) Grant and I took possession of a house here in Wheaton.  Even though I have a key, I still feel like I am trespassing on someone else's property.

I won't bore you with all of the details, rather I want to share with you the amazing gift that this house is!  On Tuesday we went to our closing, expecting it to be stressful and anxiety-producing and it was anything but.   The previous owners were missionaries in Africa for the first part of their marriage and moved to Wheaton when the husband was hired as a professor.  They lived in the house for almost 40 years.  According to their daughter, all of his students had dinner in their home and they were always inviting others in.  We are excited to own a house that has a legacy of hospitality.  We're excited to share the gift of this space with others.

We've had many requests to post photos of the inside.  I wanted to wait until we were "done" moving in, but I just couldn't possibly wait until May to share this with you.  Most of these are from the realtor, but I have added a few of our own too.  Here it is:

The front of the house

As soon as you walk through the front door you see the stairs up the middle.  The living room is on the left, the dining room is on the right.

Living Room

Doors through the living room to the screened in porch.  (It was warm and breezy here yesterday - I realized that I might actually love this porch!)

Living room again

The Kitchen

The dining room.  (Sadly, the corner cabinets will not be there long.  We have a china cabinet that probably won't fit if we leave them.)

The upstairs bathroom.

The downstairs bathroom.  (If you think it looks tiny, you are correct!)

The porch - obviously this picture was not taken in February!

The back of the house.  The garage is on the left.

The living room this morning. The only thing we have is our folding chairs and an abundance of candles. The light coming through the windows is my favourite part of the house.

The Master bedroom.  Note the giant ceiling fan which will not make it through the weekend.  (Unfortunately, this picture makes the bed look huge and the room look small.  Neither are true, it's just a hard angle to get a good picture.)

Second Bedroom.  This will be the library/office.

Guest Room.  We have the bed frame and the mattress will come soon!

The view through the kitchen door.

As most of you know, we currently live in a residence hall.  We'll continue to live here until the end of May when my 4 years as a GRA will (sadly) come to an end.  We're going to slowly move things over, mostly to get everything out of storage.  We'll also get to host a few guests as Grant's parents are coming for his graduation in May and my mom is going to come for a few weeks to help us fix the place up.  It doesn't need a ton of work, but we have a few projects that we'd love her help with!

So that's it!  We have plenty of space so if you're ever coming through Chicago or Wheaton, you'll have a place to stay.  And (of course), I'll post more pictures as we settle in.