ANITA’S HOUSE IS SOLD!
New owners have their dream home
After months of fretting over whether anyone would like my taste, I needn’t have worried. The couple who bought the home I built last year absolutely love it.
As part of a project that looked at the steps involved in buying and building a new production home from a subdivision developer, I was given the opportunity to act as a buyer, building a home for Cardel Homes at Blackstone in Kanata.
Although Cardel was footing the bill, I got to choose the lot and type of home and was given a budget to cover any upgrades to the standard features and finishes, both inside and out. The idea was to experience first-hand what it was like to go through the process.
The finished home, which was completed last December, then became what’s called an inventory home, one that is available as a quick sale to buyers who want a new home without having to wait for it to be built.
For 30-somethings Trevor and Melinda, who did not want their last name published, that worked out perfectly.
“This (home) was a little bit over what we were wanting to spend, but when we saw it we said, ‘OK, we have to buy it, we love it too much’, ” Trevor says as we chat at the kitchen island a few weeks after they moved in.
“There’s nothing that I would change,” adds Melinda.
Not wanting to buy until they had sold their Arnprior home, they were caught off-guard when it was snapped up six days after being listed. Their search for a new home had barely begun, but a visit with friends who already lived in Blackstone, in the same model of home that I built, proved fortuitous.
“We just could envision being in that house,” Melinda says.
Less than two months later they were in.
“The colour scheme is exactly in our taste, warm and just beautifully finished and big enough but not humongously large,” says Trevor.
The home is a 2,023-square-foot two-storey with three bedrooms plus a second-floor bonus room that acts as a family room. Done in earth tones, floors and cabinetry are dark brown, while tiles and counters are light and walls are beige.
The only changes they made were to paint their young children’s bedrooms — a green Minecraft theme for their son and a blue Frozen one for their daughter — and to close in a main-floor flex space that had been left open, turning it into an office.
“Buying the house was fun; selling the (other) house, it’s not in your control, it’s very stressful,” says Trevor.
Then he adds, with a laugh, “I keep saying we’d die in this house; I’m never selling another one.”