our house...in the middle of the street

You're singing now aren't you! Our house.bah bah bah....in the middle of the street....our house.

We have been living in this current house for 18 months. We moved in July 2012. We had been renting this super tiny 4plex in Olds for a year because there was absolutely nothing else! We had such a short amount of time to move to Olds so we were limited in what we could find. After a year there, we were lucky enough to get this place! My mom suggested we put an ad on kijiji- young small family looking for house to rent with backyard. (For the 2 previous years up to this point we had NO backyard! And I was so tired of that with little kids!) Anyway, I kept telling her it was a silly idea. Landlords don't find renters like that, renters have to do the work to look for ads. No one was going to see our ad and call us. Well, after a while, I thought, what the heck do I have to lose? So I put up the ad and sure enough about 3 days later I got a call. There was a couple from Chestermere that owned a house here. They were just deciding to sell or find renters and they saw our ad! They just wanted a good family to take care of the house! Match made in heaven! So we moved in and revelled in the space! Its a 4 bedroom house with a huge backyard, a park right out the backyard (literally), big basement for storage and space for my home gym, and a garage. Lovely!

Well, it hasn't exactly been bliss. We have had LOTS of problems here! On one hand, we are so grateful for the big house and prime location to Brian's work and Kennedy's school. Its also big enough to host lots of Brian's big family! We've had a couple large parties here- Brian's surprise 29th Birthday/Congratulations for passing Licensing exam, New Years Eve Party 2012, and this past Thanksgiving. Plus, because we are the only family in the middle of Edmonton and Stirling, we get quite a bit of overnight stays (which we LOVE!). Please, keep staying with us! We like visitors. So, in those regards, we couldn't ask for a better house! I just love the space, the park, the garage, and the fireplace. We have been happy here.

So, there's also been some annoying things about this house! Its old, which means theres things to deal with with that, and other annoying things that this house is just special enough to get. It all started out with some black mold my sister in law found. That had to be gone! So my dad came down for 2 days to tear it all out. The basement had tons. All the walls, floor, insulation and anything else it was touching all came out! When my dad was doing this, he found water under the floor or the basement. So, this house is like a 4 storey split. So we have our most bottom layer that has a concrete floor that they built a wooden floor on top. Under the wood floor was water that we really had NO idea how long it was there. The previous renters could have had it for years without knowing! So, that all had to come out! My dad was awesome and did all that too! We dried it out, and thought we were good.

Next, the basement flooded. We think it had actually been happening every year but due to the wood floor, the landlord didn't know. So, all our stuff came out from the basement (not quite ALL our storage) and we had lots of people come look at it for solutions. In the end, landlord decides to water proof the basement. So, they come and do that. 2 or 3 weeks later after we'd put most of our stuff away, the basement floods AGAIN. So, now they need to waterproof the WHOLE basement, not just the part where they thought the water was coming in. So ALL of our stuff comes out! Into our living room in the next basement. There was some fighting going on (landlord and basement company) as to who's fault this really was and the company didn't want to have to pay for it....lots of time goes by. About this time, is the great flood in Southern Alberta/Calgary (June 2013). The water proofing basement company is now bombarded with work and we are not a priority. We wait a couple months for them to come here. Meanwhile, all our stuff is in the living room driving me CRAZY! Eventually, I got Jessica to help me move it all to the garage so I could feel normal again! So, its August when they come to fix this which has been in all total 6 months without our basement! It all gets finished, September 1st we get the go ahead to move our stuff downstairs! Hallelujah!

Somewhere in that, our hot water tank goes, and we have no hot water for a week. ANNOYING!

3 weeks ago, we were watching a movie and Brian smelt something burning. It turned out to be the electrical outlet smoking!! Black smoke coming right out of the socket. After an electrician came out the next day, he said we were lucky we were home as it was totally burnt and our house could've caught on fire!

This week, our water lines froze and we had NO WATER! Just our house, not the whole street too. Lucky us. After dealing with the town and plumbers all day, I realize it could be at least a week with no water. They have to dig and find where its frozen and blah blah blah. My kind friend lets me come over to shower (day 2) and Brian went to the pool to shower on day 1. The dishes were just piling up!!!! It was driving me insane to not be able to clean my house! Then, on day 2, around 1 pm, the water turns itself on!!!!! It must have warmed up just enough to freeze whatever was there?! Crazy. But we were sure happy!

I can't WAIT for the day we get to buy our own house! We are actually starting to think of building instead so we can get exactly what we want even though the thought of building terrifies me!

Even with all the stress and things we've dealt with in this house, we are so grateful to have found it. We love it here and feel so lucky to be here. Our landlords have been AMAZING through everything and treat us so well! They sent us a Christmas present even and the wife made us cookies. They are very kind to us. So all in all.....its been a GREAT place to live!!!