While I can be eloquent on all kinds of subjects, myself is not one of them.

As you might know, I have been going back & forth on buying a house for the whole year we have lived here (yes, it has been a year since I left Florida). We bid on one house and backed out when the inspection found mold there.

We almost bid on another but the high price scared me off, that and the other agents talk of how “tough” the owner was. He was a surgeon and thought he was IT, if you know what I mean. Some people think what they own is worth more because they own it. I have run into a number of these people over the years.

When we got back from visiting my son and his excellent GF over memorial Day weekend, I looked at our crummy, dingy rental with new eyes.

I am frustrated with the size of the bedroom where NewNeedlepoint.com lives (9X9 feet). I am all squished in there, a miracle of organization. Plus I do my packaging on the floor or on the kitchen table. Not a wonderful set-up now that I am busier.

My son’s new apartment is set-up like a townhouse condo. Although it is on the 2nd floor, it has an upstairs with a loft office. Lots of windows, nice walls & carpet. Decent kitchen, nice bedrooms & bathrooms and a gas fireplace.

He has more bathrooms than I do (!!).

This was the kick in the butt I needed to get me moving. I was so sick of moving that I had stayed in my rental way longer then I ever imagined.

OK, so what to do? I had been through my gorgeous old house in downtown Lititz faze. K had passed through his “country gentleman’s farm with acreage” passion and we both recoiled from ersatz Victorian with a high price and the lacey trim common to victorian houses in vinyl.

(Every house here, even expensive ones have vinyl siding, I do not understand why having grown up with New England clapboard).

Anyway, we sat down and took a good hard look at ourselves. How do we live? How much work do we want to do to maintain a house? how much room do we need? What are the essentials?

Ok, we like to travel, K has a 3 day weekend every week, easily made into a 4 day weekend by moving around the 4 days he works in the week.

I keep a clean house and love that but I do not want to slave over a huge house and K does not want to manage a yard.

I need no less than 2000 square feet and a room for my business that is not a bedroom.

We finally decided that a townhouse condo would suit us. We have lived in condos before and there are pluses and minuses to them.

The over 55 condo community in Florida was the nightmare. The house was absolutely wonderful but the “members of the board for life” (or so it seemed) had nothing to do but make up rules and they did. Silly rules, important rules and mostly control, control, control (you had to have 3 Palms trees in your landscape, not 2, not 4, 3! We were spoken to for 2 and forced to add another).

Years before I had owned a townhouse in a huge community. There were 7 pages of rules just for parking.

Ok, you would think I might have learned something but I do not seem to have. This is a smaller community of townhomes, not over 55 or packed with young kids, somewhere in the middle of all that.

The townhouse I bought has 2200 square feet of living space. That is very large for a condo. It has a 2 car garage (rare for a condo) and a small workroom off the garage for K ( very rare).

I has 2 fireplaces (real ones that burn wood) 3 bedrooms 2.5 bathrooms and lots of windows & light.

There is a patio that runs the whole length of the back of the house and nothing behind us and landscaping between us and the home next door. In fact, the landscaping is lovely, lot of roses and a small Japanese Maple tree.

Ok, eat in kitchen, enormous family room off the kitchen, 1st floor laundry room and the master suite is on the main floor with both a shower and a deep jacuzzi tub. Huge closets.

There are 2 more bedrooms upstairs plus a good size landing that will be a great space for K’s desk, his own office.

There is a 15 X 11 foot room to the left of the front door they call the formal Living Room. The other one is called family room.

The supposed LR will be a spectacular office for nn.com. Windows & light & space, oh my.

OK, this all sounds idyllic, doesn’t it. Now for the downside. It is owned by people in their late 80′s. They have lived there since it was new (20 years) and have not done anything to maintain or improve it, except replace the roof last year. I am sure they absolutely had to do that.

The place needs a full renovation. Total kitchen, all baths except the jacuzzi tub (which is in surprisingly good condition. It is raised with a few steps up to it, I guess they could not climb up to get in. (m wonders how many more years she will be able to manage it).

It needs tiles to replace the vinyl floor in the kitchen and tile to replace the carpet in the back hall & laundry room and tile to replace the cracked tile in the front hall. It needs all new carpet and of course, paint. It needs the lethal wallpaper removed in the powder room and all the window treatments trashed (old, ragged & filthy).

It is my belief they just could not see it clearly, the shape it was in. Years ago I used to have to go over to my grandmother’s apartment every few months and make a pile of the clothes that needed dry cleaning, she could not tell anymore if they did or didn’t. She was a spiffy dresser so this was important.

Now my folks can’t tell how badly their 20 year old paint job looks in their FL home (not nearly as bad as this place).

It needs a new heating system and I bet a new hot water heater too.

Ok, the key to all this is the price I bought it for. They were asking a reasonable price, taking into account how far house prices have fallen. I made an offer 12% below the asking price, taking into account the condition of the house.

Th sellers have and continue to refer to my offer as a “low ball”. Given the condition, it is not.

I expected them to back & forth with me 2 thousand dollars at a time.

Surprise, they did not. The countered with a price that was 9.2% below the asking price and I was amazed. I accepted. My buyer’s agent told me that if he did not have 2 kids in college next year, he would buy it for this price.

So, I almost own a house. I buy it 6/24/2011 and hope to start the renovation right away.

Our lease is up here but our landlord has kindly agreed to let us stay on until the renovation is done.

This will be, I hope, my always from now on house. I am tired of moving and we love this area. The next step up in K’s job is a regional position where he travels so that is OK.

I will be the General Contractor for this renovation. Between K & I we have not bad taste so it ought to be good.

Remember, we have renovated many houses during the years we flipped houses.

I am a middle price renovator. Middle quality, middle price. I know just what I want and it is relatively simple. Good materials and simple style. I am something of a minimalist.

I am excited. I hope/plan to move into my finished home around August 1.

Sorry to run on about this, I am so excited.

I also wanted to talk about color. I had a unexpected lesson last week on the influence colors have on each other, when used together.

Ok, this picture is in the master bedroom in my rental, right above the bed. The print is called Peace Rose by Brian Davis. It has hung above my bed for many years.

I bought a new handmade quilt from an Amish quilt shop last week (before I knew I was buying this house). The pattern is called “Weaver Fever”. I have a Certificate of Authentication for it (a piece of heavy paper printed with the quilt’s info and the shops name). The quilt is even signed (on the back) by the maker.

The colors are unusual for me. I am usually raspberry, rose, greens & grays. The accessories in my kitchen are red.

This quilt is purples & green. I have never used purple anywhere before but I found this quilt to be compelling, I could not resist it.

When seen together, look what happens to the colors in Peace Rose.

The purples and lavenders “come forward” in the print and show up much more then before.

I thought this was interesting, I learned something I already knew much better by seeing it.

I am still reading Robert Parker with breaks in between the books for Alice Hoffman and a new Julia Quinn. I am up to Cold Service from 2006.

I have been reading Alice Hoffman off and on for a long time. She lost me for a while after The River King (which was made into a movie) and Practical Magic (also a movie).

I found when I returned to Ms Hoffman that she has a new style. She takes a place, a set place and brings people and situations in and out of it over a span of many years.

She did this with The Red Garden and Blackbird House, the one I most recently read. At first I was not sure but I have come to really enjoy her novels structured this way.

They are short stories, sort of and they are a novel too, sort of too.

Well, I have bored the living daylights out of you already tonight, sorry. My next blog will be about books. I am currently listing another load of rare/used books (ok, I am editing the pictures, the reviews start later tonight or tomorrow)

I have put this post into the Rant category. It is and it isn’t.