Some Very Great News --

Well, my wife and I finally got some very good news today. Yesterday, while house-hunting we finally found one we liked. We made an offer and today (after some back-and-forth counter-offers) it was accepted!

The rough part is that we can't move in for another two months . . . *sigh*.

We've been looking at houses here for almost a year and a half (although we couldn't actually pay for one until our condo in California sold -- which it finally did a month ago).

Our criteria for what we wanted slowly morphed over the months due to what we decided was really important to us and what was available in this area (Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada).

Anyway, one of the things that has not changed is that we wanted something that would give me a "game room". At first we were thinking of an outside "workshop"-type building . . . but recently we'd come to prefer a "Rancher with basement".

For those of you who don't know what this means, it is a house where everything (all living areas) is on the ground floor (no "upstairs"). My dear wife has some medical reasons for avoiding stairs. This means that the Laundry room has to be on the main floor (and not in the basement where it is usually found).

Thus, with all of our "living spaces" on the main floor, the basement would be MINE!

Well, okay, we will be using one of the bedrooms in the basement for our "Guest Bedroom", but the rest is for me.

The highlight of this is a 15' x 38' room that I can use (or at least use a big chunk of) for my game room. I've posted a couple of pictures of it (note: all of the furniture, etc. belongs to current owners).

The first photo is from the "stairs" end of the room. At the far end, you can see my wife (in grey coat) waving at me. On the left side of the photo is the entrance to the "Guest Bedroom", a bathroom and another bedroom which will probably become storage. Not quite visible on the other side is a door to the outside (it is just this side of the short white step-up thing on the floor).

Picture number two is from the other end of the room. Now you can see the door to outside behind our real estate agent (short white step-up thing is visible behind her).

The white door behind my wife (near leather recliner) is to a storage area under the stairs that go up to the main floor. (Alcove entrance to stairs going up is in far corner behind my wife).

Unfortunately it is still a couple of months before the rulers of the Principality of Saxe-Bearstein will move into their new palace.

I can hardly wait.


-- Jeff