Surprising Sterling

We spent the day (9:00 AM - 3:30 PM) looking at about 11 houses in Sterling today. I wasn't really sure about Sterling, but was pleasantly surprised. Of the 11 houses, Tom and I liked 4 and really liked 2. We talked out the pros and cons of our top 2 and decided to put an offer on one. Okay, here are the pros and cons of our #1 house.
Pros:

• 5 nice sized bedrooms
• 2 1/2 baths
• recently upgraded kitchen and bathrooms
• all bedrooms on 2nd floor
• layout of 1st floor (kind of shot-gun style)
• large workroom (for beer making and tool storing)
• quiet cul-de-sac
• clean neighbors (the next door neighbor was washing down the windowsills outside)
• move-in ready (just needs a bit of paint - they had some weird colors on the walls)

Cons:

• non-existent front yard
• small backyard (would need to tear out a lot of plants)
• no garage
• HOA
• no natural gas (but it's in the neighborhood, so we can look into getting it connected to the house later)

Here are just a few pictures I took of the house. 3 of the 5 bedrooms were painted a neutral white and the other 2 were a shocking pink and a bright blue. The kitchen has a neat little greenhouse window over the sink that could be used to grow herbs. It also had a nice built in pantry with pull-out shelves. There's a nice open area upstairs that could be used as a play area for kids. And there's plenty of space downstairs for Tom to have a "Man Cave".

Front of the house (the front door is off to the left side); view of living room from the front door:



View of the kitchen from the eat-in area; upstairs hall bathroom:

One of the 5 bedrooms:


Our back-up house is a rambler/rancher style, also in Sterling. It is move-in ready, has a large yard, 5 possible bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It also has a good sized driveway with a one car garage. The kitchen was small with not a lot of counter space and everything is on one level. We're keeping this as our #2 house in case our #1 doesn't work out.

This was definitely the best house hunting day we've had so far. It was worth spending the majority of the day looking at houses in one area. Tom even found a bar/restaurant nearby with something called Hog Wings - he seemed to really like them. Both of the houses aren't very far from Tom's office and I would just drive in with him and take the shuttle to my office. So, keep your fingers crossed for us that everything works out with our top choice. We'll definitely be calling on you all for help with all of the moving and painting. It's payback time, Joe. Get ready to pony up.